Life Goes On: Wake Coaching Search

The shock of Prosser's death is wearing off. The sadness won't for a long time. But, in the typical American Spirit, life goes on and part of moving forward for Wake is finding a new basketball coach. ACCNation kicks off the topic

What direction should Wake take in basketball coaching search?

It would seem that Wake Forest will have one of two directions to take when it comes time to begin the process for hiring a new men’s basketball coach.

Direction #1 would appear to be to hire someone from within to serve as the interim head coach - perhaps Dino Gaudio, if only because Gaudio has Division I head-coaching experience (at Army and Loyola).

Direction #2 would be to hire from among the list of college coaches who are currently unemployed - say, maybe Pete Gillen, the late Skip Prosser’s mentor at Xavier who has ACC experience at Virginia.

I don’t see there being a Direction #3 - i.e. conducting a national search of current D1 head coaches and assistants.

The reason I see that being a problem is that it just seems that we’re too close to the start of fall practice in October to risk having to uproot somebody from where they are right now and then risk uprooting assistants from the current Wake staff and the staff of whoever it would be who would get hired.

Which gets us back to directions #1 and #2. Let’s say you go with Gaudio - who, on the minus side, didn’t fare all that well in his previous stints as a head coach, but on the plus side does have a track record at Wake and thus could provide some needed stability in this time of crisis.

But what about Gillen - who knows the Prosser system, since the two of them coached in it together at Xavier, and had some early success at Virginia before petering out in his last three years in Charlottesville? More...

While you won't find any Virginia fans who will think Gillen is a good choice, he might actually be a good choice for Wake. My vote however would be to go back to Xavier again, and hire Sean Miller. Miller is a bit stained in the minds of some NC based fans because of his stint as assistant at NC State to Herb Sendek. But I really believe the following:

• Sean Miller can recruite big-time
• He's proven that he isn't a Sendek disciple in that he doesn't hold to Sendek's system
• Last years NCAA performance shows he's got all the potential in the world.
• He knows this area which will help in recruiting

If I had the choice of Gillen or Miller, I think Miller would be a better choice, if for no other reason than I couldn't stand to listen to Gillen's voice more than a few times a year.