Bruce Weber?: Tulsa World

[Sam]

Have fun
http://www.tulsaworld.com/sportsextra/blogs/blog.aspx?blogid=12#11046

 

[Tony]

Wow. Would love to be a fly on the wall in the Sampson household if that were to come to fruition.

 

[daqman]

Put him in the "I'd rather have Evans" column.

 

[152219]

He is from Milwaukee. LOL

He and Self had a very cold handshake after their game in the tourney this year. Don't think they like each other very much.

 

[SoonerDan74012]

Wtf????

 

[Big Old Booger]

I think he could be a solid head coach and an improvement from Capel. I think he fits the bill of cleaning up the current situation and then 5-7 years down the road handing it off to a better coach.

He's not my first choice, but I would take him in a heartbeat over Herb Sendek or anybody on the list provided by Doug Gottlieb.

 

[playmakr]

Most Illini fans want him fired.

 

[Shooterms]

 

[One More Rebound]

193-86 at Illinois, 83-53 in The Big Ten. He has made the NCAA Tourney 6 times at Illinois, even finishing 2nd in the 2004-05 season. He turns 55 this year. A solid, but unspectacular pick...

 

[htownSOONER]

It has been many years, but at one time I knew Jay Price. At the time, he was well connected and respected in the Oklahoma area. He would be a competent assistant I think.

 

[sooner333]

Weber is a really nice guy. I got to cover Big Ten Media days in his second year at Illinois. He seemed like a genuinely good guy. He made the Final Four that year with Self's players. I also saw his team lose at Northwestern.

He would be high on my list of who we have now, but I could also see him not doing a great job here. I don't know about his recruiting, but he seems to always have one really awkward tall white guy.

 

[Sooner23]

This guy is a major douche. He actually had a funeral for Bill Self after he replaced him at Illinois to try to let everyone know Self was gone and it was his team. He's a clown.

 

[Sid]

Weber appears to be a tad uncomfortable at Illinois. In mid-February, when the Illini seemed destined to miss the NCAA tournament for the third time in four years, Illinois athletic director Ron Guenther was compelled to make a statement supporting Weber. He also hinted at staff changes, telling Illinois newspapers: "You can't be loyal to a fault."

NC

 

[One More Rebound]

I would like him here, if for no other reason than to make John Rohde's life miserable. Rohde despises Weber...

 

[JustOkSooner701]

30 games above .500 in the Big Ten, made the NCAA 8/10 years (including S. Illinois) Career Record 296-140

:woot

I'll gladly take him over the alternatives at this point :clap

Make it happen Joe

 

[Tony]

I would like him here, if for no other reason than to make John Rohde's life miserable. Rohde despises Weber...

When Rohde's lips move, Bill Self's voice comes out...

Bruce Weber would cover up every picture of Kelvin and Kellen Sampson that there is at the LNC.

 

[realdallassooner]

Boring. Dang.

 

[Sooner23]

Here's the article about Weber having the funeral for Self....

Weber can't escape Self's shadow

http://msn.foxsports.com/collegebas...t-escape-bill-selfs-shadow-at-illinois-032011

TULSA, Okla. During Bruce Weber’s first season at Illinois, he infamously held a funeral for his predecessor, Bill Self.

Tired of being compared to Self, who had left for Kansas in April 2003, the quirky coach walked in to his team’s locker room before a game wearing a black suit jacket, black tie and black pants. He told his team he was coming to a funeral that was the end of talk about Self.

“The time for mourning and loss is over now,” former Illinois player Jack Ingram recalled Weber telling him and his teammates.

With Self’s top-seeded Kansas team playing No. 9 seed Illinois and Weber on Sunday in the NCAA tournament’s third round, Weber not surprisingly tried to play down the significance of his funeral for Self on Saturday.

“It was really a compliment to him to be honest,” said Weber, now in his eighth season at Illinois.

Self made little of the funeral himself Saturday, but pointed out he and Weber aren’t close friends.

“We don’t talk like that,” Self said. “It’s a situation where that happened, but I think he meant it in a certain way.”

But with all the funeral talk involving Self and Weber, there’s another funeral that no one else seems to be discussing.

It’s the one college basketball held for Weber once he no longer had any of the star players Self recruited to Illinois.

Since making the Sweet 16 in Weber’s first season, losing to North Carolina the next season in the 2005 national championship game, and winning a first-round game in the NCAA tournament in 2006, Illinois has been lifeless in the national championship chase.

Once the last of the four eventual NBA draft picks that he inherited from Self departed in 2006, Weber struggled so much that his team’s victory Friday night against woeful eighth-seeded UNLV was his first in the NCAA tournament since then.

In the five seasons after Self’s supply of star power dried up, Weber has failed to make the NCAA tournament twice, including a disastrous 16-19 campaign in 2008 when his team missed the postseason all together.

And despite opening this season with a 13-3 record that featured a win against North Carolina and an overtime loss to Texas, Illinois nearly failed to make the NCAA tournament for a second straight year after losing 10 of its final 16 games.

For such a talented team in a lackluster season of college basketball, that’s more embarrassing than when it played with a women’s basketball for the first 7 minutes, 22 seconds of a home game earlier this season.

Despite having at least seven players who should play some form of professional basketball someday, Illinois has a reputation for being soft and unable to close out games. That’s kind of like Weber, college basketball’s perennial Mr. Nice Guy.

But when it comes to recruiting though, sometimes nice guys finish last. Weber's failed recruitments of Eric Gordon and Derrick Rose were major setbacks for both him and Illinois.

For whatever reason, Weber just hasn’t been able to land those transcendent, elite recruits. He’s still yet to have a player he signed at Illinois be an NBA draft pick, a crime considering the school’s proximity to the fertile recruiting grounds of Chicago.

For what it’s worth, at least give Weber credit for capitalizing on the talent that Self left for him in his first three seasons at Illinois. During that stretch, he had a sparkling 89-16 record.

Since then, he has just a mediocre 104-69 record and lost as many games as he’s won in Big Ten play with a disappointing 44-44 record. When asked Saturday if beating Kansas would help separate himself from Self, Weber was indifferent.

“Every day, these guys (the media) are going to find something else to question or the fans are,” Weber said.

Ah yes, the Illinois fans, whom Weber can’t ignore as much as he tries. They’re the ones who inspired Weber’s funeral for Self seven years ago and should be questioning whether he is still the coach to lead them back to national prominence.

But they’re conflicted about Weber, just like Charlie Sheen is about sobriety. Although notoriously gun-shy Illinois athletic director Ron Guenther said last month that Weber will be back next season, it’s evident that Weber is feeling the pressure.

And Weber would never admit it, but he’s bothered that Illinois fans still think about Self and wonder whether he would have won them a national championship had he stayed.

That’s better than reality because Weber knows he will be lucky if he can even get his team to the postseason next year, let alone the NCAA tournament. He loses four of his starters, highly touted freshman wing Jereme Richmond may not return and he won’t have any scholarship seniors.

It turns out that Weber was wrong about Self. It’s actually Weber who’s the dead man walking.

 

[Shooterms]

Weber is a really nice guy. I got to cover Big Ten Media days in his second year at Illinois. He seemed like a genuinely good guy. He made the Final Four that year with Self's players. I also saw his team lose at Northwestern.

He would be high on my list of who we have now, but I could also see him not doing a great job here. I don't know about his recruiting, but he seems to always have one really awkward tall white guy.

 

[boksooner]

When Rohde's lips move, Bill Self's voice comes out...

Bruce Weber would cover up every picture of Kelvin and Kellen Sampson that there is at the LNC.

It would be hilaripus, if he hired Kellen as an assistant.