Coaching Carousel Notes: Montgomery Retires, Howland Linked to UCB, Marquette, Boston College & Wake Forest; Kent to WSU

The coaching carousel is in full swing in college basketball and there some UCLA angles because of Ben Howland. The rumors were true about Mike Montgomery. To no one's surprise Montgomery announced his retirement today and there is already speculation that Ben Howland maybe a candidate.

Howland's name has been linked to number of other open positions in recent days. Apparently Marquette maybe interested in Howland but they are also looking at other coaches such as Dayton's Archie Miller. UC Berkeley and Marquette are not only schools on Howland's radar.

Our friends from Boston College are very interested in Howland as are Wake Forest fans, who think Howland would be an "outstanding choice" for the Demon Deacons. I don't disagree at all with them. Howland would be a good fit for either of those programs and I think he can rebuild those programs just like he rebuilt Pitt with the kind of players who fit into his system of "Ben Ball" grounded in defense and fundamentals.

When Howland had it going in Westwood he was as good as anyone in college basketball. It's too bad that he decided to get away from Ben Ball and tried maintain his program by following the Calipari-mode of recruiting (which is to chase one-and-done mercenaries from the AAU circuit). Oh well ... not worth discussing any more at this point.

Elsewhere, Washington State filled its coaching vacancy with Ernie Kent. Kent is kind of an interesting choice. He did a good job of leveraging Nike "powered" facilities and resources at Oregon, but his teams in his later years looked like ugly mess. It will be interesting to see how he performs in Pullman.

It appears that no program of note is interested in Steve Alford's lead assistant David Grace even though he already appeared to be publicly campaigning for a head-coaching position during the season. Guess no one is impressed?

GO BRUINS.