April Fools.

A Coug. Moos' right-hand man. Knows how to shmooze with donors. At NAU, can work with less.

The right man for the job at this time.

WSU’s Jim Shaw interviews for men’s basketball head job, with decision planned by Monday​

Greg WoodsMarch 28, 2024 at 10:45 pm
By
The Spokesman Review
PULLMAN – Washington State may be inching closer to deciding on a new men’s basketball coach.

Associate head coach Jim Shaw has interviewed for the team’s head coaching vacancy, according to a source with direct knowledge of the situation, giving serious consideration to a WSU assistant of five seasons.

WSU hopes to make a final decision by Monday, according to the source. The extent of other candidates remains unclear.

Shaw, who came along with former head coach Kyle Smith to Pullman in time for the 2019 season, helped last season’s Cougars achieve one of the best seasons in program history. As the team’s de facto defensive coordinator, Shaw implemented a matchup zone that helped WSU reach the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2008, beating Drake before falling to Iowa State last weekend.

WSU is looking to replace Smith, who took the head coaching position at Stanford on Monday, leaving the Cougars after a five-year tenure. On Tuesday, athletic director Pat Chun took the same job at rival Washington, leaving Washington State without an athletic director and head men’s basketball coach.

WSU elevated senior deputy AD Anne McCoy to interim AD on Wednesday.

Prior to coming to WSU, Shaw worked four seasons as the head coach of his alma mater, Division II Western Oregon, where he posted an overall record of 102-30. He led the Wolves to a No. 1 ranking and the D-II national tournament on three occasions.

Shaw, who also previously spent nine seasons as an assistant at Washington, was named WSU’s associate head coach ahead of the 2020-21 season.

On Thursday, three Cougars entered their names into the transfer portal: Star guard Myles Rice, wing Kymany Houinsou and walk-on center AJ LeBeau. Rice, the Pac-12 Freshman of the Year and an all-conference selection, amounts to the biggest loss of all, depriving the team of its best shot-creator and ball-handler.

Greg Woods Washington State beat writer for The Spokesman-Review

AD John David Wicker. ex Coug and bring the head Basketball coach Brian Dutcher, currently making 2.3.

I want nothing to do with the backstabbers or living up to a deal done by the traitor Pat Chun over the fans objections.. We don't need the Mutts to throw us a bone. Have some dignity and cancel that series.

Some solace.....

They are in Sweet 16

Waiting for you to chime in on this one. Although I must admit I share the anti-zag sentiment in general..........

Got a little extra juice to it tonight. 4-0 Cougs in the 7th. Let’s make Pat 0-1 against the Cougs as a mutt. F UW.

Into the final 4 of WBIT after a tough game against Toledo. Play Illinois Monday.

...Schulz is going to hold the purse strings tight and Chun will leave as soon as the door opens. The leaks last week on KJR that the relationship between Chun and Schultz are not that solid are being leaked by someone, for some reason, and I suspect its the ADs office speaking from frustration to be preemptive about this news.

We need to grow revenue (at the gate) and fan interest for this program to have sustainable success. I think we are back to the days of penny pinching and hoping we find some up and comer who is going to use this job as a steppingstone to something better.

CBS just reported Chun to the Dwags!

the fun begins .

Former WSU men’s basketball coach Kyle Smith opens up about leaving for Stanford​

Greg WoodsMarch 27, 2024 at 3:22 pm
By
The Spokesman-Review
PULLMAN — Earlier this month, as Washington State was preparing for the Pac-12 tournament, Kyle Smith took a moment to himself. The Cougars men’s basketball coach was being courted by Stanford, which was in the market for a new head coach, and Smith knew he was the leading candidate.

Before the team traveled to Las Vegas, the site of the conference tournament, Smith finally let his guard down, let his tunnel vision slip for a moment. He asked himself a question.

If we won the national championship, would you still go to Stanford?

“And it was a ludicrous thought, but I said, ‘Yep,’ ” Smith said. “Why not? I would do it. It was this unique thing, one of one.”

On Monday morning, Smith accepted the head coaching job at Stanford, ending his five-year tenure at Washington State and replacing outgoing Cardinal coach Jerod Haase, who failed to guide the program to an NCAA Tournament appearance in eight seasons.

Stanford fired Haase fewer than 10 minutes after his team fell to Washington State in the Pac-12 tournament quarterfinals on March 14.

But until that point, Smith had blinders on for WSU, which was a lock for its first NCAA tournament since 2008. Even as the Cougs picked up steam in late February, using a road win over then-No. 4 Arizona to leapfrog into first place in the Pac-12, Smith refused to listen to any schools’ interest — much to the chagrin of his agent.

“I just didn’t want it to affect our NCAA tournament and the whole bit,” Smith said.

After all, Smith said, he wasn’t looking to leave for just anywhere. He liked his situation at Washington State, liked the way his family of five fit into the slower pace of small-town Pullman. On the Palouse, he had found a caregiver for his 13-year-old son, Bo, who has autism.

For as much success as he was enjoying at WSU, though, Smith understood he was heading into an uncertain situation if he stayed. The Cougars, one of the two Pac-12 programs left behind by conference realignment, are becoming West Coast Conference affiliate members next season as WSU and Oregon State attempt to rebuild the conference. How would that affect the Cougars’ roster, which Smith had already rebuilt over the offseason? It gave Smith pause.

Smith, who previously worked in the Bay Area as San Francisco’s head coach from 2016-19, felt Stanford was the right fit. To him, it was an attractive job for several other reasons: Stanford had a conference home, the ACC. It had more resources than what WSU could offer. The Cardinal were also the only school to make Smith their top candidate, he said, which is why he didn’t listen to any other programs’ offers.

“It sounds corny. It sounds trite. It’s true — it’s beyond the dream job,” Smith said. “Because I never really imagined that it would be an option. But it’s 100% what I’ve always believed in, as far as a student-athlete, and I’m not intimidated by the fact you can’t get guys in school. I’m fine with that. There’s enough. There’s enough people that have that academic background that can play, that want to be there. And that’s really appealing to me.”

It was the opportunity of a lifetime for Smith, who had accomplished what the previous two Washington State coaches could not: Usher in a hoops revival in Pullman. In 2019, when Smith took the job, he was inheriting a WSU program that had just suffered its seventh consecutive losing season, which led to the dismissal of former coach Ernie Kent — who won a combined four conference games in his last two seasons.

Smith’s WSU teams never experienced a losing season. The Cougars went .500 in his first season, a game over in the next, and by his third year, they were back in the postseason, making the NIT semifinals. They returned to the NIT in 2023, and last weekend, seventh-seeded WSU snapped its 16-year NCAA tournament drought, dispatching 10th-seeded Drake before falling to second-seeded Iowa State in the Round of 32 on Saturday evening.

By the next day, Smith held an official offer from Stanford, with whom he interviewed during the weeklong gap between WSU’s regular-season finale and the Pac-12 tournament. On Sunday night, he slept on it. He accepted the offer on Monday morning.

“There’s only a few places where my family can [live]. Very unique situation,” Smith said, citing the Stanford Autism Center, widely regarded as one of the best in the country. “We love Pullman. We really do. Don’t love realignment and the NIL. Not sure if it was sustainable, not knowing what league and that stuff.

“So I was like, well, [at Stanford] the NIL is not an issue. And people want to stay there, I believe. Right now, they haven’t. But we’ll see. That’s my task. I think I can sell Stanford.”

On his way out from WSU, Smith never received a written contract extension offer, he said.

“They were getting the final numbers on it,” Smith said. “There was nothing hard in writing. I said, that’s great. They said there’s gonna be more coming. They’re working on it. So I was like, I’m good with that. I appreciate it.”

Smith did like that athletic director Pat Chun — who bolted for the same job at rival Washington on Tuesday — and other school brass made several promises to try and keep him at WSU — an improved travel situation, featuring more charter flights; an increased salary pool for assistant coaches; a pay bump for Smith; and more years on his deal.

What mattered most to Smith: more money for his assistants and more charter flights. The Cougars took several charter flights out of Pullman last season — back home from USC on Jan. 10; for the Oregon/Oregon State trip on Feb. 8; home from ASU on Feb. 24; and back from Las Vegas for the Pac-12 tournament on March 15. For the rest of their six road swings, they flew out of Spokane, a 1½-hour drive from Pullman.

Other than Oregon State, most other Pac-12 schools use charter flights for every road trip, a reflection of the smaller budgets with which the Cougars and Beavers are operating.

“I was worried that Pat [Chun] would leave some day — the day came today,” Smith said, “and you’re gonna have a new boss and all those pieces. It’s special; it’s challenging. But having the long-term security to build the program, the same idea. Building a program was important to me. The last two springs have been really challenging. You hope you’re moving that direction, going that way, but I don’t know what the future brings in that regard, because it’s just chaos.”

Smith is hoping for less chaos at Stanford, where he hopes to build a roster of players committed to staying at the school. He didn’t have the same experience at WSU, which lost six players to the transfer portal last offseason, including several key pieces. TJ Bamba, the team’s leading scorer, transferred to Villanova. DJ Rodman, who averaged nine points and five rebounds last year, went back on his promise to return for his senior year and transferred to USC.

Sponsored​

Carlos Rosario, a reserve forward, transferred to Drake. Forward Dishon Jackson, who missed the season with an injury, transferred to Charlotte. Forward Mael Hamon-Crespin left the team midseason to return to his home country of France. Centers Adrame Diongue transferred to San Jose State and Jack Wilson transferred to Minnesota.

That’s also to say nothing of the previous offseason, which saw five Cougars transfer out of the program, including second- and third-leading scorers Tyrell Roberts and Noah Williams, the latter of whom took his talents to rival UW.

“It just opened the door for Myles [Rice],” Smith said. “It opened the door for Jaylen [Wells] and Andrej [Jakimovski]. It worked out that way.”

On Monday morning, Smith met with the WSU players and coaches to alert them of his decision. Among other things, Smith said, he chatted with them about the program, how he hopes it stays what he built it into — a player-empowerment program.

Then he turned it back on himself.

“We talked about my why — empowering people to empower themselves,” Smith said. “It’s kind of the same situation now for me.”

Greg Woods Washington State beat writer for The Spokesman-Review

Have yet to see any Cougs hit the portal. Good so far.


Now that Anne McCoy (she came to WSU with Dickson for any that recall) has been appointed as interim AD, she needs to get right up off her ass and offer Shaw the job. This is an absolute no-brainer.

Step 2, IMHO, is offer the AD job to John Johnson. 5-year contract. She worked with him all those years after all. Anne is an absolute no as a permanent AD. Or rather Schulz needs to offer. And who the F else wants to take that job anyway?

We have to stop the bleeding NOW and hope we can hang on to at least some of those players. None of these are knee jerk hires. Both quality Cougs.

I have heard that everyone at WSU is being directed to cut their budgets by 12 percent across the board, no exceptions. That’s gotta be fun. No one ever said.

Maybe this would fit under one of the Chun threads below, but here’s a first-hand observation that suggests that our bus is either being driven by a deeply distracted driver, or doesn’t have one.

I’ve been a season ticket holder and donor (not a big one, but a consistent one) for 25 years. In the past, if I didn’t renew within about 2 weeks of the renewal period starting, I’d start getting increasingly frequent phone calls reminding me to do so…and to up my donation if possible.

I have not renewed this year. I have received zero phone calls. Considering all of the issues of the past year, it seems to me that job #1 should have been to secure the base. Its hard to pull in new people if you can’t even retain the ones who have always been close.

Nm

Going to UW. For everyone that thinks he sucked, hope you are right.

Don't know if okay to put this on here; remove if so desired.

A group of us have had a behind the curtain conversation going for a few years now, and one of the others brought up some things that triggered me to note some stuff that has been on my mind. Of course, the headlines are currently athletics-related, but in some ways the conversation goes quite a bit further.

The only certainty at this point in college athletics (at least for the "revenue producing" sports) is uncertainty. Are we simply the first of many who will be shunted aside or re-classified? If so, how quickly will the dominos fall? And if this becomes a mass movement, how many eyeballs will be alienated from sports programming? The level of overall disgust among those who I know has already risen to a noticeable extent.

I've felt for a while that most schools will eventually be dependent to at least some extent on their streaming popularity and the willingness of their fans to pay to watch from home in the same way that they pay if they watch in the stadium. In our case, given that the trip to Pullman is a big deal for many, streaming is perhaps more critical than it might be for a school in an urban area. I honestly doubt that the number of Cougs willing to stream football would be less if we were G5 than P5, so the eventual outcome of that situation seems somewhat irrelevant to me, at least from a streaming perspective. For most of us it is more about watching our team. The trip to Pullman? We already know that a high profile game will draw better attendance than a low profile game. While that is true for many, many schools (both rural and urban; UCLA is a great example of an urban school whose stadium attendance varies by orders of magnitude depending upon the opponent), it is more true in Pullman, given the time & effort needed to travel. But what will our definition of a "high profile" game be in the future? If we are in a league...any league...and the game is against whom ever is near the top of that league, will we think of it as "high profile", and a good excuse to visit Pullman? I suspect the answer for most will be yes.

I also like streaming because of the ability to watch hoops, baseball, volleyball, women's hoops, etc. I watch more of that now than I watched when I was on campus, and it is worth the relatively small cost being charged in order to do that. In some ways I feel more connected to the campus today than I did 20-30 years ago, since now I get to watch events and feel more a part of what is going on than I did back then (I graduated before that time period; 30 years ago I was living a long way from WA and my media connection options were pretty limited). I can easily foresee the typical streamed game also having campus features before the game or at halftime that deal with non-sports aspects of WSU. Again, the "staying connected" theme that will add some value to what you pay for your streaming subscription.

Long story short, I think loyal fans will still watch their teams. Where the eyeballs will go away is in watching national "high profile" games. I now don't give a cr*p about a game involving, for example, Ohio State vs. Michigan or Alabama vs. Auburn. I have no respect for their conferences, so why would I be interested in wasting 3-4 hours of my life watching them? ESPN, Fox, etc., seem likely to see their viewership erode as the viewers are not only alienated, but on top of that ESPN, Fox, etc. will be perceived as a large part of the cause of the undesirable changes. And we'll still be Cougs. Current estimates worldwide is that we now have about 225,000 living alums. Add to that those who identify with us, and that is a nice little chunk of potential streaming subscriptions. Offer some value in the subscription....get the Murrow college to have students produce segments about what is happening on campus...include some snippets of the remote campuses while you are at it...and I think we'll do OK as the college athletics sands shift.

To badly paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumors of our demise are greatly exaggerated. I loved college sports in its older versions. I don't love it any more, but I still love WSU. And therefore, I love WSU teams. That may not make complete sense, but I find that many others have similar feelings. Probably everyone on this board has feelings for WSU. But feelings for college athletics in general? That is being ground down more and more as time passes. And since there don't appear to be any adults running the NCAA, or the major conferences, or the media networks, it is hard to see anyone reversing some of these trends. I think WSU will actually weather this particular storm better than many schools. But what it will look like in 2, 5, or 10 years? That is hard to guess with any confidence, other than erosion of overall media eyeballs.

Jim Shaw​

• Associate Head Coach

Jim Shaw enters the 2023-24 season in his fifth season as the associate head coach for the Cougars. Alongside Head Coach, Kyle Smith, Shaw helped to achieve back to back winning seasons for the first time in over a decade at WSU.

In 2022-23, Shaw helped lead the Cougars to a 17-17 record, despite dealing with many preseason injuries. This record earned them a bid to the NIT for the second year in a row. Second round pick in the 2023 NBA draft, Mouhamed Gueye, conducted the Cougar offense to a 68.4 points per game average shooting .424 from the floor. 19 made field goals from behind the arc helped push the Cougars past Detroit Mercy in their largest margin of victory of the season, 42.

Jim Shaw came to the Palouse for his first season with Kyle Smith in 2019-20 after four seasons as the head coach at his alma mater, Western Oregon, where he compiled a 102-30 overall record and led the Wolves to No. 1 Rankings and to the NCAA Division II Men’s Basketball Tournament three times. Shaw has over 25 years of Division I coaching experience, including nine seasons as an assistant coach at Washington. He was named the Cougars' Associate Head Coach after the 2020-21 season.

In his first year leading the program at Western Oregon in 2015-16, Shaw led the Wolves to the Great Northwest Athletic Conference regular season title, its first GNAC Championships tournament title, and the No. 1 seed in the 2016 NCAA Division II Men's Basketball West Regional Tournament. The Wolves defended the home court three times to advance to the NCAA Division II Elite Eight. It marked the first time that Western Oregon advanced to the round of eight in a national tournament since 1982. At the final site, the Wolves defeated Saginaw Valley to advance to the NCAA DII Final Four. In addition, Shaw led Western Oregon to its first No. 1 ranking in program history, as he was named the GNAC Coach of the Year.

He was once again named the GNAC Coach of the Year and West Region Coach of the Year by the National Basketball Coaches Association (NABC) in 2017-18 as Shaw led the Wolves to a 31-2 record, tying the GNAC single-season record for wins, and set a GNAC mark with 19 conference victories. The Wolves led the GNAC in scoring at 83.3 points per game and finished the year ranked No. 3 in NCAA Division II in total steals (322), fifth in scoring margin (+16.4), sixth in steals per game (9.8), ninth in total assists (575) and 10th in field goal percentage (.497).

The Wolves advanced to the NCAA West Regional for the third time under Shaw in 2018-19, falling to top-ranked Point Loma. WOU finished with a 22-11 overall record including a 13-7 league mark, falling to Seattle Pacific, 78-66, in the championship game.

Shaw spent two seasons alongside Randy Bennett at Saint Mary's College as a special assistant to the head coach during the 2013-14 season before becoming an assistant coach in 2014-15. With the Gaels, Shaw helped guide SMC to back-to-back 20-plus wins seasons as well as a pair of postseason appearances.

Prior to Saint Mary's, Shaw spent nine seasons (2004-2013) as an assistant coach at the University of Washington alongside former head coach Lorenzo Romar. During his time at Washington, the Huskies went a combined 208-100, which is the best nine-year record in school history, while also going 118-54 from 2009-2013 to mark the best five-year stretch in school history.

During that span, Shaw was a part of five Pac-10 Championships, five NCAA Tournament appearances, and three appearances in the Sweet 16. He was pivotal in the Huskies' run to their first Pac-10 Tournament championship in 2005 and first No. 1 seed into the NCAA Tournament.

Before Washington, Shaw served the previous five seasons (1999-2004) at the University of Oklahoma on Kelvin Sampson's staff. He helped the Sooners to a 131-37 record, three Big 12 Tournament titles, a Final Four appearance in 2002 and an Elite Eight berth in 2003.

From 1994 through 1999, Shaw served as assistant coach at the University of Portland where he helped the Pilots to a pair of 20-win campaigns and a 1996 NCAA Tournament berth, which was the school's first in over 30 years.

Shaw coached at Oregon State during the 1990 and 1991 seasons alongside Jim Anderson, as the nationally-ranked 1990 Beaver team, which featured Hall of Fame point guard Gary Payton, won the Pac-10 championship and advanced to the NCAA Tournament.

Shaw's first assistant coaching assignment came in 1986-87 at Idaho State where he helped lead the Bengals to an impressive run to the Big Sky Tournament championship and the league's automatic NCAA Tournament berth. That was ISU's first NCAA appearance in 10 years.

A 1985 graduate of Western Oregon State College, Shaw was an NAIA honorable mention All-American and district MVP runner-up as a senior. During his career with the Wolves, Shaw played for WOU Hall of Fame coach Jim Boutin and helped lead WOSC to a win-loss record of 72-20 over a three-year stretch. He earned his master's degree in athletic administration from Idaho State in 1986. A native of Chimacum, Wash., Shaw attended Chimacum High School where he was an all-state performer in both basketball and football.

Shaw has two grown children – daughter Brittany and son Bradley.

Actually its Coach Smith that has a decision to make not WSU. Hate to change the thread but he is in the drivers seat. Pac12 Coach of the Year sort of drives things.

Additional articles below.

The USA Today article is especially interesting. I knew nothing about the agreement the Pac-2 and MW West signed in December, which states: The two leagues made an agreement last December that says they will negotiate the “consummation, as promptly as reasonably practicable, of a definitive transaction pursuant to which all MWC Member Institutions join Pac-12 as Pac-12 member institutions with no MWC Exit Fee payable by any MWC Member Institution to MWC.”

Maybe I was asleep but I had never heard of this agreement (the article has more text on it).

But our new Commissioner sez: No. It’s just an option. Gould said Thursday that discussions haven’t even begun on that....... “We are very much in the infancy stages of talking about what happens beyond 2026,” Gould said. “We are not discussing one model or one option.

Well the agreement and her statement are about as opposite as you can get.

USA also sez the Pac-12 network will be "going dark", whereas in the MSN and I believe Brand X article Teresa sez it will remain in operation. I assume the reality is it will go down to 2 channels, and despite what Teresa directly infers on Brand X it should go dark for pretty much everything but games themselves. No more fluff.



And edit about the Pac-2 network. As I post this we are in the middle of 3 hours of "pac-12 FB in 60" on all 7 channels. Cheap to put on, although someone had to edit all those games down to an hour. Later there are a bunch of "Our Stories" episodes on, which are not filmed and produced for free. None of that shit needs to continue.

I personally didn't think Pat was that approachable and felt more corporate in his approach. I liked Bill Moos a lot.

Fundraising: Pat gets a ton of credit for this, but from my perspective a lot of this was a correlation to the football programs success he inherited.

What does the AD wish list look like?