Is Larry Krystkowiak Chris Hill's leading candidate?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWaLxFIVX1s

I have no doubt there are going to be people who like Krysko. Obviously he’s a decent coach. He wouldn’t be in the league if he wasn’t.

Unfortunately, we need something more than just a decent coach. Utah basketball is the pits right now and needs a complete rebuild. I’m not sure Krysko, and his five years of college coaching experience, can give us what we need.

No way to sugar coat that. He may be an excellent coach, but his resume does not indicate to me that he will be able to fix what is wrong with Utah basketball. I think the majority of Utah fans are hoping for a coach with a proven record of building a college program and maintaining it at a high level over an extended period of time.

If Hill does hire him, I would love to be proven wrong. I will eat crow every day if it means Utah is again a national contender in men’s basketball.

But a lot has changed. The fact he’s only been a head coach for two years in the college game concerns me. The fact that happened five years ago is an even bigger concern.

Being a college coach is more than just being a good coach. It’s about program building, recruiting, sustaining success, developing talent and teaching talent to the players.

Can he do? Maybe. But there is nothing on his resume, unfortunately, that indicates it’s a home run. This hire would be risky because we’re assuming a guy, who coached a total of five seasons in the college game and only two in the last nine, is the best option when it comes to building a program in the Pac-12.

That latter point is my major issue here. I said I was okay with this hire four years ago when he was a candidate. And I was. Beyond his lack of experience in the college game the last five years, Utah is now moving into the Pac-12 – they’re not a MWC team anymore.

The competition, talent and overall quality of their opponent is going to increase.

Is he, without any experience coaching at the Power level – recruiting at the power level, going to be capable of not only rebuilding our program, but bringing it into a new era?

It’s possible. But I don’t see anywhere near as close to a sure-thing as I expected we’d get when Hill fired Jim Boylen.

That’s not a knock on Krysko, just a realization he might not be the right fit at this time.

No more so than Giac turned around Utah basketball in 2005 with a Sweet Sixteen run or that Boylen turned around Utah basketball in his first two years.

That’s my concern. Krysko was there all of two seasons. Montana struggled a bit after he left. It took four years for the Grizzlies to return to the NCAA Tournament and win 20-plus games.

As for NBA coaching experience – Sidney Lowe brought that at North Carolina State and he was fired this month.

I think it’s overplayed by fans, similarly to how NFL head coaching experience was in college football after Pete Carroll succeeded with SC.

He was one of Hill’s top choices when we hired Boylen. His interest in the job at the time actually got him the Buck’s gig in the NBA (and the then current Bucks coached fired). Is our program in a different state now then it was then? The only difference is that we’re moving to the Pac-12 but I think it has been shown that isn’t enough to attract a home run hire. I would argue the program is no better from a competitive standpoint than it was then.

Our program is in a different state for two reasons: one, we’re Pac-12 and two, we can’t afford another miss. We need about as much of a sure-thing as possible. That doesn’t mean home run or a guy like Brad Stevens – it just means a proven winner at the college level.

Krystkowiak has proven what exactly? He had two successful seasons. Okay. But so did Boylen and look where that got him.

Not to say he would be Boylen – but we just don’t know. The guy hasn’t been a head coach at the college level since 2006. And he has absolutely no experience coaching in a Power Conference.

He won at Montana with inferior talent. I watch Krysko’s Montana team win an NCAA tourney game at the Huntsman Center as a 12 seed and I fell in love with his team. They had absolutely no talent yet outworked, outcoached, and were smarter than the competition; Similar to what Butler does at a higher level. For this reason, Krsyko was my top choice back when we hired Boylen. I am a huge fan of coaches that are able to compete with inferior talent.

Boylen kind of did the same thing in 2007 and 2008. The difference is that we were able to see if Boylen could sustain that success and he didn’t. Krystkowiak up and left before he could prove he was a one-hit wonder or something more. Two years, as we learned with Boylen and to a lesser extent, Giacoletti, is not enough evidence to create a solid opinion of the guy.

He could be a great coach. But is he a program builder? He certainly didn’t build Montana. He wasn’t there long enough. Can he recruit top-notch talent to Utah? Can he develop that talent? No one has an answer to that and rightfully, those are some major concerns.

You can point to his two-years at Montana as evidence that he might get it done. But is it really enough to warrant banking the future of the bball program on it? I’m not so sure.

Montana was absolutely in love with Krysko while he was there. Now I understand it was Montana but they think of Krysko like we think of Urban Meyer. Conversely, I’ve heard that Alabama was more than happy to see Gottfried leave and saw him as a cancer waiting to spread.

Eastern Washington fans loooooved Ray Giacoletti. I remember reading their forum on the old Big Sky message board when he made the hire. They were devastated. Happy for him to get a shot, of course, but devastated that he was leaving.

Of course Montana fans love him. He wasn’t there long enough to prove either way he could sustain success or fail. No one knows what his track record could be over the long haul and that worries me.

All the negatives against Krysko could have been applied to Majerus when we hired him. He didn’t have a long history with one school, only had one NCAA win, hadn’t sustained a program for the long-term and didn’t have a track record of recruiting top talent. How did he turn out?

I disagree. Majerus at least sustained winning over a two-year period. He was a successful (albeit, not great coach) at Marquette and had 17 years of coaching experience at the college level as either an assistant at Marquette, head coach or his short two-years at Ball State.

Krystkowiak has only coached five years at the college level. That’s it. He’s only spent two of the last nine in the college game. He has no connections, limited coaching ties and maybe a mentality that has been warped by spending the last five years in the NBA.

Overall, if we’re going the former Montana head coach route, why not Blaine Taylor? He should have interest in the job, since he was a candidate for Wyoming. He’s plugged in, coached at Stanford, has won every place he’s gone (built Old Dominion into what it is today) and sustained success at both Montana and his current stop.

Finally, and I know this isn’t entirely a valid point, but I worry no one else has shown interest in Krystkowiak since he left Montana. In all my searches, I could only link him to two jobs: Utah in 2007 and Boise State last year. The Broncos eventually passed on him and went with Leon Rice, who was an assistant at Gonzaga.

Majerus, for comparison, was offered the Cincinnati job in 1989 and turned them down to take the Utah gig.

He also was the front runner for Washington that season before eventually accepting the gig here.

I think Krystkowiak could be a good hire…for a Big Sky or WAC team. Not a Pac-12 team. We’re asking a guy who’s been out of college coaching a half-decade and has never been an assistant at a Power Conference team to come in and rebuild our program and do it in the uber-competitive Pac-12.

It just does not give me confidence the program is moving in the right direction and I hope, no, pray, Hill hires another guy.

If I’m wrong, I’ll happily eat crow. But this hire feels like a mix of Giac & Boylen and both were failures here.

But that really can be said with most hires. If Krystkowiak is the guy, I’ll get behind him because I am a Ute fan. I might have a few days mourning the decision, but overall, I’ll go along with it and hope for the best.

His choice of assistants could certainly strengthen my feeling toward the hire (or damage it even worse).

I don’t want to act like Krystkowiak is a bad guy or a bad hire. It’s just not the right hire. It’s too big of a risk and while that could have worked four years ago, it won’t work now.

We need as close to a sure-thing as we can get. If that means bringing in a guy like Blaine Taylor – great! He’ll win. He’ll come in, keep us competitive, build a solid foundation and then we can look at maybe getting a coach in here who’ll take us to the elite level (and hell, maybe he could do that here too).

Krystkowiak, though, could do that and more. He could turn out to be Rick Majerus.

But there is a lot of what if with this hire and hardly any substance. Hill can’t afford another strikeout.

But I am not impressed by what he did at Montana. He wasn’t there long enough to establish a program and prove he can sustain winning.

Two years is nothing.

The guy he is replacing took over a 10-win team, guided them to 18-wins and then 24 in his second year…only to have back-to-back losing seasons.

If we went solely on Boylen’s first two seasons here, he would be a very successful head coach. But things played out differently when he got beyond those two years.

Why? Because Boylen struggled building on that success and building the program. He had difficulty recruiting and the recruits he did bring in left the program after last season, setting up for another major rebuild.

Is Larry K a better coach? Maybe. Can he build a program? I don’t know. He didn’t build anything at Montana because he wasn’t there long enough. He had success, granted, but like I said, so did Boylen in his first two seasons here.

It wasn’t Boylen’s first two seasons at Utah that defined his legacy. It was the last two.