This season’s coaching carousel isn’t waiting for conference tournaments to begin.
On Tuesday, two days before the Pac 12 tournament starts in Seattle, Oregon notified Paul Westhead it wasn’t renewing his contract.
While this wasn’t a surprise — Westhead is 65-90 in five seasons — the school dropped the news as players were getting ready for their first-round game Thursday against Washington State.
For the sake of those players this probably could have waited. They don’t deserve to have this distraction near the end of their season, and as it turns out, their time with their coach. But Oregon administrators seem intent on getting a head start on hiring a successor.
While Westhead, 75, endeared himself to many in his first women’s college coaching stint, he wasn’t able to recruit enough players to fit that style, and who could compete in a major conference, until the last couple of years.
He did bring in a terrific freshman in guard Chrishae Rowe, who along with sophomore forward Jillian Alleyne is among the nation’s scoring leaders at 21 ppg. There’s a good nucleus here for the next coach.
The problem for the Ducks is that while they averaged more than 93 points a game, they gave up almost 90. This isn’t a surprise with a Westhead team. But this program hasn’t reached the NCAA tournament since 2005, and hasn’t had winning record in league play for just as long.
A report in the Eugene paper last month indicated that Oregon was on pace to have its lowest home attendance in more than 20 years.
It’s a far cry from the winning program and big crowds generated by Jody Runge. As difficult as she could be — and this story completely miscasts her as a “victim” of gender bias — she had Eugene buzzing during the late 90s and early aughts.
Westhead’s hire was always a curious thing, with former Oregon AD Pat Kilkenny hastily hiring him at the behest of P.J. Carlesimo. At the time, I wrote that Westhead’s entry in the women’s college game couldn’t hurt, after a long and distinguished career in the men’s college ranks, and in being the only coach to win NBA and WNBA titles.
What really turned heads was the whopping salary — around $675,000 a year — that Kilkenny gave him, and according to The Oregonian, contract terms that didn’t require Westhead to live in Oregon year-round.
Reports in Oregon mention Gonzaga coach Kelly Graves and Louisville assistant Stephanie Norman, an Oregon native, as potential leading candidates.
This is obviously a program that has the means to be a very good one, and a splashy new home in Matthew Knight Arena. Whomever is hired will likely be expected to try and keep elite in-state players who have gone elsewhere — Schoni and Jude Schimmel to Louisville, and Mercedes Russell and and Jaime Nared to Tennessee.
Up the road in Corvallis, Scott Rueck has the Beavers poised for that school’s first NCAA trip since 1996. They tied Cal for second in the Pac 12 and have won nine in row to conclude the regular season.
Rueck, an Oregon State grad, had been coaching at Division III George Fox four years ago when he was hired to salvage what had been one of the most dire major coaching situations in the country. He inherited a hot mess in the wake of LaVonda Wagner’s tenure (who had a record similar to Westhead’s, but numerous off-court issues and player departures) and crafted a WNIT team in his second season.
Rueck is nothing short of a miracle worker, and if Oregon’s looking for some clues on how to rebuild virtually from scratch, it can’t do worse than learn from its in-state rival.
