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VCU athletic director Norwood Teague hasn’t wasted any time targeting candidates in replacing Anthony Grant.
Just hours after finding out that Grant was leaving for Alabama after three seasons and a pair of NCAA tournament appearances, Teague jumped on a plane and headed to interview one of the nation’s elite assistant coaches – Texas’ Russell Springmann.
Springmann, 39, is the guy who helped get Kevin Durant, D.J. Augustin and Damion James to Austin. According to sources, Teague will interview Springmann - a Maryland native - and also Florida assistant coach Shaka Smart on Saturday.
Teague and his right-hand man, assistant AD Mike Ellis, have a handle on this process like virtually no other administration in the nation. These guys head up the Villa 7 Consortium.
Teague is a former basketball operations guy at Virginia who went into marketing at Arizona State and North Carolina before being hired as the AD at VCU in 2006.
While so many athletic directors are now reliant on these search firms to perform a critical task that they were hired to be able to perform on their own, Teague and Ellis has basically created their own search firm of sorts – and are familiar with just about all of the elite coaching candidates since the inaugural Villa 7 began in 2006.
In addition to Springmann and Smart, sources indicate that six others in the mix include Wake Forest assistant Jeff Battle, Kansas assistant and former East Carolina head coach Joe Dooley, Ohio State assistant Archie Miller, current VCU assistant Tony Pujol and a pair of head coaches: Jeff Lebo (Auburn), who has North Carolina ties to Teague and Ellis, and Billy Lange (Navy).
This was a list that has likely been re-shaped on multiple occasions over the past couple of years, shortly after Grant led VCU to a first-round victory against Duke and instantly became a hot commodity.
Obviously, the VCU opening is one of the most highly sought after in the nation – especially after the last two coaches, Jeff Capel (Oklahoma) and now Grant, have become rising stars in the business.
Sources have told FOXSports.com that nearly every elite assistant coach and numerous head coaches have already tried to get into the mix for the VCU opening because of its overall attractiveness – from the ability to win the CAA and also the reputation of Teague and Ellis.