Doug Doughty

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Editor's note: Doug Doughty has made a belated decision to staff the Virginia Tech-UVa baseball game and his column will be posted later Friday or early Saturday.

Now that Kentucky men’s basketball coach Tubby Smith has moved to Minnesota, does anybody believe that Virginia couldn’t have had Smith in 2005?

Smith had his price, a contract of $3 million per year or more, and UVa knew where it was going to get the money. Smith was serious about taking the job, but UVa President John Casteen said “no.”

At least that’s what I’ve been led to believe.

Virginia fans cringe at the slightest hint that Casteen is sticking his nose into athletics, but, in this case, it was the right move, though not neceesarily for the reasons Casteen made it.

The objection was not to hiring Smith but to paying the kind of yearly salary that Smith would have commanded. Casteen did not feel that he could face his faculty if he approved that kind of contract.

As it turns out, UVa was able to get Dave Leitao for five years at $925,000 per year and it’s hard to say now that Smith would have merited three or four times that much. I can’t imagine that anybody is unhappy with Leitao, unless it’s the university censor.

In any case, I already had planned to talk to Oak Hill Academy coach Steve Smith, who is on the verge of a sixth USA Today national championship, and that was before the Tubby Smith story broke. Steve Smith grew up 15 minutes from Rupp Arena and I couldn’t wait to hear his take on the situation.

“I think he wanted some peace of mind,” Smith said. “He had the for-sale signs in his yard Saturday morning?”

Smith knew Saturday that he was going to take another job?

No, Smith said. People had placed for-sale signs in his yard overnight.

“It was common knowledge in Lexington,” Smith said, “but my brother drove by and saw it. I asked him, ‘For verification, drive by there.’

“He was in Lexington. He drove by. He said, ‘Oh, yeah, they’re in his yard.’ I guess Tubby didn’t want to walk out and personally, himself, take them out.

“I said, ‘How many?’ And my brother goes, ‘A lot.’

“I said, ‘You talking about 10?’ He said, ‘No, a lot more than 10.’ People put ‘em there. Fans. Adoring fans.”

Steve Smith agreed that Virginia could have had Tubby Smith.

“They could have,” Oak Hill’s coach said. “The story I was hearing, it was close. Very, very close.”

IF TUBBY SMITH was going to get $3 million-plus from Virginia, presumably his compensation package at Minnesota will be somewhere in that range, if not higher.

It’s mind-boggling to think what Smith’s successor at Kentucky will command. If the Wildcats inquire about Florida coach Billy Donovan, once a Kentucky assistant, where do talks start, $4 million per year? Maybe $5 million?

Names being mentioned Friday on ESPN included Gonzaga’s Mark Few and Marquette’s Tom Crean. Few’s name comes up at least partly due to the time Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart spent in the Northwest as the AD at Oregon State from 1998-2002.

Kentucky isn’t the only high-profile job that has come open. Nevada Las-Vegas coach Lon Krueger has been mentioned in connection with the opening at Michigan, where Tommy Amaker was dismissed last week. Other names include Xavier’s Sean Miller and Oregon’s Ernie Kent, who has had uncanny success in his recruiting of the Detroit area.

How about Steve Smith, whose last four teams have compiled a record of 152-4, including three national championships? The only year in the last four that Oak Hill wasn’t first in the USA Today final poll, it finished 40-1 in 2006– the first of consecutive 40-1 seasons.

Oak Hill’s only loss in 2006 was to Montrose Christian, which had Kevin Durrant and Greivis Vazquez – the same Kevin Durrant who had played for Oak Hill the previous year.

Michigan could hire Steve Smith and certainly improve its chances of landing Alex Legion, a 6-4 shooting guard who committed to the Wolverines as a junior at Detroit Country Day and then again after enrolling at Oak Hill, eventually signing during the fall.

Rival coaches have been calling Oak Hill to inquire about Legion’s availability since the Amaker departure, but Legion has not yet received a release from his letter-of-intent and Michigan is unlikely to grant one until its new coach can make his pitch.

Legion averaged 19.6 points for Oak Hill, second on the team behind Duke-bound Nolan Smith’s 22.4. Legion had a team-high 80 3-pointers and Smith doesn’t think he missed a free throw after mid-January.

Oak Hill’s third-leading scorer was junior point guard, Brandon Jennings, who will be joined next year by travel teammate Malik Story, a 6-5 Artesia, Calif., junior who announced his 2007-2008 plans while his team was still in the playoffs. Jennings and Story both have committed to Southern Cal.

OAK HILL also has been mentioned with 6-10 Richmond Benedictine junior Ed Davis, speculation dismissed as “total rumors” by Smith.

“I’ve never talked to him,” Smith said. “He came to a game of ours last year and introduced himself. That was last year. We played his team this year but I didn’t actually talk to the kid, other than to shake his hand and say, ‘Good game.’

“I’ve had no contact with him, his mom, his dad, anybody. He might have said something to somebody else, but not to me. … I bet he stays where he is.”