Photo courtesy MLive.com

Everything on the coaching carousel is so fluid. Once you think you have it figured out, there’s another curveball. Here’s what we’ve been hearing the past week or so:

  • The interview process has begun, as you should expect, nearly a month into the search. It sounds like Athletic Director Jeff Barber is travelling from Lynchburg to meet the candidates elsewhere, and he is doing so commercially. So, that defeats the ability to track planes.
  • As we mentioned on twitter over the weekend, Bobby Lutz is not at the top of Liberty’s list. One source states he’s out altogether. Lutz has been a hot name regarding the opening over the past couple of weeks.
  • A name that has leaked out on FlameFans is David Grace. Grace is an assistant at UCLA, and he has a proponent or two who is pushing his name to Jeff Barber. He doesn’t have any head coaching experience, so it’s unclear how high Grace’s name is on Barber’s list.
  • A similar situation to Grace, is that of Jason Williford, an assistant at Virginia. Williford has ties to the coaching search firm and connections to Liberty, but he doesn’t have any head coaching experience either.
  • A name we brought to your attention last week was UC Irvine’s head coach Russell Turner. For much of the day Sunday, it looked like Turner would be named the next head coach at George Mason. Then news began trickling out Sunday night that he had turned the Mason job down. Where does this leave him and Liberty? That’s something we will be watching in the coming days.
  • Another part of the coaching carousel we have to continue to monitor, is the new jobs that come open and new names that become available. One example of this is Texas and Rick Barnes. We’ve heard from several Liberty fans and alumni pushing Barnes for the Liberty opening, but it’s hard to imagine him falling this far. One likely destination for Barnes is at Tennessee.
  • Bob Hoffman, head coach at Mercer, is a name that I brought to several of my contacts in late February before the job opened, they all shot down his name at the time. I again brought his name up shortly after the job was officially open, and his name was again shot down. Well, this weekend his name was brought to my attention as being in the mix for the opening.
  • Two other names that have popped up recently are Brett Reed, Lehigh’s head coach, and Scott Sutton, Oral Roberts’ head coach.
  • When the job first came open, I thought former Liberty head coach Jeff Meyer had a very slim chance of getting the job. The more time goes on, the better his chances get, in my opinion. I’ve heard from several sources that Meyer and Barber have met in Michigan to discuss the job opening.
  • Buckle up, things are starting to get interesting.