http://www.digtriad.com/news/article/221...o-Transfer

Desrosiers shot 37% from three point land his sophomore season. Just what we need, another 7 foot three point shooter like Ibrahima Thomas....lol.

He was ranked 53rd in the 2010 class by Van Coleman.

Source: Charleston tabs Doug Wojcik

Updated: March 31, 2012, 7:37 PM ET
By Andy Katz | ESPN.com

The College of Charleston has hired former Tulsa coach Doug Wojcik, a source with direct knowledge of the situation told ESPN.com on Saturday night.

Wojcik replaces the retiring Bobby Cremins, who was replaced by interim coach Mark Byington when Cremins had to take a leave of absence during the season after 11 games.

Wojcik will receive a five-year contract. A news conference is scheduled for Wednesday.

Wojcik was fired earlier this month after he led the Golden Hurricane to a 17-14 record, 10-6 in Conference USA.

Wojcik was the head coach at Tulsa for seven seasons and had a winning record in each year except his first. He won 20-plus games in four of the seven seasons and finished with a 140-92 record, 68-12 in Conference USA.

Wojcik led Tulsa to three postseason appearances, including two NIT berths, but never an NCAA tournament appearance.

Wojcik has coached at his alma mater Navy, Notre Dame, North Carolina and Michigan State.

Charleston finished the season with a 19-12 record, 10-8 in the Southern Conference.

Cremins coached Charleston for six seasons and led it to three postseason appearances, including the NIT quarterfinals. The Cougars never made the NCAA tournament under Cremins, who came out of retirement to replace Tom Herrion in 2006. Cremins retired at Georgia Tech in 2000.

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketba...charleston

Rick Ray is new basketball coach at Mississippi St

STARKVILLE, Miss. (AP) - Mississippi State has hired Clemson assistant Rick Ray to be its next men's basketball coach.

The university announced Ray's hiring on Sunday and scheduled a press conference for Monday morning.

The 40-year-old Ray has been the top assistant at Clemson for the past two seasons. The Tigers won 22 games and went to the NCAA tournament in 2011. He also spent four years as an assistant at Purdue under Matt Painter and seven seasons as an assistant at Indiana State.

Ray replaces Rick Stansbury, who announced his retirement in March after 14 seasons leading the program.

Mississippi State athletic director Scott Stricklin said in a statement that Ray fit the model he wanted as a head coach, describing him as "bright, enthusiastic (and) disciplined.''

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/ba....ray.0166/

That's a relief... That whole Cronin thing seemed to have a lot of legs

A lot of hirings made on April 1st, wonder how many of them are a joke?

Player transfer list from cbssports: http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketba...st-edition

(04-01-2012 08:34 PM)BJUnklFkr Wrote:  That's a relief... That whole Cronin thing seemed to have a lot of legs

Suprised Koch and Broo didn't pick up that story.

Miami names new men’s basketball coach

By Rick Cassano, Staff Writer
8:38 PM Friday, April 6, 2012

OXFORD — The Miami University men’s basketball program has a new leader.

MU Athletic Director Brad Bates announced Friday evening that John Cooper, the head coach at Tennessee State the last three years, has been hired to lead the RedHawks program.

“John Cooper is an extraordinary individual, and he’s the perfect fit to lead Miami’s basketball program,” Bates said. “He aligns with our values. He’s got a track record of success in the areas that we think are the most important, and he has a unique ability to connect with students because he sincerely and genuinely cares about them, yet he’s intensely competitive. He’s been mentored by some of the best in the game, and he can flat-out recruit. This is going to be a lot of fun.”

Cooper’s contract at Miami is for five years with an annual base salary of $250,000. Bates said he was the only individual that was offered the position.

Cooper’s Tigers went 20-13 this season, losing in the first round of the CollegeInsider.com postseason tournament. It’s their first winning record since the 1995-96 campaign. Included in that victory total was a 68-61 win in Oxford on Feb. 19 in an ESPN BracketBuster game.

Tennessee State was 9-23 in Cooper’s first season and 14-16 last year. His coaching history as an assistant included stops at Auburn, Oregon, South Carolina and Fayetteville State. A native of Kansas City, Cooper played collegiately at Wichita State.

Cooper replaces Charlie Coles at Miami. Coles retired as the winningest coach in MU history on March 5 after 16 years at the helm.

http://www.journal-news.com/hamilton-spo...56306.html

Sounds like the process wasn't very smooth, but Cooper seems like a very good choice for Miami. He really turned around Tenn St. and got some nice wins last year.

I kept thinking- "Why would they hire that old OSU football coach to coach the basketball team? They must be really desperate."

Strange hire to me. If the guy is taking the Miami job to earn $250K, what was he being paid at Tennessee State? If he is that hot of a prospect, you would think he would either wait for a better offer, or Miami is absolutely broke and took whomever they could get at their price.

Sources: TCU picks Trent Johnson

Updated: April 8, 2012, 8:38 PM ET
ESPN.com news services

Trent Johnson resigned Sunday as LSU's basketball coach, the announcement coming on the eve of his expected introduction as TCU's coach.

LSU athletic director Joe Alleva said Johnson is leaving the Tigers after four seasons to take another head coaching position.

Alleva didn't say where Johnson was headed, but TCU said Sunday that a "major announcement" involving its men's basketball program would be made during a news conference on the Fort Worth campus Monday afternoon.

There were no other specifics given in the TCU release, but sources told ESPNDallas.com's Richard Durrett on Friday that Johnson would be hired as Jim Christian's replacement.

"Sometimes coaching changes work out well for all parties involved, and we will take this opportunity to seek out the best coach for the long-term future of LSU men's basketball," Alleva said. "We will move quickly but deliberately to find a coach who will lead our program with integrity and discipline, someone who will recruit effectively in order to build championship teams while inspiring success in academics, and someone who will energize our fan base. I wish Trent all the best in his new job."

Johnson's introduction at TCU will come a week after officials there said Christian was leaving after four seasons.

Christian was hired Tuesday as the coach at Ohio University. He returned to the Mid-American Conference where he won at least 20 games in each of his six seasons at Kent State and took the Golden Flashes to two NCAA tournaments before moving to TCU.

The Horned Frogs are moving next season from the Mountain West Conference to the Big 12.

Johnson had a 67-64 record in four seasons at LSU. He previously took Nevada and Stanford to the round of 16 in the NCAA tournament.

TCU hasn't been to the NCAA tournament since 1998 when Billy Tubbs was its coach.

Christian was 56-73 at TCU. But the Horned Frogs were 18-15 last season, their first winning season since 2004-05. They finished the season with a second-round loss at Oregon State in the College Basketball Invitational tournament.

LSU was also 18-15 last season, and lost to Oregon in the first round of the NIT.

When Johnson got to LSU in 2008, he had a team filled with seniors. The Tigers went 27-8 and won the SEC regular season championship his first season, but went 22-41 combined with only five SEC wins the next two years.

Johnson went to LSU from Stanford after taking the Cardinal to three NCAA tournaments in four seasons. Stanford, a private school like TCU, was 28-7 and went to the NCAA round of 16 in 2007-08, his final year there.

Nevada also went to the round of 16 in Johnson's final season, 2003-04 when the Wolf Pack were 25-9. He was 79-74 at Nevada from 1999-2004.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

http://espn.go.com/dallas/ncb/story/_/id...ources-say

Isiah Thomas dismissed by FIU

Updated: April 7, 2012, 6:52 PM ET

MIAMI -- Isiah Thomas arrived at Florida International knowing he was taking a risk.

Three years later, the school didn't see enough reward.

The Basketball Hall of Fame player was fired on Friday by FIU, after his teams went 26-65 in his three seasons. His hiring came out of nowhere in 2009 -- "No one thought we could pull this off," FIU director of sports and entertainment Pete Garcia proudly said at the time -- and in the end, so did his firing.

Thomas told ESPN.com senior writer Andy Katz he was stunned by the firing.

"This is the most surprising thing that has happened to me in basketball," Thomas said. "I never been fired before for basketball reasons. This is the first time.

"When I was in Toronto, I was trying to buy a team and I left. When I was in Indiana, Larry Bird told me that he liked what I was doing but he was closer to Rick Carlisle. The whole thing in New York was crazy. This is the first time someone told me that I was being fired for basketball reasons."

Thomas said he was conducting individual workouts on Friday before he was summoned to Garcia's office.

He said he also had recruits coming in this weekend and an assistant coaching candidate for a job.

Thomas said Garcia wouldn't get into specifics about why he was being fired. Thomas said the meeting took place at 1:30 p.m. ET. Thomas said he has two years left on his contract and a buyout wasn't discussed. He said he was so stunned he didn't ask.

Thomas said he told Garcia he should have at least been given five years to see a recruiting class through. Thomas said he was recruiting exceptionally well in Florida and in Chicago and Indiana and was close to turning the corner at FIU.

"We have a solid group of freshmen and sophomores," Thomas said. "They fired the whole staff. There is no one left. I feel bad for the kids. They are asking questions about what they should do. I'm trying to help but there is no one left here from our staff. I'm just stunned."


AP Photo/Lynne Sladky
Florida International never generated the buzz it had envisioned in Isiah Thomas' three seasons. The Panthers averaged 1,071 fans at home this season, but nearly four times that many on the road.

FIU announced the decision earlier Friday in a simple three-line statement.

"We want to thank Isiah Thomas for his three years here at FIU," Garcia said. "However, we have decided to take the program in a different direction."

Thomas' former players, though, are not pleased.

"Everyone really, really took it hard," DeJuan Wright, FIU's leading scorer this past season, said Saturday. "It hasn't settled in. Besides basketball, everyone from top to bottom on our team looked up to coach Thomas. He has really helped us as men. I know that's cliche to say, but it's really, really true. He's really helped all of us as men, in the classroom and making sure we're doing the right things."

Wright was among several players who were working out in the FIU gym on Friday with Thomas, when news of the coach's firing broke.

Not long afterward, Wright and those same players were helping Thomas carry hastily packed boxes from his now-former office to his car.

"Surreal. It was bad, man," Wright said. "We're hurt. We're upset. It is a business, but this hasn't sunk in yet at all."

The Panthers were far from being a basketball power before Thomas arrived after a stint as coach and president of the Knicks. The school's last winning season was the 1999-2000 campaign and its winning percentage of .315 since, according to STATS LLC, is 329th out of 344 Division I men's programs that competed over the past 12 years.

So FIU turned to Thomas, but never won more than 11 games in any of his three seasons.

"What do I do now...never felt so lost!" FIU guard Tanner Wozniak wrote on Twitter moments after the firing was announced. "Why?"

The simplest answer is FIU didn't win.

"We just needed a break here or a break there, and it's not happening for us," Thomas said last month, shortly after FIU's 8-21 season ended with a loss to eventual Sun Belt tournament champion Western Kentucky. "I know we're getting there. We've had so many close games. If we keep working, good things will happen."

If so, they'll happen for someone else at FIU.

The timing might be perceived as somewhat unusual, given that FIU's season ended a month ago and that many offseason coaching changes are discussed and at times negotiated at the Final Four, which was last weekend in New Orleans.

University officials said Garcia did not plan to make any further public statement about the decision on Friday, only noting the search for the team's next coach would begin immediately.

Thomas took nothing in base salary for his first season and agreed to a deal where he would receive nearly half of any gross revenues from ticket sales, commissions collected on food and beverage concessions and sponsorships.

But FIU never generated the buzz that both it and Thomas envisioned. The Panthers averaged 1,071 fans at home this season, and nearly four times that many on the road.

"I like taking something from the bottom and trying to build it to the top," Thomas said in 2009. "There's a lot of risk in that and there is a lot of reward in that."

Thomas was chosen as one of the NBA's 50 Greatest Players after his career with the Detroit Pistons. His NBA coaching career started with the Indiana Pacers, and during a three-season stint there he never had a losing record and never missed the playoffs.

From there, he went to New York, first as president, then eventually its coach -- and a place that could be his next stop in some capacity.

With Thomas as president, the Knicks never won a playoff game, even though they often had the NBA's highest payroll. "Fire Isiah!" chants were common at Madison Square Garden, and he went 56-108 in his two seasons on the New York sideline, getting fired as coach following the 2007-08 season.

He remained with the Knicks in an unspecified role even after getting ousted as coach, even after a lawsuit brought by former team employee Anucha Browne Sanders that cost MSG $11.6 million. Sanders alleged she was sexually harassed by Thomas, who continually maintained his innocence and was never found personally liable.

And even when he was at FIU, the Knicks hired Thomas again, albeit briefly. Thomas accepted a job as a consultant with the team in August 2010, then had to decline the position less than a week later because it would violate certain NBA rules, including those prohibiting team officials from having contact with college players who are not eligible for the draft.

Thomas aided the Knicks during free agency in the summer of 2010, speaking to LeBron James and trying to sell him on choosing New York. James eventually signed with the Miami Heat. When the Knicks signed Amare Stoudemire that summer, Donnie Walsh -- who replaced Thomas as president and later fired him as coach -- thanked Thomas during the news conference.

This past offseason, when FIU hosted James, Dwyane Wade, Stoudemire, Carmelo Anthony and other players for a charity game during the NBA lockout, the players used official NBA basketballs. They were all stamped "New York Knicks."

"I've had my ups and downs," Thomas said when FIU hired him. "But don't expect me to just stay down, because that's not happening."

Information from The Associated Press and ESPN.com's Andy Katz was used in this report.

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketba...-3-seasons

I am guessing Trent Johnson saw the writing on the wall at LSU

(04-08-2012 09:48 PM)Bearcat_Bounce Wrote:  I am guessing Trent Johnson saw the writing on the wall at LSU

Suppose you heard that Ohio U, TCU and LSU would all have head coach openings this year and that 2 of those schools would hire a head coach from one of the others. How many would have guessed it would be Ohio U hiring from TCU and TCU from LSU - especially considering none of them were fired?