OXFORD — Keith Carter is barely three years into his job, and now he has another major sport at the crossroads.
Not just any sport but his sport.
Carter was a basketball all-American at Ole Miss before becoming the full-time athletic director in November 2019 following a stint as the interim.
Before the year was out, Carter had fired football coach Matt Luke and hired Lane Kiffin.
Last year he faced a real decision on the future of longtime coach Mike Bianco, who many believed was not getting a nationally prominent baseball team to the College World Series enough.
Bianco took a sledgehammer to any ambiguity on his status by winning the national championship.
That isn’t how this basketball season has worked out, and Ole Miss parted ways with Kermit Davis on Friday morning near the end of his fifth season as coach.
So now, Carter once again faces a major hire. That’s a lot in three years.
Davis was named Southeastern Conference coach of the year by The Associated Press when he led the Rebels to the NCAA tournament in 2019.
He hasn’t recaptured that magic.
Basketball has floundered the last two seasons, and it’s the only one of the school’s four main sports that can’t find its way to a meaningful postseason.
It falls on Carter to fix basketball as he did football.
Kiffin’s hire showed Carter is willing to think outside the box to hire coaches.
Kiffin wasn’t a safe hire, and he hasn’t been an easy employee for Carter to manage, but he’s restored passion to Ole Miss football.
Former Texas Tech and Texas coach Chris Beard and former LSU coach Will Wade have already been mentioned as possible Ole Miss targets in places people go to speculate and wonder about such things.
Both would be splashy hires with NCAA tournaments in their past — but other things in their past, too.
Maybe both check out and are ready for new challenges. Carter has to consider maturity, judgment and so much more with any candidate in order to find the hiring sweet spot between bold and reckless.
There are a finite number of ways to hire a basketball coach, and there are no guarantees for success.
Carter has said that Kiffin’s $9 million-ish salary will not be an obstacle in a basketball hire, so Carter believes he can move the numbers around to bring in the next Ole Miss coach.
He’s got a state-of-the-art arena and SEC membership to work with. He can’t offer candidates like a Duke basketball program can, but the Ole Miss job is better than it once was.
The arena, in fact, is too nice for the rows of empty seats it has during home games this season.
Wins and losses are enough for Carter to move on from Davis, but program apathy is a key player in decisions like this, too.
You can’t have a major program in a place like SJB Pavilion that nobody cares about.
We’ll see which path Carter chooses to make the fix.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 46 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
