Sacramento State basketball rumor mill is spinning. Is Mike Bibby really coming back?
Sacramento State has a men’s basketball opening for a head coach. That much is clear.
The gig has drawn considerable interest because the Hornets are a Division I, full-scholarship program dripping of potential, nestled in a hotbed of recruiting talent. And there are worse places to live and work than Northern California.
Who has looked into this job, who has been approached and what the coaching pool of candidates looks like is not for public consumption. That’s fair. Mark Orr is the Hornets athletic director, facing the third major coaching hire since he came aboard in this role exactly five years ago Friday. Orr is the homegrown guy who was tasked by Sac State president Robert S. Nelsen with heading the athletic department.
On Friday, there were multiple reports that one-time Kings guard star Mike Bibby interviewed for the Hornets gig and that the next step is to visit the campus. Well, pump the brakes on that one for a second before reaching for your trusty No. 10 Kings jersey with Bibby splashed across the back.
Bibby’s camp did reach out to Orr and the Hornets, but there has been no formal interview.
“I can say that the job is open, a national search is underway, and there has been a significant amount of interest from across the country, and it’s been high from all levels and from all over,” Orr said. “I can’t go into any more detail. I have to respect the process and not compromise the integrity of the search. We have a search committee, and we’re working diligently to identify that coach, the right coach for us.”
The outgoing interim Hornets coach is a good one, and an even better man. That’s Brandon Laird, the locally raised, longtime loyal assistant to Brian Katz. Katz gave the Hornets their best seasons in Division I after some brutal years when Sac State moved up from Division II to I.
If I had a vote here, I’d go with Laird. Good people are hard to find. The Hornets competed and cared under Laird’s watch, but he had an interim title for this season after Katz stepped down on the eve of the season.
Orr and Sac State president Robert S. Nelsen have every right to make their own hire, to bring in their own people, and they will be diligent in this process. Bibby has name appeal that intrigues Sac State boosters and fans in general, but they cannot make the hiring process a popularity contest. That model hasn’t worked with the Kings, who thought they could buy time by bringing in beloved old Kings players such as Vlade Divac to run things.
And there’s this: Bibby wouldn’t be the right fit here. He has no college coaching experience, or NCAA recruiting chops, or any of the things that consume so much time.
I also believe Sac State is not interested in anyone whose aim is to “change the culture” and then bolt after a year or so for a bigger gig. Would Bibby really want to coach the Hornets long-term? How about Reggie Theus, the first Kings guard star in Sacramento? He’s coached in college. He’d be intriguing to talk to, if a big name from the past is any part of this process.
Orr and Nelsen have already nailed two home-run hires. And they got baseball coach Reggie Christiansen settled in and raised the Hornets to another level. He has three times since 2014 led the Hornets to the NCAA postseason. Orr and Nelsen also landed Troy Taylor as football coach before the 2019 season, and that move still resonates. Taylor, with deep regional roots and the remarkable ability to craft teams and coach games, has led Sac State to back-to-back Big Sky Conference championships.
When the women’s head coaching job was open last spring, more than 100 applications poured in from across the country. Orr settled on Mark Campbell, a red-hot commodity who worked wonders in the Pac-12. Sac State in his first season made monumental strides and has the making of a Big Sky contender.
Now this challenge looms. The goal is for Sac State to hire its next basketball coach in the next three weeks. Orr on Friday afternoon was in a tax appointment when his phone nearly melted from all the calls and texts wondering whether he was recruiting Bibby. None of this irritated Orr, but it did inspire and amuse him. Coaching speculation with recognizable big names is a good thing, Orr said.
“What’s cool about all this chatter is that it means people are talking about the coaching opening, that people care or are interested in Sac State and Sac State basketball,” Orr said. “This is a program that has a chance of having a tremendous amount of success, to be a destination school, in a great community.”
Orr added, “I’ve been doing this a long time. I will say that I like the success we’ve had with the last two big coaching hires we made in Troy and Mark, and we were thorough, and we got the right person. We’ll get it right again.”