Four people will move quickly — in days, not weeks — to conduct a search for a new head basketball coach for Kansas University, Drue Jennings, interim athletic director, said at a press conference this morning.
They are Chancellor Robert Hemenway, Jennings, assistant athletic director Doug Vance and senior associate athletic director Richard Konzem. Jennings said members of the men’s basketball team and the Kansas University Athletics Corporation board also would be involved.
While whoever is hired will replace Roy Williams, who left KU after 15 years Monday to accept the head coaching job at the University of North Carolina, Jennings said the Jayhawks’ new coach won’t be expected to meet any standard set by Williams.
“I’m not going to try to find somebody who has to live up to Roy,” Jennings said. “We’re going to hopefully find someone who shares many of those same qualities, who is admired by his players, who is admired by people and carries a degree of integrity and certainly an ethical conduct and meets what we feel is the culture of the athletics program here. That’s what we’ll hire.”
Jennings, who said the university would consider both proven and inexperienced coaches for the position, added it was a “buyer’s market” for KU in seeking a new head man.
“I don’t mean to sound cocky about that, but we do have a very fine program,” he said. “We have a fine university to sell.”
The quality of KU’s program has been reflected by the people who have already contacted the university about the position, Jennings said, though he refused to name who has expressed an interest and who KU is planning on talking to about the position.
Jennings also said he wasn’t worried about the lack of a full-time athletic director becoming a problem in hiring a basketball coach, as he thinks the AD does not have the same type of importance to the athletics department as coaches and student-athletes.
“We don’t coach people. We don’t recruit students,” he said. “We administer. We support. We provide leadership, hopefully. Anyone who would come to coach at KU right now, probably in any sport, ought to focus on resources available to them, the committments of the university in terms of what they need to be successful with their student-athletes.
“The interest in the men’s basketball job at the University of Kansas has probably absolutely nothing to do with who is athletic director.”
Jennings said he did not know how the university would respond if any or all of the four signees — Jeremy Case, J.R. Giddens, David Padgett and Omar Wilkes — asked to be released from their committments to KU.
“I think we have to do the thing that is most correct, and most right and most honorable and for those young men,” he said. “We haven’t made a decision like that yet, and hopefully we won’t confront it.”
Jennings did say Williams will be asked for his input during the selection process, though his advice won’t be the final word.
“You have to have a high regard for coach Williams’ knowledge of the coaching fraternity that exists in this country,” Jennings said. “Will it be determinative? No. But we do listen to his advice and then we certainly value his opinion.”
While walking through Parrott Athletic Center after the news conference, sophomore Keith Langford was swarmed by members of the media.
When asked who he would stay at Kansas and play for, Langford named assistant coach Joe Holladay. At his news conference Monday in Chapel Hill, N.C., Williams said he hoped Holladay was a candidate for the position.
“Personally, I’d rather have somebody that was in the Kansas family take over the job, but obviously that’s not my say-so,” Langford said Tuesday. “There’s not really a lot of people that I can say that I would definitely stay and play for.”
A reporter threw out former KU assistant and current Texas Christian University coach Neil Dougherty as a candidate, to which Langford said: “I’d definitely play for Neil, but who’s to say he would leave and take the job?”
When asked about his mother’s desire for him to remain at KU, Langford said: “She wants me to. If things go right, this is where I want to be.”
In related news, a parade that had been scheduled for Thursday to honor Williams and his national title runner-up team has been canceled.
Video: Jennings’ news conference
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