I'm actually with jleves here - I love the fact that Ollie's getting a shot, and so far he's done a phenominal job, but if there is any gray area, you have to go with the sure thing, IMO. Now that doesn't mean Ollie won't prove himself as more of a sure thing as the season progresses, but as of right now he's still an unproven commodity. Brad Stevens has taken teams consisting mainly of two and three star recruits to National Championships, and today he just took a (mostly) completely different group of players and spanked Williams and his crew of McDonald's All-Amercians upside the head. Personally, I think Stevens would jump at the opportunity to coach at UConn, but it's all dependent on their conference affliation come this Spring. I'm not sure Stevens or Smart wants to run the risk of coaching in a mid-major type conference again.
If hiring a Stevens or Smart means possibly cutting off connections with our alumni, I think that's a shame. But I can't imagine that's going to happen. This program still is, and will always be, Calhoun's baby, regardless of who's coaching. Whether he accepts it as such with somebody from outside the program, I'm not sure. But I don't think you want to run the risk of signing a guy to a three year deal when we don't know whether or not he can, you know, actually coach. I'm not saying this is or isn't the case with Ollie, but it's not out of the question that he could suck and set this program back. With an outsider, you more or less know what you're getting. That's why I like the one year contract - even if you set your program back a year or two in terms of recruiting, you give yourself a year to in all lilihood make the biggets decision in the history of your program. That, to me, is bigger than whether Brandon Austin or Jordan Bell decides to play his ball at Providence or UConn next season.
