by Charles Rich
It's looking like Mark Turgeon will be the new Texas A&M Basketball Head Coach. The announcement, potentially could come sometime this afternoon, but likely will be tomorrow.
That's only part of the story, though. John Lopez, a Houston Chronicle sportswriter lays the blame on Gillispie's departure from A&M completely at the feet of A&M Athletic Director (AD) Bill Byrnes. While he opens as if Byrnes' moves could be brilliant, there is no doubt he sees Byrnes as an ego run wild.
There's a good mix of background history, and clearly Lopez is on the side of Gillispie on this one, but it isn't hard to turn it around and say that Byrnes had good reasons for a lot of what happened and that Gillispie's handling forced Byrnes' hand.
The story is that an intermediary/friend of Gillispie was being contacted by Arkansas as early as February. Gillispie wanted to maintain plausible deniability and focus on winning basketball games. He never encouraged or discouraged the contact, and he never told him of the circumventing contact. Byrnes found out anyways.
The Intrigue at College Station originally appeared on Fanhouse NCAA Basketball Blog on Mon, 09 Apr 2007 10:53:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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