So you fire Rick Samuels. After 25 years, the athletic department decided that in order to be more competitive, it had to move into another direction.

Whether you agree or disagree with that call, it projects the image of moving forward. That’s fine.

During the month-long search, I, along with faculty, community members and everyone else out of the loop, was excited.

I couldn’t wait until the finalists were announced to hear the names of who would hopefully be taking Panther basketball to the next level.

“I think people underestimate what we have here,” director of athletics Rich McDuffie said. “Not many realize how good our situation is, and we should be proud of what we can do.”

With the overflow of people confirming that they applied for the job, I begin to believe McDuffie’s confidence of getting ‘the guy.’

With true apologies to the finalists here, I don’t think anybody is saying, “that’s your guy,” when talking about Gary Close, Greg Grensing and Mike Miller. They are probably saying, “who?”

My first two questions were, “who are these guys?” and “what are we thinking?”

That was my fear. Sure enough, it came true.

Some of the candidates who weren’t finalists are probably more notable nationally than our choices. There’s just no way around that fact. Our process from the outside seems laughable, but trust me, it’s not funny when it involves a six-figure program.

Illinois-Chicago associate head coach Mark Coomes is a big part of what was and still is Illinois basketball. Simply put, when you say Illinois basketball in Central Illinois, I guarantee you’ll find the name Mark Coomes more than once. Coomes has head coaching experiencing at Wabash Valley and Southern Indiana. Coomes recruited and coached NBA player Ken Norman at Wabash Valley. But there’s apparently no way he could recruit at Eastern. Along with Jimmy Collins, he was responsible and for recruiting Nick Anderson and Kendall Gill. You want to know there’s a perception that UIC is a dirty program; their score under the new NCAA’s Academic Progress Report (0 to 1000) was 981, 22 points higher than the national average and oh yeah, 58 points higher than EIU’s. Sorry Mark, I guess you’re not qualified but for the life of me I have no idea why.

Illinois assistant coach Jay Price – that’s right, we just told the head-assistant on the 2005 national runner up squad that he isn’t qualified to coach Eastern. Are you kidding me?

The only reason I can think we dropped Price from the list is that he didn’t want to concentrate on the position until the Illinois season was over. We penalized Price for either winning too much at Illinois or for being professional in the way he conducts himself. Those involved in this process should give themselves a huge pat on the back.

The ironic part of the whole situation is I couldn’t understand why Price would even consider this job; quite frankly, he can and will do better.

Jay Price will make EIU regret passing him over by either not scheduling us at the big program he eventually gets hired at or by blowing us out the first chance he gets.

Congratulations because here at Eastern we proved once again that we are incapable of handling a major decision.

In short, we did another big thing badly. I’m afraid that after this, the perception has gone from “I’m disappointed in Eastern” to “that’s typical Eastern.”