BYU Basketball: The NCAA bracket of Head Coach candidates
By Adam Gibby
5 Seeds
Five seeds are those teams that most brackets have either beat by the 12 seeds or knocked out in the second round. They are unpopular, unknown and sort of just the meh… teams of the tournament. Every once in awhile though, they make a big run and find themselves in the final few teams (or candidates).
Austin Ainge: You may have never heard much of Austin but he is Danny Ainge’s son and he played for BYU in the mid 2000’s. Ainge coached the Maine Red Claws in their first season of the NBA G League and is now the director of player personnel for the Boston Celtics. He has coaching experience, is a former alumni and seems to fit the sneaky 5 seed perfectly.
Kerry Rupp – Kerry Rupp is a current assistant coach with Oregon State and was the Head Coach for Louisiana Tech from 2007-2011. Rupp graduated from Southern Utah University and does not currently have any ties to BYU. It wouldn’t be the first time though that BYU goes for an Oregon State assistant coach to become the head guy which puts him in the sneaky 5 seed position.
Gib Arnold – This may be more of an eight seed sort of player but Arnold used to coach at Hawai’i before running into issues with the NCAA and being sued by the university. During his time there however, he got the Rainbow Warriors to their first 20 win season in over a decade. Currently Arnold works in the front office for, you guessed it the Boston Celtics as an NBA scout. Arnold has been away from coaching for four years now which may be enough time for him to get another shot.