ASU AD's goal: Inject some life into hoops program
When 12th-seeded Miami (Ohio) eliminated Arizona from the 1995 NCAA tournament, I sat in the media center and listened as Herb Sendek did his best NOT to explain how the RedHawks stunned the Wildcats.
I remember asking colleagues if they had ever listened to a more uninspiring coach in an interview setting. No matter what was asked, Sendek, then 32, wouldn’t bite. Wouldn’t smile. Wouldn’t change expressions.
Bland is one thing. Sendek took it to a new level.
The old joke used to be that Sendek had a “charisma bypass.” Couldn’t argue with that.
There’s no question that beating Arizona in 1995 got Sendek hired at North Carolina State in 1996. It was Miami’s only NCAA victory in Sendek’s three short seasons.
After 10 uninspiring seasons at North Carolina State, in which his “best” record was 23-11, Sendek was hired by Arizona State.
You’ve got to know what you’re paying for, and that was ASU’s error. The same man who put his audience to sleep in 1995 put the Sun Devils basketball audience into a similar slumber the last nine seasons.
College basketball is the entertainment business. If your identity is a curtain behind which a few knuckleheads dress up in silly costumes, you’ve got a problem.
That’s why it was predictable that second-year ASU athletic director Ray Anderson, formerly a vice president of business operations in the NFL, would inevitably change his basketball program’s personality.
Anderson called it “fan affinity advancement.” That’s the new sports phrase of the year. It means: Our fans didn’t care.
Sendek will make a terrific No. 2 assistant coach somewhere. UCLA should hire him today. Washington should get Sendek on the phone right now.
Anderson has become the leader ASU athletics has sought for 20 years. He dropped Nike and doubled his money with Adidas. He was part of a $10 million-a-year student fee declaration. He fired baseball, gymnastics and wrestling coaches. He fired his in-house marketing firm. He began a $250 million makeover of Sun Devil Stadium. He surrounded himself with new-era lieutenants who made their mark in the NFL.
Sendek couldn’t have possibly survived.
The good news to Sun Devil fans is that change is good. The potential bad news is that there is probably not a sexy, home run basketball coach willing/available to replace Sendek.
Steve Lavin? Don’t make me laugh. His “best” record as UCLA coach was 24-8. He never took advantage of UCLA’s heft in the Southern California recruiting market. Duke assistant Jeff Capel? He wouldn’t move the needle in any market outside North Carolina.
Anderson has degrees from Harvard and Stanford so I assume he wouldn’t have fired Sendek without first being confident he could hire someone better than Lavin and Capel.
A year ago, he could’ve hired Montana’s Wayne Tinkle, an obvious candidate, but Oregon State got there first.
Josh Pastner? That would’ve been like Arizona hiring one of Frank Kush’s assistants in the 1970s. There’s way too much bad blood; half of the fan base would never buy it.
I like Anderson’s chances to win this hiring process. He’s on a Greg Byrne-type trajectory. Hiring the right basketball coach will make him a saint in Tempe and he knows that better than anyone.
