A Jersey Guy: UMass Coaching Search, FUBAR...but

In the end, UMass athletic director Ryan  Bamford may have gotten the right men's basketball coach at  the right time.

That has yet to be determined in the Frank Martin era which could begin as early as Thursday if everything goes right and the Minutemen sign the former South Carolina coach to a multi-year pact.

But the process in finding a replacement for Mat McCall, who Bamford fired three weeks ago?

That was a monumental series of miscalculations, mistakes and simply acts of fate which changed the coaching landscape.

Most athletic directors have two modes of operations in coaching searches.

They have an ABC list in which they focus on only their top candidate and go no further if they can get a deal done

The other plan is to take your four top candidates, interview them all and then make a decision.

The first plan works better if you have a strong No. 1  preference.

When Bamford fired McCall with a week left in the regular season, he had a list of candidates, but  not an overwhelming favorite.

He also had other parameters: familiarity with the Northeast, someone preferably with head coaching experience and even, but overwhelmingly so, a minority candidate.

Combined with UMass's current status as a lower tier mid-major program, the candidate pool was not that deep.
Bamford also enjoyed the idea of finding his own candidate from his own unique list.

And high on that list was UConn associate head coach Kimani Young, who had strong diverse background who Bamford thought could blossom in the right situation.

He talked to UConn head coach Danny Hurley and received strong positive feed back.

But Young's name leaked and there were other issues in Young's background which needed to be vetted. 

Bamford jokingly texted me after I had included Young as a prime candidate that I needed to get new sources. And that he was at least a week away from getting close to making any decision.

I just needed a better sense of timing. I was too early making any conclusions, not wrong.

Bamford then switched his focus to a group of mid-major coaches in the Northeast led by Saint Peter's coach Shaheen Holloway, who also received an endorsement from UMass alum and Iona coach Rick Pitino.

The only problem was that Saint Peters' kept winning and winning and played itself out of the UMass range. The Peacocks will face Purdue in an NCAA East Regional semifinal game against Purdue in Philadelphia on Thursday.

And Holloway seems destined to return to his alma mater Seton Hall as the replacement for Kevin Willard who is the new coach at Maryland.

Faced with a Plan B, Bamford spent the last several days putting together a multi-year deal to get veteran St. Bonaventure coach Mark Schmidt.

UMass increased its budget to a very competitive  $1.8 a year and Schmidt, someone Bamford had gotten to known over the years, seemed more than receptive.

But the Bonnies, who were playing in the NIT, kept winning, beating Power 5 conference teams such as Colorado, Oklahoma and on Tuesday night Virginia. 

All the victories were on the road and the Bonnies are now in the NIT semifinals next week in New York City.

Bamford's back up was Frank Martin, a high profile and high maintenance coach who had been fired at South Carolina for a variety of reasons, many of them having little to do with basketball. 

Martin's basketball pedigree is strong. He got the Gamecocks to the Final Four six years ago.

But when Bamford met with Martin at an off campus site on Tuesday, he made no offer, feeling that he had an inside edge on Schmidt.

When the Bonnies pulled off a last second upset of the Cavaliers, the dynamics changed.

Still, Bamford and Schmidt felt they had an understanding based on a financially strapped St. Bonaventure athletic department to come close to matching UMass's 1.8 million offer, which was more than 500,000 dollars the Bonnies were paying him.

Schmidt had one condition.

 No matter what UMass offered, he felt obligated to tell St. Bonaventure, which didn't match it, but boosted his salary enough (from $1.2 to $1.5 million) .

That was unexpected. 

There was also a stipulation from UMass that since the story of Schmidt's involvement had leaked that once he accepted the UMass job, Schmidt would be done with St. Bonaventure.

Schmidt did not want to walk away from a team playing for a championship--another deal  breaker.

That combination of events sent Schmidt back to Olean, N.Y and puts Martin in Amherst on Thursday morning, where presumably he will take over, bringing in a new staff and a few transfers of quality from South Carolina.

All of which Bamford hopes will turn UMass into A10 and beyond contenders.