Sources: Candidate may have toured JPJ Tuesday night

By: Whitelaw Reid | The Daily Progress
Published: March 25, 2009

The latest buzz surrounding Virginia’s search for a new coach is that a potential candidate may have toured John Paul Jones Arena late Tuesday night.
The identity of the candidate? Well, that’s the million-dollar question.
Several sources told The Daily Progress that an unexpected office clean up was ordered by high-ranking school officials very late in the day on Tuesday. The unusualness of the demand led the sources to believe that a candidate was being given a tour of the arena.
The five known candidates for the job are Minnesota’s Tubby Smith, Oklahoma’s Jeff Capel, VCU’s Anthony Grant, Villanova’s Jay Wright and Michigan’s John Beilein. Since Capel and Wright’s teams are both still alive in the NCAA Tournament, the mystery man, if there was one, could have come from the group of Smith, Grant or Beilein.
Of course, there is the very distinct possibility that other candidates exist.
One name that should not be dismissed is LSU coach Trent Johnson, who is very tight with Virginia executive associate director of athletics Jon Oliver from their days at Boise State.
Johnson, the former Stanford coach, just completed his first year in Baton Rouge. LSU had one of the best seasons in school history, going 27-8. Johnson would have obvious appeal to Virginia athletic director Craig Littlepage, who has always tried to use Stanford’s high academic standards and athletic success as a model.
Another name that has been floating around is Xavier coach Sean Miller, whose Musketeers play Pittsburgh in the Sweet 16 tonight in Boston. Xavier has been to the Sweet 16 three times in the last six years and has soundly defeated Virginia in each of the last two seasons.
However, Miller sounds pretty happy in Ohio, despite the perception of Xavier as a “mid-major.”
“College basketball is not college football,” said Miller, during a press conference that was broadcast on ESPN. “When you look at Memphis last year in the national championship game, I don’t think anybody really cared what conference they were from.
“They just looked out there and saw an excellent team.”
Miller went on to say that Xavier’s Cintas Center is one of the best facilities in the country.
“It’s on-campus and accessible to our team 12 months out of the year,” he said. “We have our own practice facility, state-of-the-art weight room — anything you’d ever want … it’s the best of the best.”
There is the chance that Virginia’s coaching search has expanded beyond the college ranks — Littlepage may want to be covering all his bases.
To that end, it wouldn’t come as a shock if UVa was having cursory discussions with Marc Iavaroni or even Rick Carlisle, both school alums. Iavaroni was fired by the Memphis Grizzlies earlier this season. Carlisle is currently the coach of the Dallas Mavericks.

Sources: Candidate may have toured JPJ Tuesday night

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