Iowa State coach TJ Otzelberger is not only not at the top of the list of candidates for the open UVA Basketball job, he’s not on the list at all.
“NO” was the emphatic text message that we got back from a member of the search committee that has been vetting potential candidates for the job when we reached out to ask about Otzelberger late in the day on Thursday.
Seemed to settle it for me.
And let me just say here: I know the sourcing on the reporting on the Otzelberger news, and it was pretty flimsy.
Same guy called me, told me that another guy who knows another guy that had told him about the speculation passed it down to him, and I talked him down on why it didn’t make sense.
I mean, I get it, that writers want – need – clicks.
This is part of my job: debunking.
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- Examining Baylor coach Scott Drew as a candidate for the open UVA Basketball job
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- UVA Basketball: Coaching search appears to be narrowed down to three top candidates
Chief among the hangups, from the outside looking in: a reported high-dollar buyout, said to be in the $15 million to $18 million range, which might be high, as a guesstimate – I’m not seeing the exact amount confirmed anywhere, but it would make sense for a school like Iowa State to put a high-dollar buyout into a deal.
If you’re the AD at Iowa State, you’ve got to assume that other schools are going to come calling when you’re 17-4 and in the Top 10, and you’ve already lost guys like Fred Hoiberg (to the NBA, actually) and Greg McDermott (to Creighton).
The guy who replaced Hoiberg, Steve Prohm, was fired after six years, with three of his last four being losing seasons, bottoming out at 2-22 in the 2020-2021 season.
You don’t want to continue to be a feeder program for bigger schools or the NBA, so, you put a huge buyout in your guy’s contract, to keep him from even looking around.
You also do things, like what we saw happen out there in Ames just back in December, like, sign the guy to another extension.
And when I say another extension, I mean, it’s his second in four years – Iowa State extended Otzelberger’s original deal in the 2023 offseason, giving him a raise and extra years.
The new extension, signed on Dec. 17, so, less than two months ago, runs through the 2032 season.
I’m seeing people throw around the idea that whatever the buyout is – it’s certainly $10 million-plus – could be something that Iowa State would agree to allow for repayment over an extended period.
Problem with that thinking being, that’s not why you put a buyout clause in a contract: you put that in there for protection on your side, with the other side, the coach, getting the security of, lots of money, for a lot of years.
Now, this isn’t to say that, if you’re UVA, where there are people behind the scenes, heavy hitters, saying, money is no object, you let a huge buyout deter you, if you think, in this case, that TJ Otzelberger is your guy.
Bottom line is, he’s not our guy.
That message was made emphatically to us when we asked last night.
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Chris Graham
