Why is it taking so long to announce the new coach?

You could be right, but it’s anybody’s guess at this point. The Utah admin and athletic Director, IMO, have shown poor leadership and management of the two top athletic programs at the university. MBB program has significantly suffered poorly over a decade. Reports indicate Harlan has been left out of this hiring process for the new HC and boosters and Utah admin are taking the lead. But I’m there with you! Radio silence from Utah from my point of view and experience is not a good thing for Utah fans. We’ve had coaches and players leave and Utah not saying anything with most of their departures with most fans realizing Utah doesn’t have the resources to keep them and won’t match the offers. Who knows. Hope they’ve locked a good hire down and will announce soon. Go UTES!

I don’t think you fire a coach before the season ends unless you have a replacement committed. Doesn’t make sense to eat two years of salary if you can’t get one of the big three to commit. Unless you can get Jensen Miller or Bryant your just rolling the dice again.

I think Harlan better be in complete control of finding and hiring the new MBB coach, because his job may depend on it. He has not shown a great ability to evaluate and hire coaches for Ute athletics so far.

If he doesn’t hit a home run with this hire, then we are in for another 5 years of mediocre MBB. I would fire him if we aren’t competive right off the start, and near the top 5 in conference after two years.

Yes, the timing of the Smith firing was terrible, if in fact he did not have a great candidate lined up already.

Harlan also has another important decision to make for WBB, in hiring the next coach. The pressure is on Harlan and if it were me I would take all that boosters, etc., have to offer in advice, but it would be my decision alone who to hire. That is what he gets paid the big bucks to accomplish.

I had to chuckle when I read the title of this thread. The Utes have been without a basketball coach for 120 hours and we have people wondering what’s taking so long?!

Seems like there’s quite a bit of handwringing going on over this and that shouldn’t be the case. This is one of those situations in which looking at the specifics will tell you EXACTLY what’s going on.

For instance:

– Harlan doesn’t fire Smith with a couple weeks left in the season and $5 million still being owed to Craig without being told to do so directly from people above his pay grade.

– There is quite literally a 0% chance that the same people who green lit the Smith firing and ensuing $5 million buy out were going to set these events into motion just so they could kickoff a new coaching search with the hopes that they’d eventually land on someone who was a clear upgrade from Smith.

– More proof of this is the fact that Smith actually overachieved this season. The B12 is considered to be the best bball conference in the nation and the Utes were pretty much universally picked to finish last heading into year 1. If the athletic department and our boosters didn’t have a candidate in the wings that they were excited enough about to straight up eat $5 million bucks, it would have been REALLY easy to sell everyone on this season being a step in the right direction, blah, blah, blah.

– There’s a coach in place. That coach is a former Ute that will immediately inject excitement and hope into a bball program that has been flat lining. The timing of Smith’s firing was due to the fact that there’s a few players on this squad that can hopefully be retained. Now the new coach has some runway to assess players and talk with them before they can jump into the portal. All of these factors result in there being no reason for Utah to rush an announcement of the new coach just to appease the fanbase. They’ll let the season play until it’s natural end and shortly after we’re eliminated from the conference tourney, the other shoe will drop, and what a beautiful shoe it will be!!

I don’t take the radio silence as a bad sign yet. If two weeks from now we still have no announcement, then I think this is a fair question to ask.

Other coaches are still coaching

Other coaches are still coaching