Much thanks to SB Nation's Kentucky blog, a Sea of Blue, and Glenn Logan for answering some questions about Texas Tech's newest head coach. Lots of excellent insight.

1. There's been quite a bit written about Gillispie's abrasive coaching methods and some times harsh player treatment. Is a fair assessment that he's tough on his players and were you okay with this coaching method.

It is fair to say that Gillispie is tough on his players.  I am generally okay with a tough approach, but some of the things Gillispie allegedly did were a little over the top, such as making players stay in the bathroom during half time if he was displeased with them, ride home in the media van rather than with the team, etc.

The problem is that as a fan, you really only get spun stories on the things he did, and generally the spin is 100% in the player's favor.  I don't know exactly what these guys that got subjected to this negative reinforcement did to deserve it, but one would assume they did something.  Unfortunately, what that was will probably never be known.  Maybe that's just as well, and I expect he will be less uninhibited at Texas Tech than he was at UK.

2. In your opinion, what was the reason that Gillispie let go at Kentucky? Was it related to more coaching issues ot off-the court things.

There were two reasons:  1) he didn't win enough and 2) Mitch Barnhart, UK's Director of Athletics, actively hated him.  Kentucky cannot accept trips to the NIT with players as good as Patterson and Meeks were.  There was clearly a rebellion on the team against Gillispie's coaching, and whether that was simply due to players disliking his coaching style too much to benefit, players acting like prima donnas, or Gillispie acting like a madman, we will never know for sure.  I'm sure all of these things played a role.

Barnhart came to loathe Gillispie, and it started pretty soon after he was hired.  In his second year, Barnhart was looking for an excuse to fire Gillispie, and Gillispie obliged him by handing him an NIT season when much more was reasonably expected, and refusing to sign a contract in favor of the sketchily-written Letter of Intent he agreed to when he came.  That was never intended to serve as a contract, but Gillispie apparently wanted it to.

So much more after the jump.

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PRESS CONFERENCE @ 10:00 A.M. | Consider this as your open thread for today's press conference to announce Billy Gillispie as the new head coach for Texas Tech.  Doors open at 9:15 a.m. and you're supposed to wear red.  More details can be found at the official site and I think you can watch the press conference live.  Feel free to link if there are other outlets to watch the presser.

MEETING WITH PLAYERS | LAJ's Courtney Linehan writes Gillispie held his first meeting with the players on the team:

"We had a very good meeting in the locker room," Gillispie said. "It was the first time I've had a chance to meet with them face-to-face, and they seem ready to move in the right direction."

Gillispie has also made contact with the five recruits who signed last spring under Pat Knight's staff. He said he's seen most of them play, and is positive about the prospects for next year's team.

One of the goals set during that locker room meeting was to reach the NCAA tournament in 2012. He said once he has fully assessed the roster and recruits he will move quickly to fill any gaps.

"You want to give yourself the best roster to work with starting in October next year," Gillispie said. "I really do think it's all about the players, developing relationships with returnees and recruiting a great class."

MISCELLANEOUS | The Chron's Jerome Solomon opines that Gillispie is where he belongs and DMN's Mike Graham has his season in review, which includes a reference that SF Jaye Crockett and PG Javarez Willis was the team's biggest surprise, however, from what we learned earlier in the week, Willis may not be back because of grades.

GILLISPIE IN THE MEDIA | There are a handful of links about Gillispie in the media still, including ESPN's Outside The Lines talking with college basketball analyst Jimmy Dykes about the hire of Gillispie.  Dykes approves of the hire.  Sports Radio Interviews has a partial transcript of Gillispie's interview with 105.3 The Fan and here's a snippet:

Can he win at Texas Tech?:  "You better believe it. I’m really looking forward to that. I think they have some really good players returning and I think they’ve signed a nice group. … We’ll definitely go assess those things and add maybe some other guys in this late signing period. But when you have a place that has a great university and a great community that really cares about athletics and sports and a great conference … you can definitely win."

I've already typed up my thoughts on Texas Tech's hing of Billy Gillispie to lead Texas Tech's men's basketball team.  I'm also in the process of sending questions to SB Nation's Kentucky blog, A Sea of Blue, and UTEP blog, Miner Rush, to ask them what they think about Gillispie.  I hope to have those Q&A's wrapped up later this week.

I should also remind everyone that Gillispie's initial press conference will be Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. at the United Spirit Arena.  This is the same place that Bob Knight held his press conference at Texas Tech.  Everyone is welcome to attend and would love to have DTN's very own correspondent.  I should also mention that Ryan Hyatt will have Gillispie on his radio show, from 3 to 7 p.m., and you can tweet questions to Hyatt @RyanHyattWHShow.

But in the meantime, we've got a bunch of reaction from around the interwebs about Texas Tech taking the chance on the former Kentucky, Texas A&M and UTEP head coach and we've also got some audio of Gillispie calling into KAMC and ESPN.

It's all after the jump.

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Texas Tech has Their Man and Gillispie has his University

The minute word started to spread that Gillispie would be the head coach, it seems that just about everything was in place. The official site press release seemed like it was ready to go and it makes me think this has been about crossing t's and dotting i's more than anything else. Here's the official release from Texas Tech and new athletic director Kirby Hocutt talks about Gillispie:

"I am very excited to welcome Billy Clyde Gillispie to Texas Tech," said director of athletics Kirby Hocutt. "Over the past two weeks I have had the opportunity to spend significant time with Billy and I am absolutely confident that he will lead our basketball program back to the national spotlight while positively representing our university. There are exciting years ahead for Red Raider basketball."

And Gillispie will not be available to comment or be in Lubbock for a press conference because he's on the road recruiting. We'll get to that more later, but I think Gillispie has been recruiting for some time now. In any event, here's your new head coach:

"It is a great honor to be selected as the basketball coach at Texas Tech University," remarked Gillispie. "I am very appreciative of athletics director Kirby Hocutt, President Bailey (Guy) and Chancellor Hance (Kent) for allowing me the opportunity to lead this program. Texas Tech is a great school that is located in a great community and is part of one of the toughest conferences in the country. I can't wait to get started."

There's so many layers to this story that it makes it tough to figure out where to start. There's so much history, accomplishments, and some controversy with Texas Tech's new head coach, Billy Clyde Gillispie that it makes it a bit tough to figure out. It was strange to think that through it all, Gillispie was the guy and for most, if not all of the coaching search for Texas Tech, Gillispie was the only candidate. So what do I think? I think it was the right hire and I don't think I would have been incredibly excited with any other head coach hired at Texas Tech. I'll be honest, this has be back being excited about Texas Tech basketball because I'm pretty confident what Gillispie can bring to the table.

The History

There's so much here to consider. I know using Wikipedia as a source isn't the most reliable, but it's interesting to see where Gillispie started. He started like almost any coach, from the bottom, but where Gillispie differs from most coaches is that he rose to the top of the coaching profession before he could blink. It's been some time since I looked at Gillispie's coaching pedigree, but I knew he started at the high school level, but had completely forgotten the Henry Miller experiment at Baylor and that Gillispie was at Baylor for 3 years before becoming Bill Self's right hand man.

Sometimes you wonder why people are successful and Bill Self is one of those guys who recognizes talent, whether it be on the court on on his coaching staff and Self recognized what Gillispie was doing immediately, and perhaps credit should go to Gillispie as well as he may have recognized that he needed to jump ship from Baylor to the University of Tulsa. At the time, Bill Self was building Tulsa into a conference power and regularly appeared in the NCAA Tournament. Gillispie followed Self to Illinois and by this time, it was just a matter of time before Gillispie was hired as a head coach.

Gillispie's turnaround at both UTEP and Texas A&M are legendary. They are immediate and they helped Gillispie become the coaching candidate at Kentucky.  From the time that Gillispie became a head coach to the time he was a head coach at Kentucky, we're talking about 5 very short years.

That is one hell of a shooting start and perhaps this is where things went south. Maybe Gillispie moved too fast, kept looking for that penny more and that's where things got fuzzy. Gillispie has a history of drinking and driving, but his last alcohol related issue occurred after he was fired from Kentucky. His prior indiscretions occurred while at Tulsa and at UTEP. Those now somewhat seem like a lifetime ago.

And I haven't even had the time to get into Gillispie's abrasive coaching methodology and lawsuit against Kentucky. Like I said, there's a lot of levels here.

So much more after the jump.

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(13-18, 5-11)

Date | March 9, 2011 Time | 8:30 pm CST Good Guys | Texas Tech Red Raiders Bad Guys | Missouri Tigers Location | Sprint Center | Kansas City, MO TV | B12N | ESPN | ESPN2 Radio | Affiliates GAME CAST | Fox Sports

(12-9, 8-8)

I didn't have time to write a preview of the game.  Please see esteemed colleague, Bill C. from Rock M Nation, for an extensive preview.  It's better than anything I would have done. Check your local listings for where the game will be on the television, but it's going to be one of the three options listed above.

Go Raiders . . .

PAT WAS NOT HIS FATHER

There are a lot of things that you can say about Pat Knight.  It has become abundantly clear that just about everyone says that PK was a terrific guy and he's one of the good guys in college basketball.  I've said it again and again.  Pat Knight has never cheated.  He did not succumb to the AAU game and hire AAU coaches in order to sign players.  Pat Knight, as far as I know, graduated players and he also kept his word in regards to keeping a player's scholarship until the player graduates.  He is a good guy. 

Kansas St. coach Frank Martin on PK:

"He'll survive," Martin said. "Pat is one of the good guys in this business. He does his job the right way, and it's ... we all understand what we get into when we sign up for this job. When good guys get let go, it's something I don't enjoy seeing."

Missouri coach Mike Anderson on PK:

"Obviously, he followed a legend, when you talk about Bob Knight, and that’s kind of hard to do," MU Coach Mike Anderson said. "But at the same time, Pat was himself, and that’s one thing I applaud Pat about. He was true to who he was."

And even after PK was fired, he was gracious and offered an interview with KLBK, KCBD and Fox34.   And DT's Jon Arnold writes that it was Pat Knight that sought out Texas Tech President, Guy Bailey, for clarification on where he and his staff stood going into the Big 12 Tournament:

It’s pretty obvious Tech won’t be in the Big Dance so out the door Knight goes. He’s been expecting this for a while, as have the majority of Tech fans.

The timing of the coach’s firing, though, raised more than a few eyebrows.

The story goes that Knight wanted to meet with president Guy Bailey on Monday, before the conference tournament, so he would know where he and his staff stood.

Good on both parties for stepping up and making their positions clear. Knight wanted to see if his guys would have jobs and Bailey, instead of stalling and trying to find a better time, fired Knight.

Arnold is right.  Bailey could have hemmed and hawed about where things stood, but he was honest with PK and let it be known that PK's services would no longer be needed after the season.  There's something good about how this went down and that gives me some comfort in all of this.  PK handled this with whole situation with a good amount of class in what could have been a difficult situation.  He obviously doesn't have to coach the team in the Big 12 Tournament and he could leave this team high and dry, but that's not Pat.  He may not be the most polished speaker, but he's not going to leave you high and dry.  He probably felt like he owed it to the players to finish this thing out. 

Per LAJ's Courtney Linehan, PK wasn't available for yesterday's Big 12 coaches press conference (because he was meeting with Bailey) and assistant coach Chris Beard said that the staff would finish this out:

"Even though it’s been made public that we won’t be the coaches next year we’re still the coaches this year," Beard said. "I know Pat will do everything in his power to have the team prepared, I know we’ll try to keep things as normal as we can under the circumstances."

Hell, he even did his own radio show last night, per DMN's Mike Graham:

"It really is the final edition," Knight chimed in, chuckling.

Knight was then asked to describe the emotions he was experiencing and Knight set a graceful precedent for the rest of the show.

"There's a lot of highs and lows," Knight said on the show. "(Mostly) it's a relief. You know that it's hanging out there and you've got a chance to be let go so you finally find out and get it out there in the open. It's really a relief for myself and my staff. It's out there and you don't have to mess around with the media writing articles.

"It's just bad when your wife has to read that stuff and your assistants kids, your players have to read that. Now it's out there and everyone can relax and we can just kind of enjoy this last go around in the Big 12 Tournament."

The only thing that bothers me about this is that the current AD Gerald Myers didn't do what he should have done.  AAS's Kirk Bohls tweeted, "Pat Knight's firing was TT prez Guy Bailey's call. Outgoing AD Gerald Myers, who hired Bob Knight, tried to save Pat.".  I don't know if anyone else noticed this, but when Kirby Hocutt was hired, Gerald Myers was not in attendance at the Hocutt press conference.  For whatever reason, maybe Pat knew that Myers wasn't going to be honest with him, which is why he sought out Bailey.  I'm not sure what to think about this, other than it's is the strangest part about Pat's termination was that Myers isn't really anywhere to be found. 

One other strange note.  SportsByBrooks writes that Pat contacted UT-Arlington about their head coaching position despite the fact that they have a head coach.  This is a strange note and it's not necessarily confirmed on the record, so just take it with a grain of salt.  I'll let you chew on that.

If you want to read more, see LAJ's Courtney Linehan, DT's Tommy Magelssen, and a timeline from the LAJ.

COACHING CANDIDATES

The LAJ has an extensive list of coaching candidates.  The list begins and ends with former Kentucky and Texas A&M head coach Billy Gillispie.  Just about every outlet, including ESPN's Andy Katz and ESPN's Eamonn Brennan, write that Gillispie is the candidate where this coaching search starts.  FWST's Mike Jones writes that if it's not going to be Gillispie, then Texas Tech must hire a head coach with Texas ties and I think that this is absolutely true:

I’ve been told that there are some financially heavy Tech people who are going to lobby on Gillispie’s behalf. Multi-million-dollar-type heavy. The question is whether or not they have the clout they think they do.

Snip.

Here’s another name to consider. Try Nebraska coach Doc Sadler on for size. He can coach. He can recruit. He does more with less. He was the behind-the-scenes ace on the James Dickey staff at Tech who found guys like Tony Battie, Corey Carr, Darvin Hamm, et. al.

So, Gillispie is in the lead and it appears that a lot of people are throwing out Sadler's name as well.  With that caveat, there are a lot of names to consider in the LAJ list:  Gillispie, Sadler, Marquette head coach Buzz Williams, Wichita St. head coach Gregg Marshall, Kansas assistant Joe Dooley, Marquette assistant Tony Benford, former Texas and Houston head coach Tom Penders, Utah Valley's Dick Hunsaker, Akron head coach Keith Dambrot, South Plains College head coach Steve Green and Midwestern St. head coach Grant McCasland.  I would also ask that no one mention Butler's Brad Stevens.  Stevens is a terrific coach, but he's not leaving Butler to coach at Texas Tech.  This is a pipe dream and I think I'd also throw Buzz Williams into that category as well.  I think the Butler and Marquette jobs are better basketball jobs than Texas Tech.

I'll let the lot of you figure out who these people are and if any of those names, other than Gillispie excite you.

Not surprisingly, Texas Tech head coach Pat Knight was, "relieved of his duties," as head coach (RRS.com's Chris Level and LAJ). He will remain as the head coach through the Big 12 Tournament.  [Note by Seth C, 03/07/11 11:11 AM CST ] UPDATE -- Per KCBD, here's a written statement

Texas Tech Will Relieve Pat Knight of Head Coaching Duties at Season's End

Texas Tech University President Guy Bailey announced Monday that Head Men's Basketball Coach Pat Knight will be relieved of his duties at the conclusion of the season.

"I felt like it was time to make a change within our men's basketball program," Bailey said. "I appreciate everything Pat has done for our university, not only as a head coach, but also throughout his career as an assistant. I wish him success and the best moving forward."

Knight will continue to coach the team through the Big 12 Conference Championships. A national search for the position will begin immediately.

For me personally, the move is not surprising, but the timing is surprising. There are other college basketball programs who have let their coaches go for the season, but the implication for me is that Texas Tech wants to get out in front of any other universities and start the head coach search as soon as possible. I mentioned earlier this morning that there were two articles this past week (here and here) that mentioned former Kentucky and Texas A&M head coach Billy Clyde Gillispie as a possibility. I don't think this was coincidence.

The other interesting item is that it was Guy Bailey letting Pat know that he was no longer going to be the head coach. Not the Chancellor and not the new athletic director, Kirby Hocutt. I don't think it would have been appropriate to ask Hocutt to make this move and I like the fact that Bailey is doing this. If I had to guess, Bailey and Hocutt are working in concert on this and the rumor was that the reason why the search for a new athletic director was sped up was for this very reason. For me, whether it's Bailey giving Pat the news or Hocutt, Pat's termination is on Texas Tech University. I get the feeling that a number of people wanted this to happen, no matter who was going to be named athletic director. I'm also guessing that part of the job description with the new AD was that he/she would need to find a new men's basketball coach. The new hire will be squarely on Hocutt, as it should be. It's time for Hocutt's first move.

I asked this question earlier this morning, but I'll ask it again. Obviously, Gillispie is the early favorite, but I'd love to know if there are some other names that we might want to consider as possible alternatives.