LATEST HEADLINES

Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Next victim
The Daily Item's Tom Housenick reports today that Bloomsburg University is wrapping up interviews for its vacant head coaching job today.

The field vying to become replace former Bucknell assistant Terry Conrad reportedly includes two Division I assistants, two Division II head coaches and a D-II assistant. Whoever gets the job will become Bloom's third coach in five years since Charlie Chronister retired.

Good luck fellas. Let's hope Bloom A.D. Mary Gardner treats you more fairly than she did Conrad, a Bloom alum who, frankly, was hosed by his alma mater. Conrad's Bloom teams went 18-63 in his three seasons, but there are a couple asterisks that ought be attached to that record.

His first season he was hired too late to effectively bring in any recruits and was saddled with Richie Mills, the former Chronister assistant who served as interim coach for a year before Conrad was hired, as his top assistant and recruiter. College coaches in the area say that "backstabber" would be a kind description of Mills after he lost the head coach job to Conrad.

Four former starters transferred out and Conrad really only had two of his own recruiting classes in the program before Gardner pulled the plug on his rebuilding efforts.

It's worth noting that the school has dragged its feet since the end of February on finding a replacement for Conrad, burning a recruiting year for a program badly in need of talent. Whoever takes the job will basically have the leftovers of two recruiting classes to work with.

Even without those circumstances, it is not what anybody would call a great job. Matter of fact, the financial package reportedly is so poor, Division III head coaches in the area were not even interested in the job.

One major handicap is the fact that the only source of scholarship money for the program is summer basketball camps. Most places camp revenues help a coach supplement his, and his staff's, salaries. That means at Bloom, the coach, for all intents and purposes, is asked to pay for scholarships out of his own pocket.

That does not mean Bloom can't win. It did for years under Chronister. But the program was in decline when Chronister stepped down and it is going to take more of a commitment than Gardner made to Conrad to turn it around.
Published at 6:41 AM by Hoop Time.
Help Hoop Time