The search for Oregon State’s next men’s basketball coach is over, apparently.
Multiple reports have former Brown University head coach Craig Robinson coming to Corvallis.
Robinson has just two years of Division-I head coaching experience under his belt, of which he has compiled a record of 30 wins and 28 losses. Robinson went 11-18 in his first year at Brown and went 19-10 this past season, including an 11-3 record in Ivy League play.
Robinson has Ivy League ties. During his time as a player, he was the two-time Ivy League Player of the Year at Princeton, from which he graduated in 1983.
The reported hire may be a questionable one at the moment. More prominent and experienced coaches who have shown interest in the OSU job — such as Ken Bone of Portland State, Larry Eustachy of Southern Mississippi and Ron Hunter of IUPUI — either did not fit the suit for the OSU athletic department, or in Eustachy’s case, reportedly were not even interviewed.
A big push for Eustachy had recently circulated among online forums for OSU basketball followers.
Eustachy, who brought his Iowa State Cyclones team to the Elite 8 in 2000, likely had the best coaching resume out of all the coaching names being kicked around for the OSU job. While at Iowa State, Eustachy led the Cyclones to two NCAA Tournament appearances and an NIT bid in his last season. He was named the Big-12 Conference Coach of the Year twice, in 2000 and 2001, both years in which ISU won the conference. Eustachy was also named the AP National Coach of the Year in 2000 and has a career coaching record of 320-208.
Given that, it may come as a surprise to some that the Beavers would not even give Eustachy an interview, but instead hired a two-year-tested coach from the Ivy League with a lifetime record of 30-28.
Multiple online sources have reported the hire, including CBS Sports and Fox, but the Oregon State athletic department has not yet confirmed it.
More so than his basketball coaching career, Robinson may be best known for being the brother of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle.
Oregon State is expected to confirm the hire within the next day or two.
-Kye Johnson, Oregon State Daily Barometer
[Editors addition below]
The Sporting News is reporting the following:
Brown coach Craig Robinson will visit the Oregon State campus Monday to decide whether he would like to become the Beavers’ next coach.
A published report said Robinson, the top candidate for the job, already had been hired by OSU, but a source close to the process said Robinson has not seen the campus in many years and wants to get a look at what the program has to offer.
If he accepts the job, he will replace Jay John, who was fired in January.
A former player at Princeton, Robinson worked in the private sector for nearly a decade. He decided to become a coach and eventually spent six years as an assistant at Northwestern. He has been head coach at Brown the past two seasons, compiling an 11-18 mark his first season and improving to 19-10 his second time around. Brown was 11-3 in the Ivy League this season and finished second in the conference standings, behind Cornell.
Robinson is the brother-in-law of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama
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