Sauls out, Casto in?

Little-used guard Stephen Sauls, still suffering from the aftereffects of a concussion, has been granted a release from his scholarship so he can pursue opportunities closer to his home in Texas.

This is a move that has been speculated for some time, and most people are hoping the scholarship goes to DeAngelo Casto, an athletic big man from Ferris HS in Spokane who was the state player of the year.

He would certainly seem to be the best fit for the team, considering WSU’s already guard-heavy 2008 class. But with all the hype surrounding him, the Spokesman’s Vince Grippi has been strangely silent most of the year about Casto’s chances of playing for WSU next season, which I think should tell us something, since Casto played in the paper’s town.

Grippi says there are a number of options available for the scholarship, none of which, in his estimation, point to Casto:

Why is it so hard to believe Bennett?

Seth Kolloen over at Enjoy the Enjoyment offers a Husky fan/outsider’s view on Tony Bennett today in response to what Vince Grippi and I have written, saying he’s “completely shocked” that Bennett didn’t jump ship for another program.

“Now I’m not the national media, but, frankly, I don’t believe it either. Maybe I’m just pessimistic about human nature, but when you tell me someone is ‘different,’ it’s tough for me to take. The list of coaches, politicians, preachers, etc, etc, etc, who’ve professed one thing and done the complete opposite when the pressure got too great is beyond my ability to enumerate.”

Now, before you rail about him being a Husky fan and make some snide comment about anybody who’s not a Coug always being shocked that anyone wants to spend any time in Pullman, I’ll tell you this: Kolloen is always even-handed in his assessments of the Cougs, and, to be fair, he is correct in stating that there are so few examples of guys not chasing the bigger job that the skepticism is warranted.

However, for as hard as it is for Kolloen to believe Bennett’s different, it’s just as difficult for me to understand why it’s so hard for some people to comprehend that a guy — in fact, any person, not just Bennett — wouldn’t necessarily want to jump at the first “good” thing that comes calling. While Bennett’s not the egomaniac that a lot of other coaches are, he does ooze self confidence. And if you believe in your own abilities and think you’re good at something, why would you:

1. Presume that you “can’t” be as successful as you want to be where you’re at before you’ve even really had a chance to try?
2. Presume that you’re never going to reach the level of success you’ve had so far and therefore aren’t going to have an opportunity to move on to another great job at some point in the future when the timing is better?

I think Bennett truly believes he can create a long-term winner at WSU, and he wants to find out for himself that he can’t win a national championship here no matter what anyone else says. And I’m sure he believes that when it’s time to move on, it’ll be the right time, and there will be a great job that presents the appropriate challenge right there waiting for him.

The bottom line is that I think we Cougs are in a great position. He’s going to build this program for a couple of more years and either fall in love with Pullman — again hard for anyone who’s never gone to WSU to understand, but it happens more often than they think — and stay for a long time, or build a very good program that is ready made for the next coach.

Either way, we win.

Go read Vince Grippi this morning

If you don’t make the Spokesman-Review’s SportsLink a regular part of your reading, make sure you cruise on over there and check out this piece by Vince Grippi this morning.

Normally, Grippi just writes a little bit of analysis on different things, then passes along a bunch of links. This morning, though, he wrote an extended post on his thoughts on Tony Bennett. It pretty much fleshes out a lot of his personal perspective and feelings about Bennett and the coaching carousel, which he has been hinting about the entire season:

“It’s a vicious circle born out of the money college coaches make today and the vagabond existence most of them lead. But Bennett is about as far from a vagabond as you can find, and the money? Well, he is still shocked anyone would want to pay him nearly a million dollars a year to do his job. And those two elements are what most in the national media, who try to play kingmaker, don’t understand. They think Bennett is like everyone else, ready to jump at a ‘better job’ that offers more money and a chance to win the national championship.

“They don’t get a guy who thinks about his family first, second, third, ad infinitum. They don’t get a guy who is more than satisfied with the money he’s earning. They don’t get a guy who wants to win a national title, but at this point in his life welcomes the challenge of trying to win one with a certain type of player, players he can attract to Pullman. He’s different than the coaches they are used to dealing with, so they try to shove him into the coach-form they are used to. And it doesn’t work.”

It’s a great, great piece that reiterates what I’ve been saying ad nauseam this season: That Tony Bennett is different from other coaches, that his priorities aren’t the same as other coaches, and that this constant media speculation is born out of most reporters’ complete inability to comprehend that. My opinion was based solely off of outsider observations, just reading quotes and knowing a little bit about his value system. Grippi’s is based off of actual conversations, both on and off the record.

Will the national media ever believe Bennett? Probably not.

But is it more important that the national media believe him, or that we believe him? I’ll go for the latter. And that’s good enough for me.