From Doherty and Floyd to Eustachy, Big Basketball Coaches Have Come for a Fresh Start
For high-profile men's basketball coaches who, like Humpty Dumpty, have had a great fall, Conference USA appears to be a good place to put all the pieces back together again.
The most impressive thing about the assemblage of head coaches in this 12-member so-called mid-major conference is where some of them used to coach. In a nutshell: better basketball conferences, better basketball schools.
Mike Davis of Alabama-Birmingham was Bobby Knight's successor at Indiana. Matt Doherty, now with Southern Methodist, was once tapped to fill the imposing shoes of North Carolina's Dean Smith. Southern Mississippi's Larry Eustachy, Texas-El Paso's Tim Floyd and Houston's James Dickey either quit or were bounced from jobs at bigger basketball powers for the sin of not winning enough, or after falling from favor.
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