While the Southern Illinois Salukis were fighting their way through the first two rounds of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament last weekend, two other state schools were shopping for new head coaches.
Patton to Lead the Huskies
At Northern Illinois, former Colorado coach Ricardo Patton was named as the new head coach. In 11 seasons with Colorado, Patton posted a 184-160 record, and six of his teams won 18 games or more. Twice, he took his teams to the NCAA tournament. He is brought on at NIU to turn around the fortunes of the Huskies who finished the season with a 7-24 record.
From Jayhawk to Redbird
Meanwhile, my alma mater, Illinois State University, announced the hiring of Kansas assistant Tim Jankovich as their new coach. He has been an assistant at Kansas for four years under Bill Self as well as at Illinois. He was also an assistant at Vanderbilt, Texas, Oklahoma State and Colorado State. The ISU Redbirds finished the season at 15-16 and lost in the first round of the Missouri Valley Conference tournament to Indiana State, which had a worse record. The MVC has become highly competitive with Southern Illinois, Bradley, Wichita State, Creighton and Missouri State making either the NCAA or NIT tournaments the last two seasons.
As an ISU alum, I love the hiring of Jankovich. Here’s hoping he’ll bring the Kansas playbook with him to Normal, Ill.
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