|
Monson to Be Named Coach
by Frank Burlison, Long Beach Press-Telegram
April 7, 2007
LONG BEACH - The alarm at the Minneapolis home of Dan and Darci Monson
sounded at 3:30 a.m. Friday morning.
Less than 12 hours later, Darci was looking at housing in the Long Beach
area while her husband was touring the Long Beach State campus and meeting
with the school's president, Dr. F. King Alexander, and its athletic director,
Vic Cegles.
By late afternoon, the school had itself a new men's basketball coach.
"When I came back into the hotel room and looked at her, I knew she
was as excited as I was," Dan Monson said Friday evening.
"It didn't take long for us to call Vic back and say that we would
love to be part of the Long Beach program."
The 45-year-old Monson, who spent two seasons as the head coach at Gonzaga
University before coaching at the University of Minnesota from 1999 until
resigning on Nov. 30 of this past season, will be formally introduced
as the 49ers' 16th basketball coach during a 10 a.m. press conference
this morning on campus.
The hiring of Monson (he is expected to sign a five-year contract today)
capped an 18-day hunt for the replacement of Larry Reynolds, whose fifth
Long Beach team finished 24-8 and became the first 49ers squad to play
in the NCAA Tournament in 12 years. But Reynolds was told on March 20
that his contract would not be extended.
During those 18 days, Cegles and Alexander took hundreds of phone calls
about the job, and Cegles' cellular phone threatened to become permanently
attached to his right ear.
At least five candidates were officially interviewed for the position,
and Cegles also tried to hit a couple of home runs by contacting former
coaches Mike Montgomery (no interest) and Rick Majerus (who, according
to sources, was intrigued enough about the possibility of leaving his
ESPN analyst's position and returning to coaching to have multiple conversations
with Cegles, Alexander and friends about the Long Beach job before removing
himself from consideration on Monday morning) to gauge their interest.
Assistant coaches Kerry Keating of UCLA and Cameron Dollar of Washington
were brought to campus for second interviews, including first meetings
with Alexander.
Sources say that Keating was offered the job early Wednesday, but he accepted
the Santa Clara head coaching job Thursday morning.
Monson had interviewed with Cegles at an LAX-area hotel on March 26 (the
same day Keating, Dollar and USC assistant Gib Arnold also met with the
athletic director), but didn't hear from Cegles again until late Thursday
morning, when he was invited to come to campus for another interview.
Monson, who accepted a reported $1.1 million buyout from the University
of Minnesota after his team got off to a 2-5 start, said that, once he
got onto campus Friday morning, it didn't take him long to realize that
it could be the ideal setting for his return to coaching.
"When I listened to President Alexander and Vic talk about their
vision of where the program could be - how they wanted to build it and
go about things - it aligned with what I was looking for,"
Monson said. "And I got very excited about trying to do it with them."
Monson and his wife - big baseball fans - have four children, MicGuire
(age 6 and named for Mark McGwire), Mollie (4), Maddox (3 and named for
Greg Maddox) and McKenna (17 months) and they obviously factor in his
career plans.
"This isn't a stepping-stone situation (a job he might keep before
moving onto a "bigger" job on the college basketball food chain)
for me," he said.
"I've already tried that (moving from Gonzaga to Minnesota). This
is a great marriage in that regard because they were looking for someone
to build on the tradition of this program while not looking to move on
(to another job). It's the perfect fit for me."
Cegles seconded that opinion.
"We've hired a good coach and a good guy," he said.
"As soon as I talked to him (Friday), I knew this was the guy we
wanted. He's been a head coach for 10 years and he helped turn around
another `mid-major' (at Gonzaga) and I like that Gonzaga blueprint."
Cegles said that the reason Dollar was not offered the head job had nothing
to do with the NCAA rules violations he committed during the summer of
2002 that led to his being suspended (without pay) for a month and banned
from recruiting off campus for an academic year.
"Cameron is really good and is going to be a star in this business,"
he said. "But, in the end, we just felt that Monson would be the
better fit for us right now."
|
