Boston College Basketball: Waiting for White Smoke

Sam Sharpe-USA TODAY Sports

Imagine that there was a ledge outside the Yawkey Athletics Center, with throngs of Boston College Eagles basketball fans waiting in the street between there and the Plex. White smoke billows from the top and fills the air over Alumni Stadium.

Suddenly, the door opens and athletics director Brad Bates proclaims to the crowd “Habemus coachum!“

We are a Catholic school after all; it would be a nice touch. No way Twitter wouldn’t break the news first, though.

In any event, this is now officially Day 7 of Boston College’s search to replace Steve Donahue as the head of the hoops program. Without the benefit of inside knowledge — which not even those in the local media have, despite some acting like they know what Bates is doing — is there any way to get a sense of where we are in this process?

As you might expect, no, but there are a few things we can put together based upon common sense and what we’ve seen happen elsewhere.

• Boston College and Bates will take their time, but they are not going to wait too long. This is not going to take a month, and if it does, yikes. Tomorrow will be the one-week mark, and as we have already seen, some schools have already filled their vacancies in less time. This does not have to be a lengthy process. For reference, Frank Spaziani was fired on November 25 and replaced with Steve Addazio on December 4, a total of nine days.

Bates and company must be afforded time to conduct the interview process their way, but being too deliberate (or hesitant, as the case may be) could result in preferred candidates getting away, and they know that. With the seasons of the vast majority of teams being over, consider yourselves all on “white smoke watch” from this point forward.

• Some names are already off the board. Of course, we didn’t even know guys like Buzz Williams were on it until they were off it. Rumblings on the Twitter machine indicate that Manhattan’s Steve Masiello might be on his way to South Florida. He may not have been a serious candidate for our gig, but he’s probably off the board as well.

• This one is very important: Keep in mind that whatever names you hear the media attributing to our coaching search are speculative. Since Boston College has not, is not, and will not leak anything to the press, they know as much as we do. If we listened to them in 2012, our football coach would be either Bob Diaco or Aaron Kromer. Don’t assume they know anything about who Bates is calling, because they probably don’t.  We’ve learned that lesson.

It is logical to think that we’re closer to the end of this coaching search than the beginning, but you never know. Stay tuned.