Johnny Dawkins, the former Duke standout and assistant coach, was named the new Stanford men’s basketball coach on Monday.
Dawkins was given a six-year deal to coach the Cardinal, which will be his first stint as a head coach.
The 44-year-old Dawkins had been an assistant to Coach K at Duke for the past 11 seasons.
Dawkins’ move to the West Coast has drawn plenty of discussion, both from local media and folks in California. Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News wrote a piece on Tuesday which took a negative view of the hire. The News and Observer’s Carlton Tudor, on the other hand, thinks the move is a good fit for Dawkins.
Read the articles and you decide who makes a more convincing argument.
Meanwhile in Chapel Hill, presidential hopeful Barack Obama was in town for a pick-up game with members of the UNC basketball team on Tuesday. It seems lately that Senator Obama has been at the center of a number of controveries but how controversial could a pick-up basketball game be? With Coach Roy Williams on hand to watch the game – plenty. Fortunately for Obama, this controversy has nothing to do with him (or Rev. Wright) and everything to do with whether or not UNC broke NCAA rules. According to NCAA rules, coaches are not allowed to watch pickup games involving their players at any time during the offseason.
The NCAA doesn’t see this as a big deal because of the nature of the circumstances surrounding the scrimmage and doesn’t plan to persue any action against the Tar Heels. While I agree with the NCAA in this case (this really isn’t that big of a deal), to those who don’t like UNC, this looks like another case of the Tar Heels getting their hands caught in the cookie jar while the NCAA looks the other way.