If I am Cottingham, my first call…

[MU Chi_IL]

Is to Wade.  He and Crean were close and right now you need to get ahead of the press with the FACE of MU basketball and ask for his support here.  I would ask him to be on a search committee to get his face and influence out there. This is also important because of the converse connection.  Converse has a big horse in this race too, do you think they want the only team that wears converse in college basketball to drop to the middle of the Big East pack, and gasp...maybe lower.  The Converse/Nike coaching connections go a long way and the shoe/camp money is very significant for these coaches.

My next call is to Cords to join the search committee, he has been through this before and frankly my confidence is Cottingham is about as low as it gets right now.

Once they know what kinda money they can put in play, I would start reaching out the candidates that are going to make a nice media splash and sustain the program...Sean Miller or Bennett.

If you strike out there, I would explore some of the far fetched candidates, Skiles, Boylan and all the other big names that seem to be floating out there.

As long as we are throwing crazy options into cyber space, he is mine...Kareem Abdul Jabbar.  He has wanted a shot a coaching in any spot light for a very long time, why not (maybe he and Murf can develop some bigs).

How would you play it?