Today is a busy day around campus for Stanford Sports.
Football is hosting their Junior Day, with more than 50 top
recruits from the West Coast and around the country being given
involved tours and insight into the campus and program. Baseball
is engaged in the rubber match of an exciting home series at
Sunken Diamond with longtime rivals, USC. Softball is fighting
against Hofstra for a slot in the College World Series.
But inside the halls of the Arrillaga Family Sports Center,
you will see one of the biggest news stories of the weekend
transpiring. The first candidate for the Stanford Men's
Basketball head coaching position is meeting and interviewing
with Athletic Department and University officials and
administrators. Trent Johnson, the five-year head coach at Nevada
and one-time Stanford assistant coach flew into town last night.
It is not yet known if these sessions might carry through to
tomorrow. It is my belief that Johnson is currently the
front-runner for the job, though these interviews obviously have
great bearing on that status.
The 47-year old head coach of the Wolf
Pack made waves this March with Nevada's inspiring run in the
NCAA Tournament. After winning 20 games in the regular season and
three more in a successful WAC Tournament championship run,
Johnson guided his underdog Pack to an upset of seventh seed
Michigan State in the opening round of the NCAAs. It was the
first ever win in the school's history in the postseason
tournament, but it would not be the biggest. In the second round
two days later, Nevada thoroughly destroyed #2 seed Gonzaga by a
91-72 score. The final score truly was representative of how
lopsided the contest was, with Nevada leading by 15-20 points for
a good deal of the first half. In the Sweet Sixteen, Johnson's
squad nearly upset #3 seed Georgia Tech in a tight late-game
affair. That Yellow Jacket team went on to play in the National
Championship game.
In his five years in Reno as the head coach, Trent Johnson has
recorded a 79-74 mark. Cardinal fans of course remember his three
years as an assistant on The Farm that immediately preceded his
time at Nevada. While an assistant on Mike Montgomery's bench,
Stanford reached new heights in the program's success each of his
three years. In the 1996-97 season, the Cardinal pushed for the
first time to the Sweet Sixteen, and a year later they made their
fabled run to the Final Four. While the 1998-99 season ended in
an upset loss in the second round of the NCAAs, the Card broke
yet more new ground with their first-ever Pac-10 championship.
In all of his stops, Johnson has been a tremendously
successful recruiter. While at Stanford he was an instrumental
recruiter for arguably the top classes in the program's history.
He played a lead role in hauling in the 1997 class of Jason Collins, Jarron Collins and Mike McDonald. In his last year he
helped drive the recruitment of the fabled fab five class of
Casey Jacobsen, Curtis Borchardt, Justin Davis, Julius Barnes and
Joe Kirchofer. Ironically, he helped recruit and sign Nick Robinson in the 1998 class between those two crops. If hired,
Johnson would have a chance seven years later to coach the
versatile wing/forward known to teammates and coaches as
"Pops."
Johnson is a graduate of Boise State, where he played from
1974-78. His first two years he played under a young assistant
coach named Mike Montgomery.
| Trent Johnson College Coaching
Career |
| 1986-1989 |
Utah |
Assistant |
NIT*2 |
| 1989-1992 |
Washington |
Assistant |
|
| 1992-1996 |
Rice |
Assistant |
NIT |
| 1996-1999 |
Stanford |
Assistant |
NCAA*3 |
| 1999-2004 |
Nevada |
Head Coach |
NIT, NCAA |
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