The Shaka Sweepstakes

Surely there are reporters out there who live for covering coaching searches, but yours truly is not one of them.

There's so much chatter, so much speculation and so few people who actually know what's going on. And the few people who do know what's going on are doing their darnedest to keep inquiring minds from learning what's going on.

There are some exhilarating moments, for sure, but it's hard work. And sometimes it's more fun to sit on the sidelines and witness others grappling to come up with information related to their own coaching searches.

The tricky part about today's information age is everyone is trying to be a reporter, trying to get their name out there. So you have to assess the credibility of the person doing the reporting before you relay that person's report to your own audience.

Case in point: Today we awake to find that some guy named Jon Rothstein is Tweeting this about Shaka Smart:

"Sources confirm that unless something drastic changes in the next 24 hours, Shaka Smart will stay at VCU."

First of all, you have to like the "unless something drastic changes" part. If Smart ends up taking the job, Rothstein has the out: "Well, something drastic happened." It's the classic hedge device used when a reporter isn't 100 percent sure of his information. And this isn't meant to denigrate this Rothstein guy; sometimes you have to cover your hindquarters, and we've all done it.

Second, who his this Rothstein guy? His Twitter feed says he's a "College Basketball Insider for CBS Sports Network," but the only college basketball insider for CBS that I know of is Jeff Goodman. Goodman is darn good at what he does, and the latest info from Goodman contradicts Rothstein's information.

Further research indicates Rothstein is a TV/radio guy in New York who does carry a high profile, but I wonder if he's plugged in enough to be an authority on this matter.

Speaking of Smart, The Chicago Tribune interviewed Oliver Purnell about his former assistant. The two would be fierce recruiting rivals if Smart ended up two hours from Chicago.

‘‘You like to see your assistants do well,’’ Purnell said Tuesday. ‘‘But more than that, he’s a friend. It would be ironic because our paths crossed twice already, and to cross a third time speaks to what a small world the basketball community is.’’

Purnell, who just completed his second season with the Blue Demons, was the man who guided Smart into that world when he hired him as his director of basketball operations at Dayton in 2001.

‘‘I actually had about a week to interview him because we were at my basketball camp and we had a bunch of kids there,’’ Purnell said. ‘‘He clearly stood out to me as a person who was very organized. He did some things for us in camp, and the kids responded to him. He was a tremendous motivator and communicator and very, very bright.

‘‘There’s an advantage to having a week to interview someone, but you would see their shortcomings, too. I thought he had special qualities even then.’’

Purnell called Smart "one of the best young coaches in the country," and it's hard to find anyone who disagrees with that. It's hard to find a Clemson fan who's not happy with Brad Brownell, but you do wonder why Smart didn't even get a sniff two years ago when Clemson was trying to replace Purnell.

Granted, Smart had just one year of experience as a head coach at the time. He was a year away from leading the Rams to last year's Final Four.

But even at the time, it seemed odd that Smart received zero interest from Clemson when other candidates were getting interviews. Wofford's Mike Young got an interview. As did Boston College's Al Skinner. As did some guy from Jacksonville whose name I can't recall. As did the guy from Old Dominion with the really cool mustache.

It's always much easier and less fair to judge with the benefit of hindsight, but it's fair to say Smart should've at least been granted an interview. Then again, he turned down N.C. State last year so maybe a pursuit of him two years ago would've been pointless anyway.

Some coaching-search linkage:

Here's Goodman's latest dispatch on Smart, plus a snippet that says Gregg Marshall has yet to hear from South Carolina.

But Marshall apparently has heard from Nebraska ... and has turned down the Cornhuskers.

Gregg Doyel says Nebraska must ante up to get in the power hoops game.

And check this out: Leonard Hamilton (apparently) trying to squeeze into the picture at Illinois.

We close on a completely unrelated topic: Hank Haney's eye-opening explanation for Tiger Woods' knee ailments.

Haney cites Corey Carroll, one of Woods’ closest friends, as saying that Woods injured his right Achilles tendon doing Olympic-style weightlifting as he returned from reconstructive knee surgery in December 2008.

Haney also tells of a woman who approached him during an outing in Minnesota last year. Her husband was a Navy SEAL in California and told her Woods came in for training in 2007 at a Kill House – an urban-warfare simulator – and “got kicked pretty hard in the leg, and I think he hurt his knee pretty bad.”

Haney said that matched a story from Carroll, who said Woods revealed to him that the complete tear of his left knee ligaments really happened in a Kill House when he had lost his balance and been kicked in the knee.

“My immediate thought upon hearing Corey’s account, which so closely paralleled that of the woman in Minneapolis, was that it was true,” Haney writes.

“And if so, it meant that if Tiger never catches Jack Nicklaus, it will very likely have as much to do with the time and physical capacity he lost as a result of his bizarre Navy SEALs adventure as anything else.”

LW