An article that appeared in today's Brandon Sun regarding the Brandon University men's basketball coaching situation.
Just when the Brandon University athletics department was starting to get back to a state of normalcy and consistency, rumours are swirling that there are major moves afoot in the staff.
Multiple anonymous sources have told the Brandon Sun that Bobcats men’s basketball head coach Barnaby Craddock has accepted the head coaching position at the University College of Fraser Valley, leaving a team he took to the national championship final in March once again looking to fill its top job.
Craddock, reached at his office at BU, declined comment yesterday.
However, a well-placed West Coast Canadian university source familiar with the situation confirmed that Craddock has been offered the Fraser Valley job, with an announcement expected sometime today.
Meanwhile, CIS sources have also told the Sun that BU athletic director Rick Nickelchok is in the running for the vacant AD position at Acadia University, where former Bobcat men’s and women’s basketball coach Les Berry is currently serving as the head men’s coach. Nickelchok, a source said, was shortlisted and interviewed for the position last week.
Calls to Nickelchok’s office and cell phone were not immediately returned.
If Craddock, head coach for the past two seasons, does bolt BUfor the Fraser Valley Cascades in Abbotsford, B.C., it will mean the Bobcats will be looking for a men’s basketball head coach for the fifth time in the past six years.
The Canadian Interuniversity Sport coach of the year this past season, Craddock led the Bobcats to a 20-2 Canada West conference record, a No. 1-ranking that they held for a total of five weeks and carried into the national final where they lost a 52-49 decision to the five-time defending champion Carleton Ravens.
The Cascades, meanwhile, played their first season in the CIS in 2006-07, finished in fourth place with a 6-17 record in the Pacific Division and missed the playoffs. At Fraser Valley, Craddock would inherit a Cascades team that won three national collegiate titles before making the jump to the university ranks.
The Cascades worked under a tandem coaching unit of Pat Lee and Tom Antil, but the university-college was concerned that the coaching situation didn’t adhere to CIS conditions, which state coaches are to be involved in on-campus coaching, a term which Lee — a high school counselor — was unable to fulfill completely.
According to the Abbotsford News, Lee was offered the full-time job last spring, but the two sides were unable to reach a viable agreement.
Craddock is originally from Vancouver and its believed that the location of the UCFV job — located 64 kilometres southeast of Vancouver — and recruiting potential were enticing factors.
“In the minds of a lot of coaches, the best place to coach is out west,” said one CIS source who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The two biggest (assets) would be the recruiting pool would be a lot bigger, that would be one thing for sure, and maybe just the location. It’d be easier to do things whether to travel to the States or attract teams out there. It might be easier to build a program.”
Craddock took over the BU men’s position in 2005 from Berry, who coached one season after leading the women’s team. Prior to that, Reggie Carrick was a one-year interim coach in 2003-04 when he was coaching in place of longtime coach Jerry Hemmings, who was on sabbatical at the time.
There was no word Tuesday on the status of recruits for the Bobcats. Craddock had made it official in the winter that Winnipeg high school standouts Kyle Vince and Kevin Oliver had committed to BU, while it was rumoured that Vancouver product Bol Kong, a 6-foot-7 slasher, was coming to Brandon if he was unable to secure the necessary paperwork to play in the United States. The Bobcats were also reportedly in the running for the services of point guard Adrian Sapp, a product of Vanier College and a former teammate of current Bobcat Nathan Grant.
In addition Adam Philpott, a Neelin grad, was expected to transfer to BU after spending two seasons at Acadia.
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