Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Good Move/Bad Move
Good Move: Texas A&M hiring Billy Gillispie as head coach. In two years, Gillispie turned around a miserable UTEP team, going from 24 losses in his first season to 24 wins in his second. Billy's a rising star in the coaching profession and his team played hard in losing their first-round NCAA Tournament game. He'll be a significant improvement over Melvin Watkins.Bad Move: Houston hiring Tom Penders as head coach. The current broadcast analyst is 1) overqualified for the job after coaching at the University of Texas for a decade, 2) perhaps not ready for the big time, having left George Washington University in 2001 citing "burnout," and 3) not necessarily going to run a clean program, as he was suspected of releasing player's grades to the media at UT and failing to prevent his players from making unauthorized long-distance calls at GW.
