Good for Dana Altman
>> Tuesday
Altman has decided to stay at Creighton after all, after verbally accepting the Arkansas job. Altman struggled during his time at Kansas State, leaving them for the Bluejays head gig. In Omaha, Altman has Creighton rolling, appearing in the NCAA Tournament seven of the last nine seasons. He had a top 20 team in 2003 that ran into the buzzsaw of Chris Kaman and Central Michigan in the first round. His Creighton teams won an NCAA Tournament game in 1999 and 2002, and were very competitive in closes losses the last two seasons. He has a top 100 recruit, P'Allen Stinett coming in next year.
Plus, here is Stan Heath's record that got him fired, and remember he inherited a huge mess after Nolan Richardson's nasty departure:
2003-9 wins
2004-12 wins
2005-18 wins
2006-22 wins
2007-21 wins
This season, he led Arkansas to the NCAA Tournament despite losing all three perimeter starters from a year ago. He would have had every key guy returning, with the potential to be a preseason top 20 team next season. Yet, that's not good enough for their retiring AD and some crazy fans. Arkansas deserves someone far worse than Altman.
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This is probably something I could easily look up myself, but was the Arkansas program ever even prominent before the early '90s? Where do Arkansas fans get off griping about a first-round tourney exit?
Arkansas is a very solid program, although there's apparently a lot of stuff behind the scenes there (academic problems, off the court problems like drugs) that helped to scare Altman off. Still, I'd say Heath did a very similar job as Kevin O'Neill at Marquette, except for the one NCAA Tournament run. He had rebuilt a program left in shambles by Nolan Richardson. If there has been some crappy stuff going on at Arkansas and it's at leats partially his fault, I would greatly soften my stance on Heath's dismissal.
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