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The firing of Mark Gottfried at North Carolina State has created the first opening among college basketball coaches.
It’s considered a good job in college basketball, although the challenge of competing against North Carolina and Duke in its own backyard in Raleigh, N.C. underscores the pitfalls of the position.
The likely suspects have emerged among college coaches, but one potential candidate with a link to San Antonio might be attractive.
Vinny Del Negro, a member of the Spurs for six seasons from 1992-98, is listed among the potential candidates, according to the website Collegespun.com.
Del Negro, 50, has never been a college head coach. But neither was his former teammate Avery Johnson before he got his shot at Alabama.
It would give Del Negro a chance to coach at his alma mater. His coaching tenures with the Chicago Bulls (2008-10) and Los Angeles Clippers (2010-13) would likely be forgotten by Wolfpack fans hoping to rekindle some of the program’s storied history.
Del Negro played with the Wolfpack from 1984-88 under Jim Valvano, arguably the most iconic coach in the history of the program.
And while he was fired twice in a four-year period during his NBA coaching career, he did take his teams to the playoffs in four of his five seasons coaching there. He now works as an analyst for NBA-TV, but likely could be convinced to return to his old school for the right price.
He might take pause about the job when looking at what happened to Gottfried, who took the Wolfpack to the tournament four times in his six-season tenure at the school and twice advanced to the Sweet 16.
That, apparently, wasn’t enough for Wolfpack fans.
Considering those expectations, Del Negro might consider coaching former Clippers owner Donald Sterling to have been less stressful.
Tgriffin@express-news.net
Twitter: @TimGriffinBig12
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