Nothing official, but per reports on Twitter (some by FAU basketball players and former NBA exec Stu Jackson), the Owls have hired former NBA player and head coach Michael Curry. I had no idea he was even a candidate up until a few minutes ago, but he does have plenty of coaching experience (although all in the NBA). If true, and there's no reason to it is not, hopefully his extensive NBA ties help him with recruiting.

damn good hire if true

Dieter Kurtenbach ‏@dkurtenbach ·5 mins
FAU players are tweeting that Michael Curry has been hired as FAU’s next head coach.

So not being a basketball guy, is this a good hire? NBA experienc is nice but can he recruit I would wonder?

Seems pretty official now, so I changed the title of the thread. Out of the box hire for the Owls as most reports had them looking at assistant coaches such as UF's Matt McCall and OSU's Dave Dickenson. Getting someone with the resume of Curry would seem to be a coup. It's his first college job. It'll be interesting to hear his plans to turn this program around.

(04-07-2014 02:29 PM)OwlFamily Wrote:  So not being a basketball guy, is this a good hire? NBA experienc is nice but can he recruit I would wonder?

being an NBA coach always helps recruiting because you can pitch that you know execs/scouts/agents.

I hope he works out well. I'd really like to see at least one of the Florida programs be good at basketball.

Hopefully it works better than Isiah Thomas at FIU...At least this guy does not have the baggage Isiah had....

(04-07-2014 02:29 PM)OwlFamily Wrote:  So not being a basketball guy, is this a good hire? NBA experienc is nice but can he recruit I would wonder?

I would think he would hire some proven recruiters as assistants. Good hire if he does.


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(04-07-2014 03:07 PM)WKUFan518 Wrote:  Hopefully it works better than Isiah Thomas at FIU...At least this guy does not have the baggage Isiah had....

That's what I'm afraid of. NBA career and coach does not always translate to college. Oh well. I trust our AD. He hit a home run with Coach Partrdige and hopefully he's done it again with this hire.

(04-07-2014 03:14 PM)OwlFamily Wrote:  

(04-07-2014 03:07 PM)WKUFan518 Wrote:  Hopefully it works better than Isiah Thomas at FIU...At least this guy does not have the baggage Isiah had....

That's what I'm afraid of. NBA career and coach does not always translate to college. Oh well. I trust our AD. He hit a home run with Coach Partrdige and hopefully he's done it again with this hire.

Isiah Thomas was a failure because he wanted to do the job part-time and came with a ton of baggage from his past. Curry is a basketball coach that, I think, just wants to coach and not also be an NBA executive on the side. I don't know how Curry will do as a college coach, but if Chun hired him, I'm sure he's at least a good guy.

By the way, FAU has a 6:30pm press conference scheduled for tonight.

Mike coached the Pistons for one year. I thought it was a bad hire not because I thought Curry was a bad coach but because the team was transitioning to become a really bad team. I thought Curry was made to be the scapegoat and it really wasn't fair to him. I also didn't think Curry was ready to handle those egos of the Pistons just yet.

But I think he is a really good hire for FAU.

It seems official now. Tampa papers reported it this morning. You have to think that FAU is trying hard to upgrade all sports and be a force in C-USA. This has some potential to be a good hire. He stated that he wanted to recruit good players and good people, and realized he had a rebuilding job with the Owls.

It's definitely official. The press conference was yesterday.