Is Kenny Brooks Virginia Tech Bound?
Update: He’s gone.
News broke over the weekend that Kenny Brooks had interviewed for Virginia Tech’s vacant women’s basketball head coaching position. It’s not a real surprise that the Hokies would be interested in Brooks. His Dukes are coming off their third straight NCAA tournament appearance and he’s the program’s all time winningest coach. He’s proven that he can recruit the region and has done very well with the resources at his disposal. He could be quite successful at a P5 program that was willing to give him even more.
Virginia Tech Athletic Director Whit Babcock is undoubtedly well aware of Brook’s accomplishments. Babcock is a JMU alum and Harrisonburg native.
Brooks is very well compensated, by CAA standards. He recently signed a 2-year contract extension, with no raise however. JMU pays him $225K a year. There is no buyout clause in the contract. Virginia Tech’s former head coach, Dennis Wolf, had a base salary of $233K plus a $133K retention bonus prior to be fired. Assuming Brooks could negotiate a similar sort of contract, it would be a nice step up.
For his part, Jeff Bourne almost sounded resolved to the fact that Brooks would likely leave. He told the DNR’s Nick Sunderland “We’re willing to obviously make an offer on our side that we think is attractive. But we are also fully cognizant that Virginia Tech is an ACC school and with their resources and package that they’ve put together, there’s clearly a difference between what a CAA school can do and what an ACC school can.” Sort of a weird way to play your hand JB.
We should hear something soon. JMU now faces the very real possibility of needing to replace both its basketball coaches this offseason. Considering Brooks is on the men’s coaching search committee that might be a tall order.
Bummer. Can’t blame him. He represented JMU well. Wish him the best.
This is a big loss for JMU Women’s BB. It is a good move for Brooks, though. He will be missed.
What a sad day for JMU WBB. Kenny is a class act ….
Both basketball coach’s and the football coach. Something is not right in the burg…
JMU needs to reach out to Wendy Larry asap. Proven winner, recruiter, ties to the CAA.
Best wishes to Kenny and his family. He did a great job at JMU. His will be big shoes to fill. Go Dukes!
It will be interesting to see if VT WBB will now schedule JMU.
King Dufus Jeff Bourne has more work to do now.
#1 on my pessimistic/fatalistic post from last week has come to pass. What will P. Hall do now? Once she gets over the suddenness, I fully expect to soon read that she will graduate this spring and follow Coach Brooks to VT as a grad transfer and be able to play immediately (list item #2).
What will become of the current staff? If Coach O’Regan doesn’t get the job, how many will go to Blacksburg?
Average salary on the 6-year deal will be 560K! Good for Coach Brooks.
We are now an athletics dumpster fire bordering on multi-alarm fire. In the past 18 months:
Baseball: contract not renewed
Men’s basketball: post-season no-show; fired
Women’s basketball: resigned for a promotion to a P5 conference
Men’s soccer: contract not renewed (one of the winningest coaches in NCAA)
Football: post-season no-show; resigned to take a job that is a promotion only in the broadest sense of the term — an FBS school in classification only
Media: Voice of the Dukes’ contract not renewed — impression is that he was forced out.
Clock is ticking on softball…
It wasn’t a stretch to guess VT would go after Coach Brooks, but I would’ve preferred to be wrong on this one.
I don’t blame KB for exploring options and taking this offer…..who among us is not gonna accept a job that more than doubles your salary, with more resources, offering COA while still staying in the valley (just a couple hours south). I was surprised that VT made this kind of commitment to WBB……Babcock is getting it done hiring an impressive group of coaches in football, mbb, and wbb over the last couple of years.
No way JMU could compete with offer, resources just aren’t there. However, JMU needs to WAKE the F’UP and offer COA for MBB and WBB going forward. Do I really agree with it, no…..but it is a fact of life if you are committed to your athletic programs and given JMU’s $40+ million athletic budget we should offer COA or get out some red ink and start slashing that budget b/c Alger’s stance on COA does not jive with our budget and $$$ spent on athletic infrastructure.
JMU should act quickly and offer the job to a very qualified Coach O’Regan (heck how do you think KB got the job in the first place at JMU when Sheila Mormon stepped down) and try to keep the rest of the existing staff in place.
Jon Alger is the issue at JMU and not in a good way. He may be the right fit for a small, liberal arts school in the NE with little commitment to athletics……but he is clearly not a fit for JMU, a large state school in VA with a commitment to athletics. I was no huge fan of Linwood Rose but at least you knew where you stood with him and I could at the very least respect that and disagree. With Alger all you get is a lot of lawyer talk and read between the lines BS. I cannot think of anything that Alger has really done in 4 years at JMU other than hold listening tours. And please don’t tell me about construction and building at JMU…….that happened just as much if not more under Carrier and Rose. Some things are gonna happen regardless of who sits at that desk in Wilson Hall….and buildings are that way for the most part.