NCAA Tournament

The Big East got a whopping record setting 11 teams into this year's Big Dance.

The ACC, having a down year, only got 4.

Soooo, after the first weekend's rounds, going into the Sweet 16, how is that working out?

The Big East has 2 teams left (18% of teams advancing) and the ACC has 3 (75% of teams advancing).

This includes ACC number 10 seed Florida State stomping Big East number 2 seed Notre Dame 71 - 57. Game was never even close.

The Big East as the power basketball conference?

Yeah, right.

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State Coaching Search

The message boards are naturally filled with all sorts of rumors and speculation about who will be the next Head Coach.

Things really heated up over the weekend. I suspect that's because State fans are huge basketball fans. Even if we don't have a dog in the hunt this year (or the last five years) we're still watching the tournament. We loves us some bassetball.

Rick Barnes has always been "the" coach that State fans have wanted. Including me - five years ago. Today - I'd pass on Barnes in favor of a younger up and coming coach or, if we go after an established coach, Billy Donovan.

Why do State fans love the idea of Barnes as our next coach? Well, back when Barnes was Clemson's head coach, he never bought into the whole "Dean Smith as the holiest saint of ACC coaches" thing.

Barnes would work the ref's just as hard as ol Dean would and Dean would take umbrage at that. Smith and Barnes got into more than a couple of shouting matches during games. Once, a microphone picked up Barnes telling Smith to Fly Off during one such encounter.

State fans loved it.

Anyway - the boards are full of "It's going to be Barnes" or "It's going to be Sean Miller" and so on.

Two themes on the boards have been consistent: 1) AD Yow has lined up a 'game changer' and 2) It's going to cost big and the Wolfpack Club has green lighted a huge budget. The numbers being floated around are in the $5M range.

The highest paid coach, by far, is Calipari (Kentucky) at around $4M with Donavon (Florida) second at $3.3M.

If the $5M rumors are correct, that leads me to suspect that Yow's target (and already done deal if you believe the boards) is Billy Donavon.

I would love to have Billy D as our head coach.