Andy Katz says, in an article mostly about Billy Donovan, that Tech has now
lost out on Bill
Self and Leonard Hamilton - and Oliver Purnell has apparently been ruled out
because of a situation involving a Dayton player. Amaker turned them down. So who's on top of the list
now? Buzz Peterson. Mike Brey has been contacted but says they
haven't called him back, and if they don't it won't hurt his feelings. Is
that for real? Are they that dumb? Brey would be huge at Tech.
So if they aren't happy with this bunch, who else is there to turn to? Well
we'd like to make a radical suggestion, not that Tech listens to guys like
us. But a guy who made a tremendous impression on us recently was Curtis
Hunter. His A&T team played with enormous poise and character. They
lost, and badly, but they played like a high level D-1 team in terms of their
discipline and their willingness to sacrifice for the good of the team and,
having, in the high sense of the word, professionalism about them. That's
fairly rare at minor powers like A&T, and so it should draw attention, as it
has from time to time at, say, Tulsa.
Obviously this would be a problematic hire: for one thing, he's barely
coached, and has no track record. For another, who knows how he would
handle recruiting and the media at an ACC school? Last situation even close to analogous
was Bob Wade, and we know how that ended up. However, we were enormously
impressed with A&T's performance. The program has hit rock bottom
anyway: why not give it a shot?
Not that Buzz Peterson would be a bad choice; not at all. But someone is
going to take a chance on Hunter and probably get a pretty sharp coach.