MORGANTOWN —
Clearing out a cluttered notebook and an empty mind:
• Let’s just put all you conspiracy theorists on hold for a moment.
Yes, Chad Wall, the WVU director of compliance, is leaving and the job is coming open and being posted.
Yes, the NCAA has been in town investigating the football program under Rich Rodriguez.
But, no, one does not have anything to do with the other, according to a source within the athletic department.
Wall replaced Brad Cox, who was the compliance director when Rodriguez was here when Cox left to take a different job in the university and he actually is making a step up as an assistant athletic director at VCU.
If there are problems, that apparently isn’t one of them.
• You may recall the name Dan Dakich.
You may even want to thank him, for had he kept the job he was hired for as Gale Catlett’s replacement, who knows, we might never have seen Bob Huggins back home, especially since Dakich was the second choice to Huggins anyway.
Well, Dakich left WVU after discovering problems in the basketball program involving Jonathan Hargett, who was supposed to be the man who brought Catlett a championship before retiring. He headed back to Bowling Green, from whence he came, and never recaptured what he had there.
He moved to Indiana, became an assistant, then interim head coach and now is really a talented — if there is such a thing in the field — radio talk show host.
During a low moment at the Final Four, I happened to notice him off in a corner chatting with Jay Bilas, the former Duke player turned ESPN basketball guru. Naturally, I approached and re-introduced myself.
“Jeez, Bob,” he said, “you killed me when I left.”
I could do nothing but agree with that statement, having been somewhat critical of his not signing his contract and not having done enough homework about the job and the situation before going through a Coliseum press greeting filled with fans and dignitaries.
“And you haven’t stopped. You killed me again a couple of weeks ago,” he said.
Yes, I had, but, hey, what’s a vagabond sportswriter to do?
Anyway, we talked for a while, laughed a little, even.
“I’d like to talk you for a story,” I finally said to Dakich.
“I’d rather not,” he said. “That doesn’t matter anymore.”
In truth, it didn’t, and so we shook hands and I went on my way to write about West Virginia and Duke while he talked to Bilas for a while, then headed back to the world of radio where he recently endorsed DePaul’s hiring of Oliver Purnell.
“Mark it down, the high school coaches who are criticized the hire now will all come around once they spend some time getting to know Oliver,” Dakich said.
Somehow you wonder whether or not Dakich would rather be ducking that same kind of criticism as a college coach again as he did in leaving West Virginia than to be one of the guys who’s paid to do the criticism.
• Speaking of Dakich makes us always remember that his exit opened the door for John Beilein to come town, providing us all with a magnificent run as basketball coach, introducing us to Mike Gansey and Darius Nichols and Kevin Pittsnogle and, yes, Da’Sean Butler and Joe Alexander.
Beilein left Morgantown prematurely and probably regrets it as things at Michigan not only have not worked out for the best but he wound up playing second fiddle there to Rich Rodriguez, just as he had in Morgantown, which was one of the reasons he left.
Anyhow, a promising season for Beilein wound up 15-17 the year and rumors about his job have begun to swirl. In an effort to move forward, Beilein recently let go of a couple of coaches he brought from WVU to Ann Arbor.
Beilein finally felt he had to let go of associate head coach Jerry Dunn, whom he hired at WVU after he lost the head coaching job at Penn State, and John Mahoney, who was his director of basketball operations at WVU.
“I have a clear vision of where I want this program to go and how I would like to complete my coaching staff,” Beilein said in making the announcement. “I see this change as a unique opportunity to add another highly qualified individual to our Michigan basketball program.”
“Jerry Dunn has been a successful head coach in the past and would like to do so again,” said Beilein. “He is now going to put all of his efforts toward that goal. I have worked with Jerry for seven years and appreciate his many contributions to the success of our programs. He will continue to work with me on several administrative tasks until the end of April.”
“I want to be a head coach again, and the only way to be fair to the program is to pursue these opportunities with my entire focus,” said Dunn. “I have enjoyed spending the past seven years with John. We have had a lot of success together and I have learned a great deal during that time. Michigan has made great strides getting back to the tournament, but it is time to move on and pursue my goal. My time with the Michigan family has been enjoyable, and I wish our program and the university nothing but success.”
• Da’Sean Butler is not letting this torn ACL get him down.
He showed up at opening day in Cincinnati for the Reds and spent some time with Marty Brennaman, the long-time Reds’ broadcaster now in the Hall of Fame.
Brennaman came away impressed.
“He really is one of the nicest kids I’ve been around,” said Brennaman, who has done a great deal of college basketball in the off-season, including North Carolina.
Turns out, it was the first baseball game Butler had ever attended.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com
