Ducks Attack Message Board Forum

Crazy that we legit went for Izzo and Dixon; and that Kilkenny was completely hot for Brad Stevens before he went to 2 straight final fours at Butler.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/03/28/ ... sterpiece/

I remember that search taking forever, but Kilkenny was doing a great job targeting elite talent. And he ended up making an amazing pick for his Plan D.

Nice find btw.

what a circus that search was. All the rumors of Izzo etc. Coaches we had no chance at.
Then the Altman hire. Most were like who. I was not aware of him and i watch a lot of
college basketball. This was an amazing hire. Im so glad they extended his contract.

So are we giving him credit for going with a guy who was recommended by a guy he wanted? That hardly seems like he knocked it out of the park, but rather lucked into a good situation.

StevensTechU wrote:So are we giving him credit for going with a guy who was recommended by a guy he wanted? That hardly seems like he knocked it out of the park, but rather lucked into a good situation.

How easily could he have hired someone else? It doesn't matter how the guy came onto his radar, what matters is he identified talent. Tons of ADs, GMs, CEOs, etc fail at doing just that.

That was back in the day when I had inside sources, how I miss those days, and my father was friends with someone who was very involved with that search. We ran into this guy at the tour of MKA being built that was open to the public, and I remember asking him about the coaching search and there were like 4 or 5 guys he mentioned as they really wanted but they probably weren't going to get. I remember Izzo, Few, and Stevens being mentioned along with a couple other, I remember there being another coach at a smaller school that was a hot commodity at the time, and someone else I can't even think of. After talking about those guys he said they're probably most likely going to hire Dana Altman even though he isn't their top choice cause of the candidates who were interested, he was the best choice. At this point nobody had even heard of him. How funny it was that this person who was directly involved with the search mentioned Altman as a slight disappointment compared to who they were going after, yet I think he may have ended up being the best possible choice for the program given where we were at back then. It's definitely fun revisiting this.

Edit: Just read the article, Dixon was another person mentioned.

Time sure flies by, it's been almost a decade!
I'll never forget the looks of that team Ernie Kent left and how bummed they were. And then the AMAZING improvement they had once Altman came along, specifically Garrett Sim who actually started hitting his shots.

I'm giving him credit for going hard for Brad Stevens before he was big!

I was also thinking how crazy it was that Krueger and Dana played each other in the elite 8, when Krueger basically got him the Oregon job when he was at UNLV.

Didn't Brad Stevens take Butler to the Final Four the year Altman was hired? I think everybody knew who Brad Stevens was when Oregon was coach shopping.

No. We I believe we fired Ernie before the tournament, so Stevens, while known, was just another mid major coach at that point when we reached out, but as the article noted, he kept winning (and blew up beyond us being able to get him).