FanHouse South Florida Bulls

The biggest loser of the first game of the Big East Tournament (BET) was not Cincy. It was Providence. The Friars are a fringe bubble team. They need more than simply a deep run in the BET, they need quality wins to boost their computer numbers. Providence now gets DePaul and their 200+ RPI number tomorrow. Even if they win, they get little to show for it. On top of that, Providence swept Cincinnati. That Cincinnati loss to DePaul further drives down the value of those wins.

The only other winners are sportswriters who like DePaul coach Jerry Wainwright. Wainwright is popular because he's a good quote and media friendly. Now they can claim he is making progress and should get another year.

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If you caught any halftime show on ESPN or any college basketball segment on SportsCenter this weekend, there was always something about the NCAA tournament bubble and the projected last four in and last four out. Cinci kept showing up on the wrong side of the projections.

But the Bearcats don't have to worry about that drama anymore. Losing to South Florida on the road all but guarantees they won't be appearing anywhere in tournament projections.

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If Baylor can drag itself out of NCAA sanction purgatory, recruit talent to Waco, and get into the NCAA Tournament then any team in a major conference should believe it can as well. Especially if the program dwells in a talent-rich state. Of course, the talent has to actually have the grades to make it.

Stan Heath has almost as tough a job with South Florida. A team with little history, less tradition and plays in the 16-team behemoth Big East. He is recruiting in Florida where, despite the football-first mentality (much like in Texas), there is still a sizable talent base to recruit basketball players.

I understand that when you are building a program -- and that is what he has to do -- you may have to take a chance on players with a shaky foundation. Whether it is brushes with the law, bad family or academics. Even the best programs will, if the talent warrants it.

Heath, however, has continually gone to the academically shaky with some frequency, and it has been a struggle. So far USF has had three recruits fail to qualify. Teeng Akol, Dwan McMillan and now George Teague. That's just for the 2008 recruiting class.

Not to worry, they just added a 20-year old freshman to help this year. His grades seem in order at last.

Sure, you can speculate about the Michigan job or that Kentucky gig if you want the boring coach searches. I mean, those searches seem to actually have clear targets. The real excitement is in Tampa where they just can't find anyone to take the job at the University of South Florida.

Current ESPN College Basketball Analyst, Fran Fraschilla, has been the latest to take his name out of the hat. I think the list of people who have turned down the opportunity to even interview for the job is longer than the list of actual interviews.

The good news, is that former Arkansas Head Coach Stan Heath is not just willing to listen. He actually has met with the USF Athletic Director. The two met in Atlanta, sight of the largest basketball coaching job fair -- the Final Four. Heath has yet to visit USF's campus. Something that apparently killed interest in the job for Winthrop's Gregg Marshall and South Alabama's John Pelphrey.

If Heath goes to USF, or anywhere else, expect at least one of his former Arkansas players to follow him.

If Heath ends up at USF, there's a chance SEC freshman of the year Patrick Beverley could join him.

"I love it here at Arkansas, but it's going to be hard for me to play for somebody else," Beverley told the Chicago Tribune. "I want to finish up strong in my classes so there won't be any problems if I have to transfer.

"[Heath] is just a good dude who gave me a lot of leeway and allowed me to play my game. That's the kind of coach I like to play for. The new coach may not let me play my game."

He'd be happier if Heath somehow ended up in Ann Arbor since he chose Arkansas over Michigan, though. Plus there Heath had secured a late verbal from a 4-star small forward out of Mississippi. Jenirro Bush hasn't signed his NLI yet, and has reopened his recruitment.

Here's another stealth name in the USF coaching search: Matt Doherty. Yes, he only has put in one season at SMU -- after putting in only one season at FAU.

If the theory goes that even the worst major conference job has greater potential and more to offer then the best mid-major gig, then let's just call the University of South Florida the exception that proves the rule after firing Robert McCullum.

Greg Marshall at Winthrop turned down the, uh, opportunity to be the next head coach at USF. He's not the only coach to do so. Travis Ford at UMass and Anthony Grant at VCU have rejected overtures to handle the Bulls. Also, John Pelphrey at South Alabama interviewed for the job and then said, "uh, no."

So far the only candidates interviewed still interested are Big East retreads -- Fran Fraschilla and Pete Gillen. Mike Jarvis is reportedly interested as well, but further rumors I completely fabricated at this very moment suggest that Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese threatened to kick USF out of the Big East for either Memphis or East Carolina if they even consider Jarvis after what he did at St. John's.

The South Florida Bulls only started spring practice a week ago, but once more USF finds players in trouble with the law and suspended from the team.

Two University of South Florida starting defensive backs were arrested early this morning outside a Tampa bar on misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct and obstructing or opposing an officer without violence and have been suspended indefinitely by USF coach Jim Leavitt.

Senior cornerback Mike Jenkins, who turned 22 Thursday, and sophomore strong safety Carlton Williams, 21, were arrested shortly after 3 a.m. by Hillsborough County sheriff's deputies at Bobalouie's Pub, 1913 Bearss Avenue. They were released on $750 bond about 8:30 this morning.

Apparently there was a crowd of nearly 200 outside the bar after it had closed around 3 am. Go figure a crowd that large, plenty of people who had been drinking and now without their booze. Naturally a large fight broke out leading to the arrest of Jenkins and Williams.

Last off-season, the Bulls had several players arrested and suspended. Not to mention more then a couple academic casualties. Looks like not much has changed.

You know, usually for coaching openings, some coaches express an interest in the job. Try and get the media to float their names or send word via back channels. Not at the University of South Florida Bulls. They took applications.

Other candidates to officially apply are former Kansas State coach Jim Wooldridge and Mike Brown, a 12-year NBA veteran who coached in the NBA Developmental League, along with a junior high boys coach in Columbus, Ohio; a Boys and Girls Club director in Atlantic City, N.J.; and a USF student, who coaches a middle-school girls team.

Former Villanova coach Steve Lappas, an analyst for CSTV, said Sunday he was interested in the position while former coaches/TV analysts Pete Gillen, Cliff Ellis and Mike Jarvis also are pursuing the position.

Is this a major conference job or a local rec center?

So, three former Big East Coaches -- 2 of the 3 were fired -- are looking to get back into the conference. Mike Jarvis would be fun, simply for generating pure outrage that he would get back into the coaching college basketball after everything that happened at St. John's. And no, I'm not talking about the players looking for strippers in Pittsburgh back in 2003. It was paying players -- of course it came from the director of basketball operations at St. John's, not Jarvis.

The best part is that Mike Jarvis might not even be the most questionable character trying to get the job at USF. That honor might belong to George "Tic" Price submitting his application. Name doesn't ring a bell? He was a captain on the VT 1979 team that got knocked out of the NCAA Tournament by Larry Bird and Indiana State. Nothing?Well he had been the coach at McNeese State. Still not working for you? Well, he was the coach at Memphis for a few years until he was fired resigned after it was discovered he was having an affair with a 23-year old student at Memphis in 1999. Just for good measure he and the school also became embroiled in a lawsuit over the firing of a secretary who alleged she was fired after refusing to falsify expense accounts and do additional work for his basketball camps (PDF).

I'd like to think that even USF would raise the standards a bit higher. I mean, their Athletic Director (AD) has actually shown in the past actual competence. When Doug Woolard was the St. Louis AD, he hired a hot young assistant from UCLA named Lorenzo Romar. Sure Romar eventually went back to his alma mater, but he definitely hired a good coach. That was followed up with another decent coaching hire that has St. Louis competitive in the A-10.

The one thing USF needs is someone with ambition and drive. Not some retread

Four and 28 is not a very good record, and those are the numbers that ultimately got Robert McCullum fired. South Florida won just four Big East games in a two year period, and today, the AD decided that he'd like to bring in someone else to get pounded right the ship.

McCullum's been in a tough spot since the day USF joined the Big East. A team like South Florida expecting any head coach to come in and start approaching .500 in the Big East was about like expecting LaVar Arrington to win the world chess championships.

It feels like McCullum was expected to achieve success with the basketball program similar to what the football program has enjoyed ... but the challenge for McCullum was much harder than it was for football coach Jim Leavitt. The southern part of Florida does football. Not basketball. Ask Miami or Florida State. And the Big East is infinitely deeper in hoops than it is on the gridiron, making it a hell of a mountain to climb. Now that I think about all this, the fact that McCullum won four games is kind of amazing.

It might not be entirely fair that he was fired, but... the coaching game has never been noted for its fairness. USF seems like they really want to pump a lot of money into their athletic programs, so I think they'll want to make a big splash of a hire, but ... that's got to be about the least appealing job in a major conference. Best of luck.

I really thought Notre Dame had turned the corner with the huge road win over Syracuse this week. Instead, it was something even stranger. As tremendous an offensive performance they demonstrated on the Orange, there was an almost immediate balancing of the scales with a trip to Tampa where they fell to the South Florida Bulls 69-63.

Notre Dame shot 37.5% (24-64) and given the reliance of the Irish on the 3-point shot, going 9-28 from outside was devastating. The big surprise was that Notre Dame settled for a lot more jump shots and not driving to the basket or just trying to go inside to Rob Kurz and Luke Harangody on offense as much. The only one who could hit shots was Colin Falls who scored 26 points on 10-18 (meaning that the rest of the team shot 14-46, 30.4%).

South Florida, by contrast drove to the hoop constantly, making more baskets and getting to the free throw line. They enjoyed a 30-12 advantage on free throw attempts. The Bulls also grabbed a +11 rebounding advantage over Notre Dame to get more second chance points and limit the same for the Irish. Generally had more energy and more aggressive.

This had to be a stunning loss for Notre Dame. To fall to a team that can still count the number of Big East wins in its first two seasons on one hand. They are now 6-4 in the conference, falling to 6th place. The loss may very well drop them from the top-25, but they are still going to the NCAA Tournament at this point.

South Florida gets to 3-6 in the Big East sharing 11th place with UConn, St. John's and Seton Hall. Their goal of being in the 12 Big East teams to make the Big East Tournament remains intact.

Shocking that the two worst teams in the Big East only meet once this year. That's right, the match-up of Rutgers and South Florida. In the end, the home team Bulls beat the Scarlet Knights 62-40.

Aesthetically, it's probably for the best that they only meet once. Of course, if aesthetics really mattered, then Rutgers wouldn't be allowed to play another game this year. This wasn't even Rutgers lowest scoring game this season. They only managed 37 against DePaul a week-and-a-half prior. This game saw them shoot 16-58 (27.6%) and a pathetic 1-17 on 3s.

Rutgers is now 1-6 in the Big East and only cracked 60 points twice. Fred Hill was hired by Rutgers because his reputation as an ace recruiter. He's got a lot of work ahead of him.