King Rice
There’s nothing sentimental about the head coaching hiring process. It’s important to note that recent hires by the Commodores haven’t had any connection to the university, with both Drew and Stackhouse hired clearly for other reasons. With that being said, why not consider a successful head coach who used to work for Vanderbilt, and someone who was in the hunt for this job several years back?
Rice played point guard at North Carolina under Dean Smith before beginning his coaching career at Oregon over thirty years ago. He spent several seasons coaching the Bahamas national team, served on staff at Providence, and worked under Kevin Stallings at both Illinois State and Vanderbilt. He departed from Vanderbilt to become head coach at Monmouth in 2011, having varying levels of success across the last thirteen years, including three league titles back in the MAAC.
Rice is a fun name to throw out based on his experience with this program, but he hasn’t even led Monmouth to the NCAA Tournament in the last thirteen years. He has led them through multiple conference changes and had a pretty good program a few years back, but this seems like a major jump for a guy who seems pretty content with the Hawks. It would also be pretty interesting to see the Commodores jump from one former Tar Heel to another.