All is quiet on hoops head coach search

With or without Joe Scott '87, life must go on for the men's basketball team.

It has been nearly four weeks since Scott tendered his resignation to take the head coaching position at the University of Denver, and Princeton has yet to hire a replacement candidate. The vacancy puts the Tigers in a relatively unusual position — of the 49 Division I programs whose coaches either resigned or were terminated upon the season's conclusion, only eight jobs remain unfilled.

Harvard, the only other Ivy League school to join the coaching carousel, has replaced Frank Sullivan — sacked after 16 years at the helm — with former Michigan and Seton Hall coach Tommy Amaker.

Meanwhile, Director of Athletics Gary Walters '67 has remained mum on the Princeton coaching search.

"I don't want to create any false expectations," Walters said. "As always, we take the confidentiality of our processes very seriously."

Walters explained that it is athletic department policy to withhold details of the search process and the names of candidates involved, and declined to comment further.

The only name that has officially surfaced is that of Mike Maker, who vacated his assistant coaching position at West Virginia (27-9) after its own personnel change. Maker was seen as former Mountaineer coach John Beilein's lead assistant, but Beilein's departure for Michigan opened Maker up to other opportunities. Maker has assistant coaching experience at Samford and Dartmouth in addition to West Virginia.

Maker has publicly announced his candidacy and desire for both the Air Force and Princeton coaching jobs, but has been unreachable since leaving the Mountaineers.

Other rumored coaching candidates — including Princeton assistant Mike Brennan '94, Georgetown assistants Sydney Johnson '97 and Robert Burke, and Brown head coach Craig Robinson '83 — have either declined or been forbidden to comment to The Daily Princetonian.

Despite the mystique and hullabaloo surrounding the coaching change, it will ultimately be the players who have to put the ball in the hoop come November. Though Princeton is officially without a head coach, the team is already focused and preparing for next year's campaign.

Spring workouts and practices have commenced, and Scott's departure has not changed the off-season regimen from years past. The team outlined what it needed to work on before spring break and, since its first day back, has committed itself to improving those things.

"The plan is mostly the same with a different emphasis than the last two years," sophomore forward Michael Strittmatter said, adding that the changes are "nothing radical."

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"We are doing our normal thing," junior forward Kyle Koncz said. "The assistant coaches have been running our workouts and showing us what we need to improve on."

The only difference between this year's off-season training and last year's comes not as a result of Scott's departure but from a slightly different focus in the weight room.

"[The training] is slightly different but not in any way because Coach Scott is gone, only because our strength coach Jason Galucci has stressed a few different things this year," junior forward Noah Savage said. "Coach Brennan [and assistant coaches Howard] Levy, [John] Fitzgerald and [Tony] Newsom have been around running things and helping us improve."

The players have been focusing on the court and not on the coaching search, as they are only provided with limited information by the athletics department administrators.

"We are in the loop but have not heard much yet," Savage said.

Nevertheless, coaching jobs across the nation are filling, so Princeton's days without a coach are numbered. Until then, it's business as usual in Jadwin Gym.