Travis Ford's brief run as the head coach at the University of Massachusetts helped the Minutemen back to respectability. His teams won more than 20 games each of the last two seasons and the program returned to the top of the Atlantic 10. He left for Oklahoma State, though, and the team faced a difficult decision about who would do the best job of keeping them at a level unreached since John Calipari left the school. They could hire a second-tier coach with a winning pedigree, promote an assistant from within or reach into the past for a guy who represents that proud era mentioned above. The Minutemen appear to have chosen door number three and will announce former UMass guard Derek Kellogg as their next coach tomorrow.
Kellogg will be a popular hire. He's a local celebrity and has been an assistant at Memphis for the last eight seasons. UMass obviously hopes the recruiting skills he used to help the Tigers to the finals will keep the talent flowing to Amherst. You have to wonder if the Minutemen couldn't have accomplished all that and brought in a guy with head coaching experience to boot.
Tony Barbee, who also played for the Minutemen under Calipari, has been the head coach at UTEP for the past two seasons and was on Memphis's bench with Kellogg before getting that job. Barbee withdrew from consideration late last week, though, but Gary Parrish of CBSsports.com reports that the decision may not have been all his.
Multiple sources with knowledge of the situation told CBSSports.com it wasn't as much about Barbee not being interested as it was about Barbee being told he probably shouldn't be interested any longer by his former boss John Calipari. In other words, the sources said Calipari strongly suggested -- which is a nice way of writing "pretty much demanded" -- Barbee get out of the way of Kellogg, a Memphis assistant who, like Barbee, is a former player at UMass under Calipari.It's good of Calipari to help his assistants like that but it is interesting that he'd want to keep Barbee in conference. Unless he thinks he won't be able to do much at UTEP, that is, in which case you'd have to think twice about predicting huge success for Kellogg.
