The Kansas City Star has further confirmed the news that Kansas State’s Frank Martin has been hired by South Carolina and will be introduced at the school tomorrow.

The school’s board of trustees is expected to okay his contract at a special meeting in the morning.

According to the Twitter account of Kansas City Star reporter Kellis Robinett, Frank Martin to South Carolina is happening:


“Source close to Frank Martin just told me Martin has agreed in principle to become South Carolina’s coach.  Press conference tomorrow.”


And if it’s on Twitter, it’s gold, Jerry, gold.  In this case, it might actually be correct.  GamecockCentral.com also says the deal’s done (behind a paywall).  Ditto Columbia’s newspaper The State (also behind a blankin’ paywall).

Now granted it took Martin getting steamed at his Kansas State boss to make it happen.  And, no, Martin has never built a program, he’s just sustained one.  And, yes, he did just admit on national TV yesterday that he has sent money to players at other schools.

But this is a big splash hire for AD Eric Hyman.  South Carolina basketball now has credibility, something it’s lacked since the school grabbed Dave Odom from Wake Forest (and hopefully for Cock fans this one will turn out better than that hire did).

Make no mistake, Carolina just got serious about basketball.  Toss all those caveats and “yeah, buts” we mentioned earlier out the window.  The school’s AD just put a whole lot more fannies in his arena’s seats next season.

In the end, that’s what it’s all about for athletic directors.  And if Martin can bring Carolina the consistent success its so long lusted after, then the Colonial Life Arena should be packed for a good while to come.

Big hire.

(Sidenote — Last one outta the Big 12 please remember to turn off the lights.)

Over the weekend, it was reported that South Carolina AD Eric Hyman formally asked Kansas State for permission to talk to basketball coach Frank Martin about the vacancy in Columbia.  Given a chance to kill the talk on CBS during its NCAA Tournament coverage, Martin danced:


“In the age of social media that we live in right now, it’s crazy.  I was scheduled to be at a press conference today in South Carolina and I was sitting watching a show in New York City last night.  And obviously I’m sitting here with you guys today, so it’s… The stuff that gets out these days, I look at it as a compliment that we’re doing our job the right way at Kansas State that these sort of things get out.”


That statement from Saturday was not a denial of his interest in the USC job.  It was not a denial of anything, in fact.  The day before he did tweet the following: “I have not talked 2 anyone.”

Well, if a report from GamecockCentral.com is to be believed — that’s the Rivals site covering Carolina — then Martin’s agent sure must be doing some talking.  On the same day Martin was tap dancing around the subject on CBS, GamecockCentral wrote the following:


“A source close to Kansas State coach Frank Martin told GamecockCentral.com on Friday that a deal to bring the coach to Columbia to replace Darrin Horn was 90 percent done.  On Saturday morning, the same source said that the deal remains 90 percent complete, but is not finalized.”


The site also claims a contract was sent to Martin on Friday night.  And the student newspaper for USC — The Daily Gamecock — reported late last night that “Frank Martin interviewed in Columbia” according to “a source.”

Could all the Carolina talk simply be leverage for the coach?  It’s possible as he’s scheduled to open negotiations on a new deal with K-State on April 1st.

It’s also possible according to The Kansas City Star — and as we suggested last week — that Martin is ticked over his school’s decision to suspend a key player right before his team’s second-round NCAA tourney game with Syracuse. 

PowerCat.com — the Rivals site covering Kansas State — reported yesterday that “a source close to Martin” said “It’s not about money anymore.”  Meaning Martin’s relationship with KSU AD John Currie might be beyond repair after the suspension of Jamar Samuels.  That site also suggests that if Martin leaves, “dirty laundry will be tossed everywhere” by the talkative, hot-headed coach.  (Wonder what Hyman thinks about that?)

Meanwhile, Wichita State’s Gregg Marshall — a South Carolina native and the man most-often mentioned in connection to USC’s search as it got underway — has announced that he’s staying put in Kansas. 

So the previous favorite isn’t in the running (and apparently never really was).  Sources are reporting that Carolina has met with Martin, hammered out 90% of a deal, and sent him and his agent a contract.  All just one week before the coach is set to negotiate a new deal with Kansas State.

Unfortunately for Cock fans, the only news this morning on Martin does not concern a signed document.  Instead, ESPN is running a story with this headline as of 10:35 this morning: “Frank Martin paid his former players.”

Yikes.  But it’s not exactly what you think. 

In the story, Martin is quoted — from his CBS stint on Sunday — as saying that he sent money “to kids that played for me in high school when they were in college because I knew where they came from.  I knew they didn’t have a father figure.”

“I’m not going to tell you who they were,” Martin said during the broadcast.  “But I sent them a lot of money over the years to make sure they could take their girlfriend out to the movies, make sure they could wash their clothes and do all the things that scholarship money doesn’t cover.”

Martin was making the case for his own suspended player — who was given $200 by an AAU coach who had been a father figure to the young man growing up. 

While Martin’s statement shows that he has a heart, it might also cause the NCAA to start asking some questions.  No, Martin did not admit to paying his own players — a clear NCAA violation.  But he did admit to sending money to other schools’ players.  And that’s exactly the kind of action that led to one of his own players being suspended for fear of an NCAA violation.

That admission might throw a wrench into Hyman’s plans.  You can bet he would have preferred the coach had never mentioned anything about his payouts to other schools’ players.

So, is Martin angry enough to bolt a traditional basketball school for a football-first school in a football-first conference?  Is he simply using Carolina for leverage to get more money and more control in Manhattan?

And is Hyman ready to pull the trigger on a guy who can be a bit of hair-trigger himself and who’s just admitted on national television that he’s sent cash to college players?  From Carolina’s side of things it looks like things are still all-systems-go.  GamecockCentral.com is reporting today that USC’s board of trustees will hold a special meeting tomorrow morning to discuss “contractual matters.”

In other words, it looks like Martin may fly (to) the coop a few days before that scheduled negotiation with Currie and KSU is scheduled to begin.

Stay tuned.

Though the folks in Kansas don’t seem to be taking this one too seriously, people in the Palmetto State are still saying Kansas State’s Frank Martin might just wind up coaching in Columbia next season.

Three days ago, GamecockCentral.com — the Rivals site covering Carolina — reported that K-State’s coach had “heavy” interest in the job vacated by Darrin Horn’s ouster.  The Kansas City media shrugged it off.

Wednesday, the same site reported that there had been contact between Martin and AD Eric Hyman and that “Martin is more than willing to come to Columbia.”

Today, there’s more speculation that Martin — who’ll be helping to cover the NCAA Tournament for CBS this weekend — could be high on Hyman’s list of candidates.  This writer says “Frank Martin apparently is a possibility.”

Meanwhile WSPA-TV in Spartanburg reports that Martin and Minnesota’s Tubby Smith “are primary targets in USC’s head basketball coaching search, according to the South Carolina News Network.” 

If Carolina lands Martin, you can color us surprised.  Martin is coaching in a basketball hotbed right now and making more than $1.5 million per season.  That deal runs through 2014-15, but he’s also in line — through contract stipulations — for an extension.

South Carolina’s job has been a Bermuda Triangle for coaches.  The SEC is about to become a 14-team league (read: harder to win) while the Big 12 has now become a 10-team conference (read: easier to win).  At Kansas State, there’s the shadow of Kansas to live under.  At Carolina, Kentucky and Florida are the big dogs.

Add it up and it would probably take a hefty bag of cash — maybe even a Hefty Bag of cash — to lure Martin to Columbia.  That or Martin could be hacked off enough at his current school’s decision to suspend a key player for an NCAA tourney game that he’s willing to bolt for any school making an offer.  We think that’s doubtful, but we don’t claim to know what goes on behind closed doors in Manhattan, Kansas.

Taking everything into consideration, we’re not saying Martin to Carolina couldn’t happen, but if it does you’ll know that USC’s Hyman will have done some seriously heavy lifting.

When South Carolina gave the boot to Darrin Horn, hope took over for Gamecock fans.  Messageboards were filled with mentions of Shaka Smart, Frank Martin and other “hot name” or proven head coaches.

Now reality is setting in.  If Illinois can’t lure Smart from VCU for more than $2.5 million and Wichita State’s Gregg Marshall won’t leave Kansas for less than $2 million and — reportedly — a seven- or eight-year deal… well, then Carolina’s going to have to go another route.

Two such “other route” candidates are now getting more discussion.  Both have ties to South Carolina.  Both are African-American.  Neither is a “name” candidate.  (Both are bald, too, as you can see from the photo at left… not that matters.)

First is current Ohio State assistant Dave Dickerson (at right in the photo).  A former Maryland player — who was actually a freshman the year Len Bias died — Dickerson served as an assistant at the school under Gary Williams until taking the head coaching job at Tulane in 2005.  Think about that timing.  Just months after accepting his first head coaching job, his program — along with much of New Orleans — was hammered by Hurricane Katrina.  The Green Wave actually relocated to Texas A&M’s campus for a while. 

He was fired after the 2009-10 season, but there aren’t many people who could’ve succeeded under those circumstances.  His tie to the USC job?  The 44-year-old — who’s been on Thad Matta’s staff for two years — is from Olar, South Carolina and was raised in Beaufort.  He’s also said that he does “want to be a had coach again and I feel this time I will be able to right some wrongs.”

More importantly, The State is reporting that Dickerson has expressed interest in Carolina’s opening.  “I have not been contacted by USC about their coaching job, but I would be very interested.”  (Beware, that paper’s info is behind a paywall.)

The other coach who’s starting to get some ink in connection to the USC gig is 43-year-old John Cooper of Tennessee State.  Cooper served as an assistant under Eddie Fogler in Columbia from 1995 through 2001.

The Kansas City native served as an assistant at Oregon and Auburn between his stops at Carolina and, now, TSU.  Hired in 2009, Cooper led the Tigers to 20 wins this season, one of which was the only loss suffered by Murray State during the regular season.  He also happened to come into the Colonial Life Arena and hand Horn a loss.  That win was the first for Tennessee State over an SEC foe in 24 games.

Perhaps AD Eric Hyman can still pull a surprise and land a head coach from a large school.  More likely, he’ll go the assistant route — on that front, Duke aide Jeff Capel can’t be ruled out as Hyman went after him four years ago.  But Dickerson and Cooper are names to watch as the Cocks’ process continues to play out.

GamecockCentral.com — the Rivals site covering South Carolina — is reporting that Kansas State head coach Frank Martin “has been confirmed as a candidate with ‘heavy’ interest in USC, according to a source close to the situation.”  (That’s paywall stuff, folks, so you’ll need to buy a subscription for more.)

If true, it seems that Carolina AD Eric Hyman could book one flight to Kansas City and knock out a pair of interviews — one with Martin and one with believed-to-be-top-candidate Gregg Marshall of Wichita State.

Martin — a Miami native — is known for his drill-sergeant style (hell, in a movie R. Lee Ermey would play him… NSFW, by the way.).  He is also known for taking Kansas State to four NCAA tournaments in his five years in Manhattan.  The 45-year-old has never won fewer than 21 games in a season and has a .684 winning percentage. 

But he currently makes $1.5 million in a basketball-loving state.  Would he really have “heavy” interest in moving to a football-first league and a program that’s seen the downfalls of George Felton, Eddie Fogler, Dave Odom and Darrin Horn in the past 20 years?

If so — and if Carolina could offer him enough cash to make the move — he’d be the second ex-Bob Huggins assistant to coach in the league along with old colleague Andy Kennedy.  Hmmm.  Seems all those Huggins guys have tempers when you think about it.

South Carolina athletic director Eric Hyman will go outside the box in his search for a new men’s basketball coach.  Not in terms of who he’ll hire — that’s unknown — but in terms of how he’ll find the Cocks’ next coach.

Unlike so many ADs, Hyman will not be hiring an outside search firm to aid in USC’s coach hunt.  Instead, The Charleston Post & Courier reports that he will consult “basketball coaches he knows.”


“I’d rather deal with basketball people (than a search firm).  Basketball coaches have got a pretty good sense and feel for people.  They’ve got a better feel for the marketplace than maybe a search firm would.”


We continue to believe that Wichita State’s Gregg Marshall — a man who’s from the Columbia area — will be high on Hyman’s list… if not at the very top.

Yesterday, Eric Hyman said that he would study a wide pool of candidates in his search to replace fired hoops coach Darrin Horn.

From our standpoint, South Carolina’s search will likely begin with one man — Wichita State head coach Gregg Marshall.  Marshall led tiny Palmetto State school Winthrop to seven NCAA Tournaments in nine seasons before heading to Kansas.  He’s taken Wichita State from a losing team to a #5 seed in this week’s NCAA Tournament (with an RPI of 12) in five years.

He’s also from Greenwood, South Carolina which is just about 80 miles from Columbia.  And during Hyman’s presser yesterday, he said that recruiting, player development, and connections to the area would all be factors in his decision. 

Marshall makes sense.  That said, being from South Carolina, he may wonder why he was never tabbed for the Gamecock head coaching job earlier in his career.  And as a native of the state he would surely know that Carolina has been a graveyard for coaches since the Frank McGuire era came to an end in 1980.

Marshall might have the following choice to make: home and SEC money versus — according to history — probable doom.

If he’s not the Gamecocks’ choice — and through multiple interviews with SEC schools in the past, Marshall has not been the choice — then who will be on Carolina’s short list?

Columbia’s The State newspaper has posted an online poll that includes in addition to Marshall a number of coaches with ties back to the state (meaning the actual state, not the newspaper).  Included on the list:


Dave Dickerson — current assistant at Ohio State and Carolina native (also fired as head coach at Tulane)

Tommy Amaker — current head coach at Harvard and former Duke player (also fired as head coach at Michigan)

Tubby Smith — current head coach at Minnesota (where he’s doing a so-so job) and a former Carolina assistant coach under George Felton in the late 1980s

Jeff Capel — an assistant at Duke and former player there (also fired as head coach at Oklahoma)

Stan Jones — an assistant at Florida State and former assistant at Mississippi State

Anthony Solomon — an assistant at Notre Dame and former assistant at Clemson

Shaka Smart — VCU’s head coach and one of the hottest names in the country


Smart could land better jobs than Carolina.  He’s on everyone’s list for a second year in a row.  One look at USC’s track record and he’ll likely turn his head in another direction.

Smith is 61-years-old and the Gamecocks went the veteran route with a 59-year-old Dave Odom back in 2001.  Speaking as someone who’s now over 40, the older you get… the less you excite a fanbase.

If a lack of fan support helped do in Horn, would a coach who was fired from another program really generate excitement in Columbia?  Would the hiring of an assistant?

It’s ridiculously early to be making guesses about who Hyman will wind up handing a contract to, but if you’re gonna do it, the smart money’s on Marshall.

South Carolina’s firing of Darrin Horn is currently taking place in Columbia but AD Eric Hyman (at left) has already made it clear why he decided to make a change:

1.  Horn’s recruiting wasn’t up to snuff.

2.  He failed to develop players.

3.  Fans had turned away from the program.

Hyman did, however, credit Horn for improving the program’s academic performance and for keeping his program off the NCAA hit list and his players out of jail.

But, “We have three of our four highly visible programs competing at a high level and we want our men’s basketball program to do the same thing.”

Hyman said that he is in a good position money-wise to make a good hire.  He said the new coach’s salary will be market-driven.  He also said the pool of candidates will be as wide as possible.

While saying that he wants to find a coach who can recruit and develop players, Hyman also stated that having a connection to the area will matter.  Cue more speculation about Wichita State’s Gregg Marshall.

Here’s a good wrap-up of what went wrong for Horn in Columbia.

South Carolina has released a statement on the firing and it includes a comment from Horn himself.

So much for the whispers that Darrin Horn would survive at South Carolina.  The school has fired the coach after four seasons.

In the end, not even the decision by Bruce Ellington to become a hoops-only player could save Horn from his overall record in Columbia (60-63), the horrible season that just ended (the Cocks’ 21 losses tied a school record for futility), and dwindling fan support.

Athletic director Eric Hyman has scheduled a news conference for 1:30pm ET today.  By firing the coach now — and not waiting until April 1st as some had suggested — Hyman will have to hand over a $2.4 million buyout to Horn, rather than $1.6 million.  But as we wrote last week, what’s $800,000 bucks to an SEC school that’s raking in more than $20 million per year?

The State in Columbia is already naming potential replacements as Wichita State coach Gregg Marshall — a Palmetto State native — and current Duke assistant Jeff Capel.  The paper reports that Hyman went after Capel — who was fired last spring from Oklahoma after five seasons — before hiring Horn four years ago.

Consider Marshall to be the fan favorite.  He took Winthrop to the NCAA Tournament in seven of nine seasons at the school.  His Wichita State program has gone from no tourney to the CBI to the NIT and now to the NCAAs in his five seasons in Kansas.  The Shockers — a #5 seed — will face VCU and “hot name” coach Shaka Smart in their opening game on Thursday.

Early last week, most in Columbia believed Horn would be retained.  But as the week wore on — and as Carolina nosedived out of the SEC Tournament — murmurs increased that Hyman might pull the trigger on his coach.  We were told by a source as recently as yesterday evening that they believed Horn would “barely” survive. 

Not so.