Joe on utepia | The place for commentary for UTEP athletics

Phil Johnson. Does that ring a bell?

When new Miner basketball coach Tim Floyd mentioned he wants to bring in Phil Johnson as an assistant coach ... ding, ding, ding, ding ... did that name ring a bell?

Recall that in 2004 Johnson was the San Jose State coach who was reprimanded by the Western Athletic Conference for a confrontation with a Miner fan behind the San Jose State bench.

Many here know that there a few fans who sit right there for the purpose of getting under the opposing coach's skin. The incident caused a nearly 10-minute delay in the game. Johnson is not the first opposing coach to complain about the verbal harassment from close-by fans. He apologized, but denied he took a swing. " ... I should not have turned around and yelled back at him. I let him get under my skin, and that won't happen again," El Paso Times reporter Darren Hunt quoted Johnson as saying at the time.

The fan, Randy Ortega, told the Times he was riding Johnson about his alma mater, East Central Oklahoma.

Floyd en route to El Paso; he's it

Tim Floyd UTEP's new basketball coach! For how long, you ask? Don't even start.

Getting nationally known Floyd to accept the job is a coup, as was getting Mike Price to coach UTEP football.

Here's a striking similarity. Both big-name coaches realized that departing coaches left them good talent. Price likely drooled over young quarterback Jordan Palmer. Floyd realizes there were no seniors on this years 26-7 basketball team.

So if Floyd has a good year in 2010-11, will he leave? So what if he does! That's the nature of the game now. Don Haskins, here for almost 30 years, threatened (bluffed) about leaving five or six times: Detroit, the Dallas franchise of the old ABA ... even that threat to go to Lamar unless the boosters came up with a bit of money. He also fought hard to get decent pay for his assistants.

The only bad news I see today is that there'll no longer be the fun of speculating on the new coach. Everybody, EVERYBODY got it wrong on a day-by-day basis since even before Tony Barbee left for Auburn. But it was fun. Billy Gillispie? No, Floyd. No, neither one because Randall Dickey is the man ... but there's still and outside shot at Floyd, whose father-in-law is real sick back in New Orleans ... who has an NCAA investigation ongoing for something he says he didn't do at USC ... so it's got to be Dickey.

It's over. And it's started anew for UTEP basketeball. Good work by AD Bob Stull on this one.

Stull fiddles while blogs burn

We sports bloggers in town, and a bevy of posters, have been all over the board on who's to be UTEP's new basketball coach.

There are inside sources galore. And the latest "done deal" report is that Miner Assistant Randall Dickey will replace Tony Barbee.

What happened to the "done deal" regarding Tim Floyd? Snf I orginially liked, and still do, Billy Gillispie. Both, at this writing, were also being mentioned for the Houston job. And for UTEP. And maybe Gillispie is in line at DePaul.

The protocol here is that the UTEP Athletic Department hierarchy (Bob Stull) taps out its pick and seeks the OK from University President Diana Natalicio. We tend to forget that she has always made the final decision on coaches.

So we can only speculate what's going on; well, except in sports everybody can be a knowitall. That's the fun.

It could be that it's remembered that Gillispie wouldn't sign his contract when he was here; we don't really know what went on with Billy and the school when he was being recruited by Texas A&M. Billy also had to fight off a DWI charge while here. And since UTEP has a football coach who battled out of a national scandal, maybe Billy didn't stand a chance on returning here. And who knows if Billy ever wanted to come back in the first place.

It's still odd to me that every time the UTEP jobs comes open, which has now been five times since His Coachency retired, Floyd's name comes up. But it never seems to get very far. We do know that everybody likes Tim Floyd a lot. Then again there's the NCAA probe into a $1,000 bribe regarding a star player when Floyd coached at USC. Floyd resigned. He was not fired. He's ticked that USC's athletic director didn't back him on the allegation. So  that's hanging in the air.

I'm guessing maybe Natalicio has taken a deep breath, called Stull on the phone, and said: Bob, can you for once get somebody who's not Billy The Kid to come coach here?

Dickey?

He's a veteran assistant; never been a head coach. His brother, James Dickey, was head coach at Texas Tech before Bob Knight took over. Randall Dickey is known as a good Xs and Os man. Perhaps, if this "done deal" is the "real done deal," it can be said that since there were no seniors on this year's 26-7 team, and there are four freshmen recruits coming in, UTEP might take the stability road? But nobody ever mistook Randall Dickey for "glitz."

Now wait a second, I have it on reliable inside sources - dozens of them - that it's a "done deal" that Bob Knight is coming out of retirement and will coach the Miners next season. Can't go wrong on a "done deal," right?

Curious remark on UTEP coach

I'm now going along with thinking that UTEP has a "done deal" with a new basketball coach, and that man is likely Tim Floyd, who's been an honorary Miner since he left the coaching staff as Don Haskins' top recruiter in the 1980s.

Athletic Director Bob Stull, who's and expert at not tipping his hand, said " ... We will tell recruits to wait until they can talk to the new coach." Departed Coach Tony Barbee (to Auburn) had four freshmen ready to join the team next season. That was not a "tip of the hand," but perhaps it was a little bit of a tremor.

Here's what that quote likely means: The deal is about set with Floyd, who likely said he can bring some players in. He's always had nation-wide contacts. UTEP had no seniors on this season's team. Any new coach would want to have his own guys as soon as possible. The four new freshmen, not recruited by the new coach, would mean four Barabee guys would be around for four seasons, if they panned out as players and in the classroom, that is.

Ex-Miner, Texas A&M and Kentucky Coach Billy Gillispie would be a good choice, too.  Unlike Floyd, Gillispie's name is cropping up at other schools, including Houston and DePaul. If other ADs knew that Floyd was ready to return to college (he's been at Idaho, New Orleans, Iowa State, USC, plus the NBA), his name would be out there a lot more. It isn't. That could well mean that Floyd to UTEP is already a "done deal."

UTEP, get Billy back

I'd like to see UTEP beat out other schools and convince Billy Gillispie to return as basketball coach. Billy is a good coach and a good guy for El Paso. He was well-liked in his two seasons here.

But Gillispie is on virturally everyone's "rumor" list, and there has to be speculation that his pal, Houston AD Mack Rhoades, would want him there now that Tom Penders is gone. Some think Gillispie is in the running for DePaul, too.

I agree with some others that Sam Houston State's Bob Marlin is a winner. I'd give Gillispie the recruiting edge since Gillispie did well with players at: UTEP and Texas A&M. Yes, he was a bust at Kentucky, but anybody who has followed Gillispie knows he wasn't cut out for hanging with big-money boosters, such as at Kentucky. You've got to be a "society" guy and a great coach - and get to the Final 4 often - to be accepted by the swells at Kentucky. In the world of sports its Yankees/Dodgers, Boston Celtics, Dallas Cowboys, Notre Dame football and Kentucky basketball.

Tim Floyd?

He'd be great. He built winners here in the 1980s as top recruiter. He's been a head coach in college and of the NBA Chicago Bulls. It's odd, though, that his name doesn't appear on the "rumor" lists for job openings of late. Maybe he's happy in his home state as an assistant with the New Orleans Hornets? The UTEP job has opened up several times since his mentor, Don Haskins, retired, and Floyd's name hasn't come up here in Utepia.

UTEP, beat out Houston and DePaul and get Billy back.

Football suspensions & Barbee job hunting

Two things today:

1) When a coach suspends his senior-to-be quarterback, it's a real bad thing. Trevor Vittatoe is counted on to be a team leader/model citizen. He and two others have been temporarily kicked off the team; they'll not be able to do team stuff or participate in the first six spring football practices.

So what did they do? Once again Price, because he can, isn't giving out details. This is real bad, too. As stated many times, I think this just causes rumors. Did the guys commit a crime? Or maybe they got caught giving Price a hot foot while he was napping in the film room? Politicians can't keep such secrets under the "people's right to know." There's no democracy at play in the realm of Coachdom.

I don't buy that these are youngsters who should be treated as innocents. They are major college football players in a multi-million-dollar program. Some are using their free education to actually get an education; others are using it in hopes they can become millionaire pro athletes.

2) Basketball Coach Tony Barbee looked to be the top candidate on the list of names interviewing for the Auburn job (The Birmingham paper). If he's also called in to interview at DePaul, that will cement that he's one of the big names out there in the coachosphere.

I'm still predicting Derrick Caracter is done at UTEP.

New Houston coach

Probably Billy Gillispie will be the No. 1 candate to replace Tom Penders as Houston's basketball coach - not UTEP's Tony Barbee. I'm thinking Barbee won't be too interested.

Penders won 648 games in 30-plus years of head coaching He went 121-77 at Houston. He had two years left on his contract and Houston AD Mack Rhoades said it was Penders' wishes.

Recall Rhoades was the top assistant to Bob Stull when Gillispsie was hired here to replace Jason Rabedeaux. One recent blogger had it correct when he said Rhoades headed up the hiring process. That he did. And, yes, the AD certainly has the final say. But Rhoades is the one to went and got Gillispie, then an Illinois assistant.

One thing in the Penders resignation story got me thinking. Rhoades said Penders did a good job of building this year's team with the limited finances he worked with.

If Barbee goes anywhere (I'm still leaning toward he is), it would be for big bucks. Why leave a team that won 26 games this season and has no seniors and four supposedly good freshmen coming in?

Also, I don't think Rhoades would try to steal mentor Stull's guy unless there's something in the fog we don't know about.

Note: With no seniors and four freshmen coming in, that means some of this year's players can't be back due to the scholarship limit of 12. This is Barbee's chance to dump any player he thinks has a bad attitude. A guy or two was basically a walk-on this year. That could factor in, too. In many cases, especially in football, when a coach has a scholarship hole unfilled, he'll give the money to a local kid, at least until he needs that spot for a better player.

Gillispie is out of work, having pfffed out at high-society Kentucky last year. He didn't coach this season. That's just not Billy's crowd over there at that top of the college basketball world school where not making it to the Final Four is a failure. Billy did well at UTEP and Texas A&M. He could do well at Houston, too. Billy is Texan by birth and seemingly by mindset.

This isn't a downright prediction. This is just the early picture that presents itself hours after Penders' resignation.

Next for UTEP?

I don't see Derrick Caracter returning to the UTEP basketball team for what would be his senior season, and Coach Tony Barbee will accept an offer from another school, if he gets one. Of course he will leave if he can. And I think somebody will have an offer. He's a big-city Eastern guy.

It's simple. Caracter, since he's been a young teenager, has been telling adults he doesn't need school because he's going right to the NBA. I don't see him staying academically eligible for a senior year here. A good story in the New York Times this week paints Caracter as a nice person who has no desire to attend school. It quotes Caracter saying he was sorry NBA Commissioner David Stern put in the rule about not going straight to the NBA from high school, as did LaBron James and others ... all the way back to Moses Malone in the 1970s.
 Now they can't.

Caracter first enrolled in a private high school in home-state New Jersey (Newark area). He departed after a year. Went to a public school. Departed back to the private school the next year. Then, as do many talents with bad academic standings, he was laundered at one of those prep schools so he could get into Louisville. There Coach Rick Pitino wouldn't let him practice for a while because he'd ballooned to 315 pounds. The two didn't hit it off. He came here and didn't seem to have problems; he was well liked and got points and rebounds and UTEP went on a 16-game winning streak when he became eligible at mid-semester.

Late in the season Barbee began throwing out hints that he was  not happy with the team's mental attitute. I'm not blaming Barbee. I think he's got a bunch of guys who listen to sports advisors more than they listen to him. That's a coaching problem. Recall one freshman was shown the door this season. Usually that makes an imprint on players' minds. Maybe it didn't in this case and Barbee should have run somebody else off, too? Good coaches run troubled players off the team. Example: The big guy Haskins brought in with Hardway was gone by January because of attitude stuff. He was the guy UTEP recruited hard. Hardaway was the throw in. The big guy was lumbering slow. Hardaway is one of the best ever to play here.

This doesn't mean Caracter is a sure shot to be in the NBA. He's got too many flaws that should be worked out in college. Guys as tall block some of his shots.  He's bad on positioning, and that's why he's had foul trouble way more often  that other 6-9 big guys. His passing is lax.

My takes:

Caracter might not even want to come back, and it may be by mutual agreement.

I don't know that Barbee is on DePaul's short list. But I think he'd be a great fit at that Chicago school in the Big East. DePaul's administration is on record saying they're going to pay well to get the best possible coach, more than the $800,000 a year the university pays now. Barbee gets just more than $200,000 here. Most  big schools pay much more than $200,000. There will be other openings, one of them being the school the new DePaul coach leaves.

DePaul has said it is moving slow on naming a coach because some possibles were in the NCAA Tournament. Don't bother them now is the thinking. And that's just protocol. But watching the games you see a lot of good, young coaches in the tournament - and some of the smaller schools have a lot of raw talent. Anybody in an NCAA office pool knows that by now. Upsets galore. I went with mostly favorites on mine, and I'm doing poorly this pool season.

Overall, Caracter was a main reason the Miners won the regular-season Conference USA title. He's not going to last another year in college, though. At least I don't think so.

Barbee has improved his wins in each of his four seasons here. This year the Miners got 26.

UTEP will be even better next year, even if Caracter doesn't return and Barbee moves up the coaching ladder. Everybody else is due back and there'll be more maturity to go with the talent that won 26 games.

No Sweet 16, ahem!

OK,  it's not quite the Sweet 16 in Utepia. Sorry about your office brackets, posters and die-hards. Keep it up, though. That's what makes sports so great. But it's the off-season now. The best team UTEP faced all season, the Horizon League's Butler, shot 3's all second half and beat UTEP 77-59. Biggest wipeout of the season.

It went to show that this tall,talented team's package is just not tightly taped up. A good BASKETBALL team beat a top TALENTED team ... so easily. UTEP had no answer whatsoever for hot-shooting Butler, that outscored TALENT by almost 30 points in the second half. If you belong in the NCAA Tournament, you don't get outscored 50-26 after talking a six-point halftime lead.

This was an overall good year for 26-7 UTEP, which returns all players next season, unless junior Derrick Caracter is dumb enough to try for the NBA draft. UTEP advanced in the "smarts" department of the game quite a bit this year, actually pulling out clutch wins late in the Conference USA season. That hadn't happened in Coach Tony Barbee's first three seasons.

But it was clear this is not a team that is ready to be Sweet 16 yet. When Butler's outside shooters started making a bevy of "nothing-but-cord" shots, UTEP didn't/couldn't do anything to adjust.

Bottom line here: Conference USA is not NCAA USA. The Miners are not ready to win games against the BASKETBALL teams in the NCAA.

Next up, posters: Will Barbee leave for a better job?

Gotta play smarter

UTEP can beat Butler if UTEP has the patience to take what's open on offense. That's not a UTEP forte.

Derrick Caracter, 6-foot-9, looks to be the best talent under the hoop. If Butler's two big guys sag on him, that doesn't mean UTEP's shootists (Culpepper and Polk) should immediately jack it up from 3-point range. But that's what they've been doing.

Get the ball into Caracter. If he can wiggle for a shot, fine. One defender won't stop Caracter's offense. If he can't get a decent percentage shot, he must do a better job of finding an open man 10 to 15 feet from the basket.

UTEP doesn't do this well, and they're not going to be able to override this problem with the sheer muscle and flash they used in Conference USA. Butler has played well, and defeated, some big-name teams by playing solid overall basketball.

I've got steady-playing Butler as a slight favorite Thursday. I just don't see Culpepper getting to put on his circus act on offense, like he did in the C-USA Tournament. He must stick to ball-hawking/stealing. He does that well.

I don't think UTEP will be able to stay hot shooting outside for an extended period of time against a good team like Butler. You can put on rallies that way. But sustaining a good offense means some layups and high-percentage shots like Caracter's, and slashing along the baseline like Williams and Moultrie.