Eastern Washington coach Kirk Earlywine had been on the job 32 days before he called Ball State looking for another head coaching gig.
Ball State and Eastern Washington have confirmed that Earlywine did show interest in the vacant head coaching position at Ball State. One Ball State official said he spoke to Earlywine last week and even remarked that it seemed odd that Earlywine would be interested in the job so soon after landing the job at Eastern Washington. Earlywine, who was announced as the new coach June 15 at EWU, came to the Eagles from UNC-Wilmington, where he had served as an assistant.
Earlywine worked at Ball State under former coach Rick Majerus in the 1980s and let the Ball State administration know that he has strong ties to the state.
Eastern Washington interim athletic director Michael Westfall said Earlywine did tell him he was going to apply, but that was only after Earlywine was contacted by a member of the Ball State Board of Trustees who was a Majerus player.
"Occasionally these things make it to the surface," said Westfall, who abruptly fired Mike Burns last month and hired a good friend in Earlywine. "Kirk did the right thing. He listened, and he was intrigued by it because he was there with Rick Majerus. It is a job that has a higher profile and pays twice as much as we do, so I can't blame the guy."
Still, this was less than six weeks into his new job and after he had already gone on the road recruiting for the Eagles.
"Once reality sat in, he decided he's not going anywhere," Westfall said.
Bizarre? Yes. The Ball State Cardinals have said for the past two weeks that they've received a lot of interest in the job, and the fact that it came from a sitting head coach just weeks into his job should say something about the position.
Meanwhile, Westfall said Earlywine lost two players -- one returnee and one signee -- in the transition from Burns to Earlywine. Eastern Washington finished 8-8 in the Big Sky and 15-14 overall despite having a first-round pick in Rodney Stuckey on the roster.
Westfall said the school also is waiting on an NCAA finding after it self-reported an extra benefit to a family member of a former reserve player under Burns. The school self-imposed the loss of one scholarship as a penalty.
Final nuggets
• Lost among the Pan Am cuts last week was the spirited play during the trials of Washington's Jon Brockman. The Huskies will lean heavily on Brockman now that Spencer Hawes is off to the NBA. They expect to play much more up tempo.
"We'll go back to being an up-and-down team," Brockman said. "Instead of just sitting back and using [Hawes] as our big tower, we'll get out and run. My gut says we'll look to break a lot more."
Brockman didn't hesitate to make a bold prediction that the Huskies will be in the NCAA Tournament after entirely missing the postseason last season.
"We need to get to the tournament, the NCAA Tournament," Brockman said. "We need to win a couple of games, and once you've done that, it's anyone's trophy."
Washington returns four of five starters.
• UMass found a replacement for Kentucky on its schedule after the Wildcats dropped the Minutemen and paid the school $50,000 per the contract. And it is an SEC school, too. The opponent will be Vanderbilt. But the big difference is that the Minutemen will travel to Nashville for the two-year home-and-home series. Kentucky was supposed to play UMass in a Boston home game. Now UMass won't play a game in Boston this season. The Minutemen will travel to Syracuse and Boston College next season.
• Darren Rovell of CNBC, a former ESPN.com colleague and a good friend, had this interesting nugget in his blog Wednesday about where the 60 NBA officials come from:
NBA Referee Experience
CBA: 32
SEC: 16
Ohio Valley: 16
No College: 16
TAAC: 10
Pac-10: 6
ACC: 5
Big 10: 4
Big East: 3
Big 8/12: 2
The most interesting aspect of this is the 16 officials from the Ohio Valley Conference. A former OVC coach said Wednesday night that he remembers former head of officials John Guthrie, who had the same role with the SEC, constantly reminding the coaches that the officials were going to the NBA. Yet, the OVC coaches were perplexed since they apparently weren't enamored with the performance of the officials, according to the former OVC coach. The only recent incident involving officials and a potential scandal in college occurred in 2006 when the SEC fired official Kerry Sitton because of his connection with a federal investigation into former SEC official Travis Correll (who resigned from the league) relating to a multimillion dollar investment fraud scheme. The day Correll resigned, the SEC fired its then-director of officials, Guthrie, and released referee Jason McNeil, although the league said they weren't linked to the investigation.
Andy Katz
