Russell Turner
One last name to consider, and it’s another coach with hands-on experience at Stanford on his resume. We’re not sure what direction that the Cardinal will look, but it’s hard to ignore someone who’s worked for them, as NBA experience, and has had success running his own program in the state of California.
Turner playing college ball at Hampden-Sydney and was an assistant at Wake Forest, but has now spent the last two decades on the West Coast. He assisted Mike Montgomery for four seasons at Stanford before following him to the Golden State Warriors. After six seasons in the NBA, Turner took over at UC Irvine and has been there for the last fourteen years. He’s taken the Anteaters to seven regular season titles in the Big West and notably led his team to an upset win back during the 2019 NCAA Tournament over Kansas State.
Turner has been a consistent winner at UC Irvine, though the Anteaters have only triumphed twice to this point in their conference tournament. He was on staff for the most recent prosperous era of Stanford basketball, though that was two decades ago and a lot has changed. The leap from Big West to ACC would be monumental, even with that steadiness and success, meaning hiring Turner in itself would be quite a leap of faith for this program.
At long last we’ve run through each of ten candidates for the Stanford job. Others will certainly be considered for the Cardinal, but these were just some initial names. Who do you think will land this job as the team transitions into the ACC and can they actually create winning basketball in Palo Alto?