The Penn Men's B-Ball Head Coach Job Search Watch

I've blogged about it here and here, and so far this is what various newspapers have reported:

1. Cornell coach Steve Donahue has an interview.

2. Brown coach Glen Miller withdrew his name from the Hartford job to get considered for the Penn job. About a week ago, because of this move, The Harford Courant reported that Miller is the lead candidate for the job. The last time I checked, Harford papers don't scoop the Philly college hoops media about who the lead candidate is. Miller certainly is a serious candidate, but I don't think there's a lead one yet.

3. Fran McCaffery of Siena, a Penn alum, appears not to be a candidate because he recently inked a 5-year deal with his school. That said, I'm inferring that he's not a candidate because he endorsed his good friend, Lehigh's Billy Taylor, for the job (read the next paragraph about Billy Taylor). I still haven't read where McCaffery has stated that he wouldn't listen if Penn came calling. Still, from his actions, it would appear that McCaffery isn't in the picture.

4. Billy Taylor, the Lehigh coach, appears interested. McCaffery, who recruited Taylor to Notre Dame as a player, served with him as an assistant in South Bend and who was Taylor's boss when McCaffery was the head coach at UNC-Greensboro, has given his endorsement to his mentee. Taylor turned down the Delaware job, which St. Joe's assistant Monte Ross got. He also spoke with Ball State when its job opened up and might be a candidate for the Virginia Commonwealth job, which opened up when Jeff Capel took the Oklahoma job.

5. One of the area papers has endorsed current Penn assistant Dave Duke.

6. No word on whether the candidacy of former Penn star, NBA player and current Celtics' assistant Dave Wohl is serious. The linked article also talks about other candidates for the Penn job. Wohl declined comment on whether he was a candidate.

7. Fran O'Hanlon, the Lafayette coach, has said that he's very happy in Easton, Pennsylvania. While the reports are that it's 99 percent certain that O'Hanlon will remain in Easton, O'Hanlon said that if Penn came calling, he'd listen. (Click here for an interesting article that appeared today in a Lehigh Valley newspaper about both O'Hanlon and Taylor and some of the few coaches that used either Lafayette or Lehigh as a springboard to a bigger job -- if the article expanded its horizon to say a look-back period of 40 years, it could have mentioned one Pete Carril).

8. Former long-time Penn assistant Gil Jackson, now the head coach at Howard, has indicated that he's staying put.

8. The Philadelphia Inquirer recently reported that both former Penn State coach Jerry Dunn (now an assistant at West Virginia) and former George Washington and St. John's coach Mike Jarvis both have surfaced as candidates (click on the link and scroll down to the end of the article). If Penn were to hire Dunn, the Ivies would have two brother tandems coaching in the league -- Jerry and Terry and Penn and Dartmouth, and James and Joe Jones, at Yale and Columbia. Ironically, Fran Dunphy was a serious candidate to replace Jerry Dunn when he was let go at Penn State several years back. The Jarvis connection? His A.D. at G.W. when he was the hoops coach there was none other than current Penn A.D. Steve Bilsky.

As I've written before, there's no (relatively) obvious candidate for Penn the way Fran Dunphy appeared to be for Temple. As a result, it may take a few weeks before Penn A.D. Steve Bilsky determines who will succeed Fran Dunphy.