BREAKING: Ken Bone is your new WSU basketball coach
by Jeff Nusser on Apr 6, 2009 2:16 PM PDT
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Washington State University has a new basketball coach. Portland State’s Ken Bone accepted the position today, The Spokesman-Review has learned.
Ever wanted something for Christmas -- wanted it so bad that you begged and pleaded for it endlessly -- and then actually gotten it? That's what I feel like right now. I could not be more ecstatic that this guy is our next coach. Who cares that he's going to leave in three years? He'll do a hell of a job with the talent we already have assembled.
This almost completely takes the sting out of Tony Bennett leaving.
I said almost.
More later.
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Now the question is...
Who does he keep? What’s his contract look like?
Doesn’t really matter right now. Great hire
Aussie, Aussie, Aussie
I'm glad it is done.
Let’s move forward with the new coach. Hopefully he makes all the players happy and they can improve on what they have learned.
Welcome to the Bone Yard
I am ready for the Bone Yard!
I am excited for better in state recruiting(west side)….GO COUGS!!!
Good hire. I cant wait to see the contract details.
I am guessing it is about 700,000 a year for 4 or 5 years. I hope there is a $500K buyout as well.
If I had to guess
I’d say 5-600k a year plus incentives with a moderate buyout. Hes only making 125k a year right now. Triple that and it would be easy to get him to sign
Aussie, Aussie, Aussie
I hope no more than 600k
That’s an great raise and he gets the challenge of coaching in the Pac 10. If he proves his worth the salary will only go up. The budget this year is awful though.
School wise, yes
The athletic budget is doing just fine. Plenty of money in the excellence fund.
Don’t forget UVA forked out 400k for the buyout too
Aussie, Aussie, Aussie
True
I remember Sterk saying they would pay a new coach around what Bennett was making. Obviously Bone is not getting 1 million. I would be willing to overpay a little in exchange for a higher buyout. But 500-600K would be good.
I think he said they "could" pay a coach what Bennett was making
That way, they didn’t eliminate anyone right off the bat.
Good deal, I like the hire, time to get it going again!
I actually don’t see Bone leaving in 3 but if he does he does. I hope they keep Woodley and Johnson. We will see if they can keep Thames and Motum and what they want to do as far as bringing in spring recruits.
Woodley just getting off with Ian and Grippi on with Ian on KJR at 250pm folks.
This is fantastic news
I couldn’t be happier! I think this a great hire by WSU and I can’t wait to see what happens next year.
Glad the search is over
Now, here’s hoping that Coach Bone gets down to the business of getting this team back to the top half of the Pac-10.
Fantastico!!!
This is great news! I feel phenomenal about this hire! Now, first order of business, go sit down with Thames.
Good luck, Bone! – we are rooting for you!
Actually, first order of business is to get the staff set
Then figure out the best course of action for retaining everyone.
I'm not going to get too excited
until we find out if the recruits stick around.
That said, in general Bone’s style of play should suit Marcus and DeAngelo, and hopefully he can get Klay to be more aggresive towards the hoop.
Let’s just say I’m cautiously optimistic, I want to see how we play defense and run the offense, but I know he’s a good coach and probably the best of our options.
I am pumped! We just upgraded our program.
The recruits would be stupid to not stay. The guy took Portland State to the NCAA tournament that last 2 years. That’s right freakin’ Portland State. I can’t remember the last time they were in the tourney. I love Bennett, but from a X’s and O’s perspective this guy is one of the best. He is a legit coach. He has also has a lot more experience. Without Pac10 talent he lost to UW by 1 point (the #1 team in the Pac10), he beat us in a scrimmage and he beat #7 Gonzaga. I think he will be a great recruiter. Give him 4 years, that is all it took at PSU>
Press Conference?
Does anyone know if Bone is going to do a press conference/ announcement in Pullman today or tomorrow like Wullf did?
PSU assistants
http://www.goviks.com/SportSelect.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=19300&KEY=&SPID=11202&SPSID=92454
I could easily see Bone keeping a couple of the existing assistants from WSU and maybe only bringing his associate head coach. Of course that guy may be in line to replace him. Anyway, I think there is a good possibility that he try and retain Johnson and Woodley.
Or this guy
I saw someone mention Bone’s former long time assistant at SPU, who is now the head coach there.
http://www.spufalcons.com/roster.asp?playerid=229&sport=4&path=mbball
Both Good Hires
Who cares about location, but remember he did bring Dick Bennett out of retirement…from freakin Wisconsin. We would not be where we are at without that happening.
Also, Wulff bleeds crimson and grey and he is a California boy, which can help with recruiting, because he understands what it is like to come from Cali to the Palouse.
Location of a hire can be important, but to play devil’s advocate it’s not that important if you bring a big name in. At least, these two guys understand the recruiting challenges and the region and can coach. Give these guys a couple years.
...
I think we should have hired Terry Porter and if he wasn’t interested then at least looked at more coaches. Sterk said we’d have a guy by Monday because he knew he was getting Bone. Why would you want to rush an important hire like that? I would have contacted coaches that were in the top 20 of this list …
http://www.ncaa.com/sports/m-baskbl/stats/ncaa-m-baskbl-div1-team-field-goal-percentage-defense.html
and this list…
http://www.ncaa.com/sports/m-baskbl/stats/ncaa-m-baskbl-div1-team-assist-turnover-ratio.html
Because that was what Cougar basketball has been all about. We are not going to be able to recruit the kind of uptempo basketball recruits to Pullman. They want to play at prestigious schools and/or urban schools.
I honestly don’t think Sterk has done anything poor aside from giving the last two coaching searches that he said were going to be ‘nation wide’ to guys less than an hour flight from here, and to guys that run offenses that won’t work in Pullman.
by Roy Weaver Stuckey on Apr 6, 2009 3:24 PM PDT reply actions
Again, I just think that last statement is ignorant
You don’t know that Bone will run an offense that won’t work in Pullman. In fact, you have no idea what kind of offense he will run. Why? Because he’s a guy that tailors his offense to his personnel. And his defenses have always been in the top half of the Big Sky in adjusted defensive efficiency.
As for your lists … let’s just take opp. fg defense. You can eliminate the coaches of Memphis, Connecticut, Gonzaga, Kansas, Butler, Xavier, Florida State, Kentucky, Purdue, Mississippi State, because none of those guys are coming here to begin with. Which of the coaches of Stephen F. Austin, Wright State, McNeese State, Lehigh, Tulsa, Hampton, Bowling Green, Hofstra and Alabama State would you have liked to hire? Never mind the fact that of those 20 teams, only eight were in the top 20 in adjusted defensive efficiency last year. There is more than one way to play great defense.
The problem with going after "big conference" coaches for us
We’re a step down for top of the conference coaches, which leaves us with guys that aren’t winning (Davis), aren’t winning enough (Gillespie), don’t get along with their administration (Gillespie, Knight), have academic issues (Davis), etc. And nationwide searches are less likely to result in coaches that have any tie at all to Pullman. The NW has plenty of basketball talent, and plenty to go around to both UW and WSU with players left over for Gonzaga as well.
Bottom line, I’m sold on Bone. He’s shown he’s a winner, he knows the NW, and he can adapt his style. Questioning decisions because the AD is choosing guys that have ties to the NW or the school is somewhat strange, as what we often talk about is that people don’t get what it means to be a Coug. Maybe it’s not the first priority, but if your going to recruit to Pullman it’s best if you can find it on a map before you get hired.
You are right, we probably won’t get any up tempo, high flyers, but Bone did win at PSU and PSU had a worse reputation in basketball than WSU. The Big Sky is not notorious for bringing in up tempo, NBA type players. The last 2 appearances in the tournament were the only time PSU has been in the tourney. He won with his recruits (who were not big names) not the ones that his Dad and assistants brought in. I would have like to see what Bennett would have done the next 4 years at WSU. I guess we will see what kind of program he can build on his own at Virginia. Also, don’t count out Bone yet in recruiting athletic talent to the Palouse. He may be able to get some players from the west side or find talent elsewhere. We will see. I guess I see optimism in this hire.
I feel sort of like I did when Wulff was hired....
a little “ho-hum”. Don’t get me wrong, Bone was the default choice…but I would have liked it not to be by default.
Solid choice…but not too much to get excited about….yet.
Just because he's the default
Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be excited. He was the default because everybody, and I mean everyone that wrote about it (WSU writers, UW writers, Pac 10 writers, ESPN writers) felt that Bone was the right choice for the school and our goals. The surprising hires are often surprising because they are times where we are swinging for the fences, when a single or double is all that we need. When you swing for the fences, your more likely to strike out then actually hit a homerun.
Yeah it seems like he is a good guy and all the pac-10, espn writes, and NW writers wanted to see him rewarded.
by Roy Weaver Stuckey on Apr 6, 2009 7:05 PM PDT up reply actions
Roy Weaver Stuckey
I too was very interested in Terry Porter, but am not hurt that we got Ken Bone. We still don’t know whether or not Terry Porter truly was interested in the position.
As for your feelings that Sterk didn’t do a national search or overturn every single rock to find the right guy… well you have to put things into perspective. There is a reason why Bennett is not taking his top assistants with him, and its not because they are bad coaches. Its because they don’t have strong recruiting experience in the Virginia/East Coast area. We could have interviewed every coach nationwide and only found a handful (if that) of division-1 head coaches with as much recruiting experience as Ken Bone has in the area.
Secondly, you have 8 or 9 freshman in limbo; you have 3 or 4 coaches in limbo, and 4 recruits in limbo. If you take too much time some or all of these guys are going to start second guessing whether anybody really wants to come to Pullman. Look at the Arizona situation. One of the premier programs in the nation and they were publicly spurned by 3 or 4 different candidates. To me I start question whether Arizona is really a top program if so many coaches turn them down. Well same goes for us in Pullman. Once these other coaches start hearing that similar coaches are turning down WSU, then maybe it sends the wrong message that we aren’t in any better shape than we were before the Bennetts arrived. If we lose a ton of our recruits through a drawn out process like this, then we are back to square one. We have Ken Bone in place with no team and no coaches. It immediately turns to Paul Graham 101, go find the best JC talent you can to fill all the holes.
Ken Bone will do a terrific job. He is from the area, he is a great x’s and o’s coach and he knows how to maximize his talent. Anytime I have Husky friends telling me they hope we don’t get Ken Bone because he would be good for the Cougs – I take a little pride in that!
by LeaveItToWeaver on Apr 7, 2009 3:25 AM PDT reply actions 1 recs
Well said....
I honestly don’t think there was a better choice for our program. What else does Bone have to do to prove his worth? This was a good move on all fronts.
Ben Johnson staying on to help...
Office chatter is telling me that Ben Johnson is going to stay on with Coach Bone for next season…good news that should help calm down our guys!
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