The AD will go out and undercut the old regime, hire his own guy, and if it doesn't work, the AD's acuity is questioned, or he could get input from someone who actually knows something about UConn basketball, go with the recommendation, and if it doesn't work out, he gets a mulligan--for obvious reasons. Administrators adopt the path of least resistance. It's the reason we have bigtime college sports in the first place. If they actually considered these sorts of decisions as anything other than a nuisance (ever talk to a college president about the sports programs?) they probably would be making very different decisions. Board of Trustees + Alumni + the fact that bball is only 1% of the school budget = let's make the decision that's going to cause me the least amount of headache in my real job.