Dave Rice: How Badly Did Utah Basketball Screw This Decision

Back when it was clear we were about to part ways with Mr. Boylen, several BYU fans ones that I don’t want to punch said to me,

"YOU GUYS SHOULD ABSOLUTELY HIRE DAVE RICE"

Looking at the interwebs this weekend, I found this… and this… and this.

For those too lazy to click, Dave Rice just signed the #7 prospect and #12 class in the nation.

As the saying goes, Pride Goeth Before The Fall.  And initially even I was too proud on this one.  But I like at least some Ute fans were operating on a thought.  Since we clearly want to get better and get better quickly, we’re going to go out and spent $1.5 million or so on a coach people outside of Missoula have heard of.  That would have been the smart move.

Instead we hired Larry.  Now those who read me regularly are going to assume this is another bash Larry post, and it most certainly is not.  But the question you have to ask about this search, if Larry Krystkowiak was a part of it, how wasn’t Dave Rice.  Rice was a well known commodity, known as a very good recruiter and a smart coach.  He was a big part of BYU basketball walking right on by Utah as the best program in the state.

Second, he understood the uniqueness of coaching in Utah.  If he could deal with the nutjobs down in Provo, he could certainly handle the lighter version up in Salt Lake.

Finally after swallowing just a bit of pride on our, we’d have given a kick in the pants to the boys down south that just might help us turn that tide.  Oh and as a side note, he took the job for $400K so that he could afford better assistants.  The piss poor amount we pay would have looked like a fortune.

Instead we all thought we were too good for Dave Rice.  That we’re not going to tolerate a BYU assistant taking our head job.  I mean our football coach and defensive coordinator are from BYU, but who wants those results.  The good Dr. Hill instead decided that his target should be a guy that begged for the Boise St. job and couldn’t even get interviewed.

I guess it’s just me but I’d be curious to see what a guy who could bring the #12 class in the nation to a Mountain West Conference team could do recruiting in the Pac-12.

But that’s me.