Midwest notes: Gregg Marshall says job rumors not a distraction
On Tuesday, Wichita State coach Gregg Marshall told radio host Jim Rome that if Alabama wants to talk big money, he will listen.
“‘I’m coaching my team, and that’s what I’m going to do, hopefully, for another couple of weeks,’” he said. “And if Alabama is still interested in talking to us with some type of crazy offer at that time, then we will certainly entertain that, but it’s going to take some type of crazy offer to get us to leave Wichita State.”
On Wednesday, Marshall explained why he handles the rumors head-on.
“I just tell people the truth,” he said. “I’m coaching my team. None of my players are worried about it. None of my staff’s worried about it. I’ve said how content and happy I am at Wichita State over and over and over. It could be the last job I ever have. I could retire from there. At the same time, I don’t bury my head in the sand if a tremendous offer comes along. That’s something we’ve dealt with for 17 years.”
Don’t forget us – Last weekend, the prospects of a game against Kansas loomed over the Shockers. This week, it’s a rematch with unbeaten Kentucky.
Both teams must win Thursday. All the talk is leaving Notre Dame claiming underdog status.
“We do feel a little bit like odd-man out,” Irish coach Mike Brey said. “There’s so much out there about the Kentucky-Wichita State rematch. We did win an ACC Tournament going through North Carolina and Duke on Tobacco Road. That gives us, you know, confidence to play against them.”
Get out the map – Wichita State practiced Tuesday at the Cleveland Cavaliers’ practice facility and again Wednesday morning before its public session at Quicken Loans Arena.
Neither trip went smoothly. The bus driver had a hard time finding the Cavaliers’ gym on Tuesday. Marshall said he used the GPS on his phone to help.
Wednesday, the bus driver couldn’t find the right place to drop off the Shockers. Finally, they disembarked on the street and tried a public entrance. Then they found they couldn’t take their backpacks through the metal detectors, which delayed their arrival.
They made it on time, barely, for their public workout.
Marshall’s bonuses – The victory over Kansas in the third round pushed Marshall’s total compensation for the 2014-15 season above $2 million.
Marshall makes a base salary of $1.75 million this season. He earned $18,000 for WSU’s regular-season Missouri Valley Conference title, $35,000 for a 20-win season, $25,000 for his program meeting the MVC’s non-conference scheduling policy, and $35,000 for the team’s Academic Progress Rate (.961) exceeding .930. He earns $36,000 for each NCAA Tournament game and $60,000 for WSU reaching the Sweet 16.
Bonuses of up to $408,000 can still be earned: $36,000 for three more tournament games, $100,000 for reaching the Final Four and $200,000 for winning the national championship.
He can throw that speedball by ya — Notre Dame’s Pat Connaughton has been one of the Irish’s best players this season, but his future most certainly lies on the baseball diamond.
Connaughton, a 6-foot-5 guard, is also a fierce, right-handed pitcher with a fastball in the mid- to upper-90s who was drafted by the Baltimore Orioles in the fourth round of last year’s Major League Baseball Draft and pitched in their farm system last summer.
Connaughton’s loyalty to his teammates and his school won out over a full-time professional baseball career, however, and he returned for his senior season and is third on the Irish in scoring (12.5 points) and leads the team in rebounds (7.3) and three-point shooting (42.1 percent).
“This university gave me a lot of opportunity, not just on the court, but off the court,” Connaughton said. “So when it came down to making a decision, there really wasn’t a decision for me to make. I kind of knew the whole time in my heart I wanted to come back. I wanted to not give up on basketball, let alone on this team and this university before I thought it through. To be able to do that and to be able to have the year that we’ve had and to be able to put ourselves in the position to make an even deeper run in March kind of shows the exact reasons I came back, and shows that it paid off and I made the right decision.”
The Orioles are even open to letting him attend some NBA tryouts, although they believe he’ll eventually come back to baseball full-time.
“He’s a baseball player who’s also a really good basketball player,” Brian Graham, the Orioles’ player development director, told The Baltimore Sun. “Obviously he’s playing basketball right now, he’s doing a great job and we certainly are happy for him and wish him luck. I’ve spoken to him, and I anticipate he’ll be back to baseball when basketball ends.”
This story was originally published March 25, 2015 at 7:04 PM with the headline "Midwest notes: Gregg Marshall says job rumors not a distraction."