“I cannot give you a time frame, but hopefully this will take days not weeks,” Drue Jennings, KU’s interim athletic director, said Tuesday. “We have had contacts already, and we will sort through those.”

The search committee consists of Jennings, KU chancellor Robert Hemenway and senior athletic department administrators Doug Vance and Richard Konzem. Jennings noted, though, input would be sought from members of the KU Athletic Corp. board as well as from student-athletes.

The clock, Jennings emphasized, is ticking.

“It’s a perceived need of the university not to let this drag on,” he said. “Our players more so than most people need to have that question answered.”

Jennings declined to name candidates, but three head coaches prominently mentioned are Bill Self of Illinois, Tom Crean of Marquette and Mike Brey of Notre Dame.

If KU officials are unable to lure any of those three to Mount Oread, it could be construed the school was unable to grasp the brass ring. Jennings doesn’t expect that to happen. He believes Kansas is in the position of being able to choose who it wants to replace Williams, who announced Monday night in Chapel Hill, N.C., he was leaving KU to take over at North Carolina.

“Let’s face it,” Jennings said, “it’s a buyer’s market for us. I don’t want to sound cocky, but we have a great program here.”

Jennings also emphasized the four-man search group was not wearing blinders; they were not looking for another Roy Williams.

“We’re not seeking a replicant, a clone of Roy,” he said. “Everyone has a different personality. We’re not looking for someone who has to live up to Roy.”

Nevertheless, the man who replaces Williams will inevitably be compared to his predecessor because Williams fashioned the highest winning per

continued from page 1c

centage of any active Division One coach during his 15 years at Kansas. At the same time, Williams won numerous conference championships and made four Final Four appearances.

“We want a coach who has demonstrated success,” Jennings said, “or one who has demonstrated the prospect for attaining success.”

Bob Frederick, who served as Kansas AD from 1987 to 2001, has said it could be difficult to hire Williams’ replacement before the Jayhawks have a permanent athletic director in place and the search for Al Bohl’s successor, Jennings said, is on hold.

“You’re asking someone to take a job with tremendous pressure and he doesn’t know who is boss will be,” Frederick said.

Asked if it was reasonable to expect KU to be able to hire the coach it desires with only an interim in charge of the athletic department, Jennings took an optimistic view.

“I think it’s reasonable to expect that,” he said.

In the process, Jennings said he thought they might consult with Williams and that the compensatory package KU would offer “will be competitive with a program of equivalent status.”

Williams’ annual total KU package was more than $1 million even though his salary was $129,360, the lowest among Big 12 Conference coaches. Williams earned nearly half of his income from his radio-TV pact. Other money came from summer camps and from apparel and shoe contracts.

Williams, incidentally, apparently did not have a buyout clause in his contract. In other words, Williams will not be required to pay a penalty for leaving prior to the expiration of his pact.

Today is the end of the first week of Jennings’ stint as interim AD. The former CEO of Kansas City Power and Light Co. was Hemenway’s choice to fill in temporarily when he fired Al Bohl last Wednesday.

“When I took this job, I had no idea one of my jobs would be to replace the men’s basketball coach,” Jennings said.