TERRE HAUTE — Indiana State Director of Athletics Ron Prettyman’s men basketball coach hiring saga has gone from the palatable local buzz of Kevin McKenna’s introductory news conference on March 29, to sitting in his office doing the anonymously soul-crushing drone work of going through endless contract legalities.
“There’s just a lot of legalese to sort through,” Prettyman said Friday.
Soul-crushing might be pushing the metaphorical envelope a bit as far as Prettyman is concerned, but the fact remains that McKenna’s contract is not yet a done deal one month after he was hired, which is a concern to some Sycamores fans.
Prettyman said ISU fans shouldn’t fret. The lag time between McKenna accepting the job and negotiating the final details of the contract are not unusual in high-profile collegiate jobs.
“I think that whenever you are in the process of hiring a coach and you need to move quickly, you come to terms with general agreements,” Prettyman said. “The details come later and that’s where we’re at.”
Prettyman has declined to release salary details of the contract until it is done, though McKenna is believed to have a standard five-year deal.
Prettyman expects McKenna’s contract to be completed soon, negotiation continues between legal represents of McKenna and the ISU athletics department.
“There’s no concern this won’t get done,” Prettyman emphatically stated. “Kevin and I meet nearly everyday and there’s a great working relationship.”
McKenna hasn’t let the contract get in the way of progress. His assistant coaching staff is completed, and McKenna has been on the road recruiting to replace Clayton Vette’s scholarship in the April recruiting period that ends on Monday.
Prettyman has been impressed.
“He works hard he battles for his program, he’s very involved, everytime I walk by the office, the players are in the office talking to him or one of the assistants. He’s very visible, cares about the young men on the team,” Prettyman said.
• Saint Louis to MVC? — St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bernie Miklasz reported last week that one of the requests new Saint Louis Rick Majerus had if he accepted the Billikens job was that SLU should rejoin the Missouri Valley Conference. The Billikens were in the MVC from 1937-1943 and from 1944-1974 and are currently geographic outcasts in the Atlantic 10.
Majerus will be introduced as the Billikens coach on Monday. None of the affected parties are commenting on the Valley, but it’s an intriguing possibility.
I think SLU is a slam dunk for the Valley. Geographically it is perfect. SLU is similar to other Valley private schools and it is building a new on-campus arena
It would solidify St. Louis as a Valley city. The MVC tournament has grabbed St. Louis’ attention without SLU, but there’s no guarantee the local interest remains if the Valley suffers a downturn, which could happen sooner than later with massive roster conference-wide change over next year, not to mention five new coaches.
There would be logistical problems with 11 teams, particularly with the amount of conference games. The Valley would either have a 20-game conference schedule, or have to abandon its cherished round-robin format, something it did from 1994-1996 when it had 11 teams before Tulsa left.
Twenty games, which the Big Ten is doing next year, is ideal. But the Valley would have to cram them into one week less than the Big Ten has because the MVC tournament starts a week earlier. As it is, the Valley basketball schedule is too packed. Twenty games would have to make pre-exam conference games a reality.
It’s a minor hiccup in the grand scheme of the advantages SLU would bring to the Valley.
From the Press Box
From the Press Box: Prettyman not concerned about McKenna’s contract
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FROM THE PRESS BOX: ISU baseball has pluses, minuses for tourney bid
Last Thursday, when Indiana State’s baseball jumped around in a celebratory dogpile after clinching the Missouri Valley Conference regular season championship at Bob Warn Field, no one thought that a little over a week later, the dreaded NCAA Tournament bubble would fly over Terre Haute. -
FROM THE PRESS BOX: Subtle switch has fostered MVC baseball parity
When Indiana State was crowned as the regular season baseball champion of the Missouri Valley Conference last Thursday, it marked the fifth different regular season champion the league has had since 2005.
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FROM THE PRESS BOX: ISU has done enough to be in NCAAs
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FROM THE PRESS BOX: TH’s Murans back in the Derby … this time with favorite
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TODD GOLDEN: ISU eyes prize one game at a time
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TODD GOLDEN: Grass is green enough for Indiana State in Missouri Valley
Take a look around the Missouri Valley Conference landscape and it would be easy to assume that a significant portion of the league membership is searching for perceived greener pastures.
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FROM THE PRESS BOX: Sycamores are Odum’s team now
Soooo … who wants to talk about the 2012 Indiana State men’s basketball season?
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FROM THE PRESS BOX: ISU will face uphill climb in MVC in 2013
The Missouri Valley Conference Tournament semifinals are always scintillating. No more so than Saturday when Illinois State upset 15th-ranked Wichita State 65-64 and when No. 25 Creighton took care of business with a 99-71 victory over Evansville.
Arch Madness indeed. -
FROM THE PRESS BOX: Effort, heart, concentration are fleeting for ISU
Every time Indiana State’s men’s basketball wins a game, you think to yourself, OK, now is when these Sycamores live up to their potential.
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FROM THE PRESS BOX: Peyton’s place belongs to Eli
The good people of Indianapolis justifiably puffed out their chests throughout Super Bowl week as the city received deserved rave reviews for the job it did as hosts of Super Bowl XLVI.
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TODD GOLDEN: Teammates, colleagues express their loyalty to Weatherford
Sometimes you worry whether someone is stopping to smell the roses when they smell rosiest.
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FROM THE PRESS BOX: Does melted ice reveal Belichick's heart of gold?
If you’re into Youtube — and who isn’t these days? — there’s a vintage television profile of then-Cleveland Browns coach Bill Belichick posted on the popular site.
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TODD GOLDEN: Indiana State men caught between expectation, reality
The Missouri Valley Conference is hush-hush on how it puts together its matchups for the annual conference schedule.
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TODD GOLDEN: Accentuating the positive with ISU's Odum
There’s something to be said for being your own worst critic, especially when it comes to sports.
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TODD GOLDEN: Loss hurts, but national exposure is ... priceless
Trying to advance the philosophy that any publicity is good publicity is probably an effort wasted on a losing team less than 10 minutes removed from a disappointing defeat where victory had been oh so close to fruition.
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TODD GOLDEN: The great playoff race is on for Indiana State football
The great race is on.
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TODD GOLDEN: Fans owe ISU seniors 10,000
I have covered Indiana State football since the 2004 season.
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FROM THE PRESS BOX: Indiana State has used up its playoff mulligan
It’s been a glass half-full kind of season for the Indiana State football team, so it was easy — and exciting — to get caught up in looking ahead to scenarios that placed ISU in the FCS playoffs, even if ISU didn’t win out.
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FROM THE PRESS BOX: Not a coulda, shoulda for Sycamores
Indiana State's football team is getting tired of being graded on the curve of its own past futility.
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TODD GOLDEN: Supernatural Shakir was a sight to behold
I’ve often heard it said when a player has a big statistical day that he’s racking up “video game numbers.”
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TODD GOLDEN: Sycamore defense absorbs lesson
A win is a win, they say. And for Indiana State, none of the Sycamores are going to take back or put an asterisk next to their 48-34 victory over Butler on Saturday.
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TODD GOLDEN: And now on to the normal part of the schedule
The Steve Miller Band would’ve appreciated Indiana State’s trip to Penn State.
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TODD GOLDEN: Sabermetrics has changed love of baseball
I turned 40 this summer. No problem.
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FROM THE PRESS BOX: No debate about quality of Vigo baseball
It’s standard practice for losing high school coaches — especially coaches who led teams on a deep postseason run — to heap praise on their seniors one last time. It’s even more so when one of those seniors was the rock of a given team for a four-year period.
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FROM THE PRESS BOX: Season dies down, but ISU’s plate not empty
With coaching changes having mostly sorted themselves out and with recruiting having just entered its quiet period today, college basketball has settled into its more relaxed offseason mode.
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FROM THE PRESS BOX: Winning spring more important than winning the spring game
Indiana State football coach Trent Miles has been involved in collegiate coaching since 1987. He knows better than anyone that there’s no one-size-fits-all way to approach the annual spring football game.
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FROM THE PRESS BOX: Friday wait was worth it for Indiana State
Many have seen the famous Salvador Dali painting, “Persistence of Memory.” The most memorable images in the surreal painting are unquestionably the pocket watches that are drooped over a ledge, a tree branch, etc.
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Many Sycamores, past and present, to remember
The minute it became apparent Indiana State had punched its ticket to the NCAA Tournament with a 60-56 victory over Missouri State on Sunday, I reflected on all of the moments in the previous seven years of covering the Sycamores that led to this.
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FROM THE PRESS BOX: Sycamore AD Ron Prettyman explains Cal Poly interest
Editor’s note: Indiana State Director of Athletics Ron Prettyman interviewed and participated in a public open forum for the same position at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo last week.
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