WSU Basketball Coach Search: Is Moos Waiting on Dayton’s Archie Miller?

Mar 20, 2014; Buffalo, NY, USA; Dayton Flyers head coach Archie Miller works from the sidelines against Ohio State Buckeyes in the second half of a men

The Washington State Cougars and Bill Moos are in the middle of the most polarizing coaching searches the basketball program has ever seen and interesting developments just keep popping up.

Probably the most fun thing for fans and blogs like ours to do is to speculate and offer up interpretation. Between Mike Leach and Bill Moos there is always plenty of both to do, they don’t really clear much of anything up for us. So when matters of interest arise, we try and offer up some level of an educated guess. The Moos short-list of basketball coaches for example, which is now down to five, now has a desired time limit on it as of Monday’s “Cougar Calls with Bill Moos”; 10 to 14 days. So we have to wonder what this means?

Two weeks out, hmmm. The most interesting fact that comes to mind is that the NCAA Tournament runs out exactly that long, which means that if a desired coach still remains in play (Archie Miller of Dayton being the only obvious choice) no matter how deep he goes Moos still gets to talk with him before making his final decision. The Flyers aren’t expected to go all the way, but who knows? They’ve already proven March Madness is in full effect.

If Dayton were to go out in either the Sweet-16 or Elite-8 rounds this weekend and we are indeed waiting on coach Archie’s availability, we should have our answer in the next (now) week or so. If they make a run into the Final Four, we might have to wait it out till the end of the tournament.

Of course the Flyers’ run into the Sweet-16 has already catapulted Archie’s resume into every athletic director’s top-5 as far as programs around the country that will be in need of a new head basketball coach in 2014 go. With issues like traveling arrangement and facility deficiencies having already been brought to the forefront of conversation when it comes to WSU in certain coaching circles, the sell to an Archie Miller will be difficult at best now that he will have several viable options to choose from.

So bottom line, Miller may indeed be on the list or we could just be reading into it too much and Moos just wants to take his time with his other candidates. Either way, now that Miller’s Flyers have become a Sweet-16 darling, it’s tough to try and imagine him not having a better situation available for himself when Dayton’s season comes to an end. That’s not a knock on Washington State, just the facts of the current situation with football facilities still being the main priority and still having to pay out $1.7 Mil on a basketball coaching contract.