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For a few days people were talking about how quiet things were on the coaching carousel. That's pretty much over.
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First, DePaul fired Oliver Purnell and are now quite keen on hiring Bobby Hurley or Bryce Drew.
Herb Sendek got fired at Arizona State. The Sun Devils have also targeted a Blue Devil, hoping to hire Jeff Capel.
Meanwhile, having fired Allen Major, Charlotte is showing some imagination and daring, going after Mark Price. Well, why not? Why hasn't it happened before? The guy seems like a natural.
Of less concern locally, Mississippi State fired Clemson assistant Rick Ray and has replaced him with Ben Howland, formerly of Pitt and UCLA.
It's not our decision and we'll support those guys no matter what they do, but we honestly think they could do better than Arizona State and DePaul.
Arizona State is really a football school which always wants basketball success but never has it for long.
In 1983, ASU hired Bob Weinhauer, former coach at Penn, who was famous around these parts for saying in 1978 that Duke played like "a bunch of elephants."
The elephants ran all over Penn after that, culminating in a legendary backwards dunk on a fast break by Kenny Dennard.
Weinhauer lasted three seasons.
Next was Steve Patterson, hired in1985, fired in 1989.
Bill Frieder seemed like a reasonable bet, but he lasted eight seasons and was gone, leaving behind a 318-197 mark at ASU.
Don Newman? Gone in a year.
Rob Evans lasted eight years and finished one game under .500 there.
Herb Sendek of course was hired away from NC State to great fanfare and initially was very popular in Tempe.
At the end though the complaints were striking similar to what we heard at NC State: personally remote, boring style.
He finished 159-137 at ASU.
Capel would do well to remember that Oklahoma didn't hesitate to fire him after two poor seasons, despite a 30-win season in his third year in Norman because ASU is equally brutal.
Capel is a talented coach. We just would hate to see him get caught up in the classic ASU shuffle. It's a tough place to succeed.
And DePaul?
It has some advantages over Arizona State though, starting with being a basketball school in The Big East, a basketball conference.
Just about everyone has had a tough time there though, partly because recruiting has been tough. There's plenty of talent but you really have to be tied into the AAU scene in Chicago.
Alternatively you can go shop out of town, but that hasn't worked too well either.
The Buffalo paper is urging Buffalo to give Hurley enough money to stick around, which may work for awhile, but he's clearly heading for bigger things.
And it may not matter: Tuesday evening ESPN listed Hurley as the leading candidate; by early Wednesday morning, some outlets were listing Valpo's Bryce Drew as the top choice.