The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Who will replace Moore at Quinnipiac?
Quinnipiac fired men’s basketball coach Tom Moore this week. Register columnist Chip Malafronte sorts through some of the names that have been mentioned as possible replacements.
This week’s column coming to you from Philadelphia, site of the inaugural Ivy League basketball tournament and a place where hotel valet parking attendants yell at you for not getting close enough to the curb.
It wasn’t all bad, though. Walking through the city on the way to the Palestra, I was behind a bearded fellow who whistled the entire score of “Hello, Dolly!” Maybe this really is the City of Brotherly Love.
• There was a fairly decent case to be made for Quinnipiac retaining men’s basketball coach Tom Moore at least one more season.
He’d recruited a couple of foundational guards in Mikey Dixon and Peter Kiss, freshmen scorers to rebuild the program around. Teams in his 10 seasons were highly competitive until falling on hard times last year. And he was an extremely likable personality committed to coaching others — be it the Bobcats or a bunch of 8-year olds at his summer camp — and not, as is so often the case, marketing himself or building a brand.
But coaching at the Division I level is a business driven by results. A university has every right to be troubled when there’s years with no return on an investment of a salary in the neighborhood of $500,000. Successive 20loss seasons are enough to put any coach on notice.
Athletic director Greg Amodio was hired two years ago to get men’s basketball on par with Quinnipiac’s other revenuedriving sports. The school elevated to the MAAC in 2014, with the intention to make itself attractive for another upgrade. School president John Lahey has said he believes there’s Big East potential here.
So it was no secret to anyone in the athletic department, or even Moore himself, that his job security likely hinged on a comeback campaign this season. Moore was certainly capable of making the Bobcats a winner again. He won’t get that chance. That’s too bad. But in this cutthroat business, it’s the nature of the beast.
• The New York Post reported on Thursday that disgraced former Rutgers coach Mike Rice is “a leading candidate” to replace Moore at Quinnipiac. Rice, you may recall, was fired in 2013 when video surfaced of him physically and verbally abusing players at practice.
No one we spoke to could confirm whether there’s real interest of if the rumor was floated by Rice’s agent. But it’s hard to believe Quinnipiac would seriously consider this route, especially after it went through a similar scandal just two years ago with women’s hockey coach Rick Seeley, fired in the wake of allegations of verbal and physical abuse. Seeley, who’d just signed a contract extension, filed a wrongful termination suit against Quinnipiac.
There’s no understating the importance of this decision for Amodio, hired in 2015 specifically to upgrade the men’s basketball program. Rice as a candidate here seems preposterous. The very existence of that video, easily pulled up off YouTube by any rival assistant coach, is recruiting poison against any school that hires Rice.
Quinnipiac can’t afford the risk. And there are far more attractive candidates with no extra baggage sitting in the school’s backyard.
• Iona assistant Jared Grasso, an 2002 Quinnipiac graduate, and Hamden’s Scott Burrell, a former Quinnipiac assistant now the head man at Southern Connecticut State, are two potential replacements for Moore.
And if Matt Kingsley, Yale’s associate head coach, isn’t on Quinnipiac’s radar, he should be. The Hamden native and former Notre Dame-West Haven standout is considered one of the nation’s best mid-major recruiters.
• Two names believed to be on Quinnipiac’s short list are longtime Albany coach Will Brown and Vermont coach John Becker. Both have enjoyed success in America East. Quinnipiac, sources say, is ponying up an annual salary that will make the job even more attractive.
• New Haven’s Chad Dawson says he’s “leaning toward retirement” after being a 10th-round TKO victim to Andrzej Fonfara last Saturday night at the Barclays Center. Dawson, the linear light heavyweight champion of the world five years ago, is 3-4 since beating Bernard Hopkins in Atlantic City. At 34, it’s clear to Dawson that his time as a worldclass fighter is behind him. “I’ve had a good career,” Dawson told media after the fight. “I have nothing to be ashamed of.”
• They say taking the lower level of the George Washington Bridge is the best route — no 18-wheelers — but I always take the upper level. If disaster movies have taught me anything, it’s to be prepared for anything. So I figure the upper level greatly increases survival chances should the bridge collapse onto itself in an earthquake.
• The NCAA selection committee has taken extra precaution to guard against another leak. You might recall last March the brackets surfaced on social media before the selection show was finished. The show has been trimmed from two hours to 90 minutes, still a long time to be held hostage by talking heads and hollow analysis. Here’s hoping for another leak.
• Israel is the surprise team of the World Baseball Classic, winning its pool and advancing to the next round (it played Cuba late Saturday night) thanks to New Haven’s Josh Zeid and ex-Yale star Ryan Lavarnway. Zeid, being used out of the bullpen, was 1-0 with a save in Israel’s first three wins; Lavarnway went 5-for-9 with a homer and three RBIs.
• Trumbull’s Craig Breslow was committed to play for Israel, but has since signed a minor league contract with the Minnesota Twins. He’s in Florida trying to make the roster, and doing quite well, earning a two-inning save as the Twins beat Team USA in a pre-WBC exhibition on Wednesday in Florida.
• The WBC hasn’t gained much traction here, despite a strong U.S. entry in an otherwise loaded field. The tournament is missing something that we can’t quite put our finger on. Maybe it’s as simple as the fact that at this time of year, Americans are far more invested in March Madness and anticipation of the MLB season.