Penders will reportedly not return

[CalallenStang]

Guiding Houston to its first NCAA tourney berth in forever was apparently not good enough to save Penders' job. Reports are that he's out as the Cougars' head coach.

http://www.sportsbybrooks.com/tom-pende ... oach-28076

[RGV Pony]

UH mustve rounded up the cash to seal the deal for BCG

[NickSMU17]

Amazing that they make the tourney and get rid of their coach, our endowment and budget is 10 times Houston and we keep our well below 500 coach, and give him an extension...

[CalallenStang]

This Penders story is still unconfirmed.

Yo, Nick, check out Cornell's coach's record from his first four years...makes Doherty look like John Wooden.

[Hoop Fan]

Amazing that they make the tourney and get rid of their coach, our endowment and budget is 10 times Houston and we keep our well below 500 coach, and give him an extension...

if its true, it makes us look really bad is a understatement. Sometimes the market and public perception forces you to make a change. You can't have the DMN publishing articles like the ones ripping Doh and just stick your head in the sand and pretend everything is going to be fine. 14-17 in year 4 against a truly pitiful schedule and 40 games under .500 for your tenure is not acceptable at 98% of D-1 but its ok at SMU. Still can't believe the contract that SMU gave to a coach coming from Florida Atlantic.

Ask yourself this, if Smu is such an impossible job and everybody knows it, has Doh done enough to get another job if he wanted one right now? Anywhere? hell no.[*]

[Pony_Fan]

Amazing that they make the tourney and get rid of their coach, our endowment and budget is 10 times Houston and we keep our well below 500 coach, and give him an extension...

if its trule, it makes us look really bad is a understatement. Sometimes the market and public perception forces you to make a change. You can't have the DMN publishing articles like the ones ripping Doh and just stick your head in the sand and pretend everything is going to be fine. 14-17 in year 4 against a truly pitiful schedule is not acceptable at 98% of D-1 but its ok at SMU. Still can't believe the contract that SMU gave to a coach coming from Florida Atlantic.

Ask yourself this, if Smu is such an impossible job and everybody knows it, has Doh done enough to get another job if he wanted one right now? Anywhere? hell no.

He might be able to hold a clipboard somewhere with his "buddies". Head Coach, maybe at a Div II. I really doubt he would get another chance if he left here.

[moodymadmen]

UCF beats SMU in the CUSA tourney and yet their coach is fired. Houston WINS CUSA and goes to the big dance yet Penders is reportedly gone. Meanwhile, SMU keeps spinning their wheels with a guy 30 games under .500 in conference play. Why do I have the feeling Houston will be a juggernaut in a few years while SMU will still be rebuilding and recovering from the Doh era?? What a shame.

[MrMustang1965]

News conference scheduled for tomorrow in Houston.

Updated story from the Houston Chronicle at 6:56 p.m. (CST).

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hot ... 23499.html

[NickSMU17]

This Penders story is still unconfirmed.

Yo, Nick, check out Cornell's coach's record from his first four years...makes Doherty look like John Wooden.

The cornell job is totally different and makes for a terrible comparison...Doh = Phil Bennet...

I am just waiting for the JJ of basketball if he exists

[PonyDoh]

This thread is funny

[NickSMU17]

SO was MSU beating Maryland without Lucas....



SNAP!


You think we can get Izzo to come here for 10 mil a year....

[CA Mustang]

This thread is funny

How so?

[PonyDoh]

This thread is funny

How so?

It's always just the same folks, on different sides of the fence, yacking about the same stuff. Hey, let's look at all the coaches in completely different situations, and erroneously compare them to our own. We aren't committed to winning, we're sending a losing message.

[smupony94]

Houston coach Tom Penders to step down
By STEVE CAMPBELL
Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle
March 21, 2010, 8:13PM
.


The Penders era will come to an official end on Monday, when he announces his resignation after six seasons at UH.

A prominent UH insider said Penders’ resignation was the byproduct of “a positive” meeting with athletic director Mack Rhoades on Sunday afternoon. Rhoades would not comment on the matter, saying only, “There will be an announcement regarding the future of the men’s basketball program in the near future.”

Penders, who has a 121-77 record (.611) in six seasons at UH, was not available for comment. The school is expected to hold a press conference on Monday, three days after a season-ending 89-77 defeat against Maryland in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. The Cougars finished 19-16, making Penders the first coach in school history to win at least 18 games in six consecutive seasons.

The contract of Penders, 64, pays $450,000 annually (plus incentives) and runs through 2012. The base salary is $250,000, making the school’s cost of buying out the two remaining years $500,000.

UH will be replacing a 36-year college coaching veteran who has led four different schools into the NCAAs. Penders is 12th in Division I history in games coached (1,086) and 25th in victories (648). His UH winning percentage is the third-best in school history, trailing Guy V. Lewis (592-279, .680) and Pat Foster (142-73, .660).

In the six seasons before Penders’ arrival, UH went 63-112. Penders won more games during his tenure than the three coaches who preceded him (Alvin Brooks, Clyde Drexler and Ray McCallum) did in 12 seasons (117-196, .373). UH hasn’t won an NCAA Tournament game since a 49-47 overtime victory against Virginia on March 31, 1984, in the national semifinals.

Detractors of Penders point out that UH played erratically during the regular season &mddash; defeating the top two teams in Conference USA, UTEP and Memphis, and dropping games against the likes of Tulane and UCF &mdash. The Cougars were 15-15 before punching their ticket to the NCAAs by winning four games in four days at the Conference USA Championship in Tulsa, Okla.

Another source of contention with some boosters and athletic department members is Penders’ reliance on recruiting junior college players and his inability to consistently land talent from the Houston area. The top four scorers on this year’s team (Aubrey Coleman, Kelvin Lewis, Maurice McNeil and Adam Brown) all started their college careers elsewhere. Three of the scholarship players on the roster are from the Houston area (Aubrey Coleman, Sean Coleman and Kirk Van Slyke.) Aubrey and Sean Coleman (no relation) came to UH the junior college route.

Sagging attendance is a recurrent UH issue that predates Penders’ arrival. The average home crowd of 3,202 this season is the lowest since the 2,884 of 2003-04 — the final season of Penders’ predecessor, McCallum. UH experienced a surge to 4,245 and 4,858 in Penders’ first two seasons, but the average has fallen below 4,000 the past two seasons.

A long-rumored front-runner to be Penders’ successor is former Texas A&M and Kentucky coach Billy Gillispie, who worked at UTEP when Rhoades was a senior staffer at that school’s athletic department. The previous UH AD, Dave Maggard, drew the ire of many boosters by re-affirming his commitment to Penders last March after Kentucky parted ways with Gillispie. Rhoades has said he has had no conversations with Gillispie since arriving at UH as the AD this past August.

Other coaches who have drawn support from UH boosters as possible candidates are Sam Houston State Bearkats coach Bob Marlin, whose team went 25-8 this season and lost to Baylor in the first round of the NCAAs; Texas Longhorns assistant Rodney Terry, an Angleton native; and Villanova Wildcats assistant Chris Walker, a Houston native and former Milby High star who was instrumental in assembling a third-seeded New Mexico Lobos team that lost to Washington in the second round of the NCAAs.

[CA Mustang]

This thread is funny

How so?

It's always just the same folks, on different sides of the fence, yacking about the same stuff. Hey, let's look at all the coaches in completely different situations, and erroneously compare them to our own. We aren't committed to winning, we're sending a losing message.

True, every situation is different. However you are judged according to how well you do in regards to your conference mates and regional peers. As the performance of SMU's men's basketball program is lacking (and has been lacking for years), you can't expect folks to sit by content while conference mates make proactive moves. Will the changes work for ECU, UCF and UH? Who knows? But those schools decided that regular season records comparable to SMU aren't acceptable and require a change.