[JGore]

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!!

[JGore]

While I’m certainly not happy about losing Tanuvasa to Provo Community College, I do like that Utah’s not buying into the idea that they have to win the headline war over TDS in December. I’m just fine with them winning offseason championships- in fact, their fanbase seems to thrive on it.

I’m sure for the # TDS threw at Tanuvasa, Utah can go and get 2 slightly less talented/hungrier and healthier prospects to play in the DT rotation and as the OP mentioned, we’ve already got some promising underclassmen that have shown they can play near or above his level. So why hamstring the NIL budget just to keep him outta Provo? Tanuvasa played a full season in ‘23 but in ‘22 & ‘24 he only managed 11 total games. Hopefully TDS just overpaid for a guy that’s gonna play in half their games.

Again, while it sucks to lose a contributor to that school, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Whitt is content to let them overpay for guys that he feels are replaceable. And my last 2 cents- I think it’s pretty pathetic that TDS’s offseason plan seemed to revolve around poaching Utah’s talent. Calhoun listed them as the first team to make him an offer and they spent the ENTIRE portal window tampering with Snowden, trying everything they could to pry him from Utah. They also obviously spent some time illegally contacting Clegg while he was on his mission. Kids don’t just come home and flip in 48-72 hours after being gone for 24 months. I count keeping Snowden as the biggest victory of the offseason as it certainly sounds like he was TDS’ “Plan A” for the offseason.

[JGore]

Normally I don’t get too up in arms over these things, but there’s some issues that make this Clegg flip-flop pretty infuriating.

When Provo loses prominent LDS recruits to Utah, their fans have the flippant attitude of “Oh well, we’ll just continue to recruit him while he’s on his mission”, and while they can’t come out and say it, Provo’s coaches feel the same damn way. Recruiting wise, these kids are legally off limits when they’re away on their missions but BYU takes full advantage of the church sending these kids away- most often to a far away country where they’re isolated from anything and everything outside of the LDS church.

Clegg literally returned home from his mission a few days ago. There is a ZERO% chance that this kid was completely left alone for 24 months, only to see YBU make contact with him, resume the recruitment process, and manage to flip him all within the 72 or so hours he’d been home from his mission. The fact of the matter is, for the last 2 years there was a concerted effort by members of the Provo football program as well as LDS church officials with marching orders to sway Clegg towards YBU.

This exact scenario will continue to play out anytime Provo loses out on a big time mormon recruit, Provo officials will continue to lie about it, and they’ll continue to get away with it because they control the entire narrative while these kids are away from home and 100% under their control.

This just serves as yet more evidence that ethics and legality mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to TDS when they know there’s no chance at all of being caught. They just make it so damn easy to hate them.

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