The Illini Nation was stunned last night as its star center Meyers Leonard announced he will forgo his junior season and enter the NBA Draft. This announcement only puts more pressure on the Illini’s newly hired coach John Groce. Groce, who comes from the much-smaller Ohio University, was a surprising hire to many of the Illini faithful. After Bruce Weber’s firing, Illinois failed to hire Virginia Commonwealth head coach Shaka Smart and Butler’s Brad Stevens. The people of Champaign are looking for answers as to why Athletic Director Mike Thomas hired Groce instead of searching for more high-profile options. On Monday in front of a Journalism 400 lecture, Chancellor Phyllis Wise helped answer some of those questions.
“Mike Thomas is the Athletic Director and he reports directly to me. I was very involved in hiring him. My philosophy in general is that you hire the best people you possibly can and then you tell them to go forward and do good. And you stay out of there day to day decisions. In all of these big coach decisions, Mike Thomas has come to me multiple times during the process and told me that he was considering doing this and was thinking about doing that, what did I think. I have to tell you, if I had to do what his job is, I couldn’t do it because I don’t know enough about athletics to know exactly what he should be doing. But when he presented arguments to me for doing what he wanted to do, I felt that they were right and I felt that they were right for the longer term of our athletics department and athletics in general. So I did not try and second guess him. I believe he’s done a great job.
Although Wise spoke of how sports are not her area of expertise, she still understood the steps Thomas took in hiring the new coaches.
“I do know about the process he’s gone through in terms of searching and recruiting for the coaches that he has selected. It has been a very carefully thought through process. There have been faculty, there have been other staff, other people on each of the search committees that have gone and really called through the list of people who we thought we could recruit and then interviewed each one of them to see that they were willing to make a move.”
The Illini, who have never had a minority men’s basketball or football coach, will remain with that distinction after hiring football coach Tim Beckman and Groce who are both white. Wise indicated that even though a minority was not hired, numerous minority coaches were considered for the open positions.
“The bottom line is what I know is that Mike Thomas tried very very hard, both in the football coach as well as the men’s basketball coach and the women’s basketball coach, to look at people of color who are qualified. We never look at people of color who aren’t qualified. But qualified to be in the Big Ten at this level of athletics. The Black Coaches Association, the BCA, has a report card that they check on how many people you talked with, how many people you met with, whether or not an offer was made, and they have several other criteria and there’s that kind of report card on whether or not you looked at people who were qualified of color. And Mike Thomas has gotten an A on every report card for the last five years that he’s been an Athletic Director.”
Although Thomas has received criticism for his coaching decisions for men’s basketball and football, Wise fully supports her AD.
“I believe he’s done a great job. And obviously the results will be seen over the next few seasons.”
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