I happened to see an old friend who I had introduced to Trojan basketball a number of years ago. I asked if he was still buying a season ticket, and he said no, and I asked him why? He said he was upset that we passed Joe Kleine over when we hired a new coach.
Even though we had the greatest season ever, he was still upset we didn't hire Joe.

Now I would imagine most of us would differ with his thinking. If you fire a coach for not winning, why would you hire someone off his staff instead of bringing in someone to make a completely fresh start, which we did with Chris.

And some might disagree with my feeling, that if you lose a winning coach, then it might make good sense to hire a qualified assistant off of his staff to continue what has been going on, and keep the continuity instead of going outside and starting all over. That's exactly what Chasse did with Wes. Chasse obviously felt Wes was qualified to be our head coach, and he could take over in a winning situation. Now I understand that there are different approaches, and none are perfect.

A large, well established program such as Duke, North Carolina, etc., might approach the situation differently, as they would be committed hiring a name coach, with the ability to pay him a lot of money. But for mid majors, going with the assistant when the program has been winning, might be the best alternative. We'll see.

Either way presents risks. When Turgeon left Wichita, there were no assistants on his staff that even got a sniff, but none of them were worthy and none of them, as far as I know, are head coaches yet. He did have one that could have been considered, but our AD at the time told him he'd need HC experience to be considered. So he left a couple years prior to coach at Northern Colorado. He then turned that into the Colorado job. Many fans were upset because we thought Coach Boyle would be perfect and was the main reason behind the success that Turgeon had here. Which may be accurate considering the drop off we had after Boyle left.

But I think we did alright for ourselves going outside the staff and family. But Marshall was a hot commodity that had had plenty of offers and rejected them all. I think most of us felt like he was a long shot to move to KS but I'm thrilled he did as he was my number one want at the time.

As long as it's an educated decision and not done just because, it helps. Southern Illinois went to the assistant coach well one too many times and it devastated their program. But it's also worked out quite well for Northern Iowa.

Assistants are a known quantity. You ought not to have to wonder if they are bringing some front page-type baggage with them, and you have seen them in action close up. Conversely, hiring assistants possibly precludes hitting a home run, which you might do from the outside. But if you swing for the fences you usually end up striking out a lot. That's why the AD gets paid the big bucks.

I was certainly in favor of going outside the old staff and hiring the new coach when we hired Chris. And if he had stayed four or five years and did well, and then left, I might feel differently about our hiring process. In that situation, I would possibly want to go outside and hire another good young coach. On the other hand, if Wes had been here the entire time, and was totally integrated into the program, I might have still gone the assistant route.

But since Chris was here only one season, and we have a lot of talent scheduled to return, it probably makes good sense to continue the continuity. In addition, I'm impressed with his hires of assistant coaches. I sincerely believe that Chris set the table for the program to continue on at a high level, and I'm convinced Wes will take the reins and keep the program moving forward.