Geography and hiring coaches

Iowa's selection of Siena's Fran McCaffery on Sunday is not only a home-run hire for a downtrodden program; it's another blow to the notion that all choices must adhere to geographically based constructs. He's an "East Coast Guy" or a "West Coast Guy" is as not as silly or destructive as the rapper feuds that made headlines a decade ago, but it is generally a concept without merit.
In the summer of 1961, the University of North Carolina promoted a 29-year-old assistant coach to the top job. Said assistant was three years removed from his first gig in coaching, which included the direction of the golf team at the U.S. Air Force Academy, which didn't even have a campus much less a golf course at that point.
The young coach was born, raised and educated in Kansas. You know him as Dean Smith.
The hire worked out pretty well. It's just one example of how it's about how you get there, not where you're from.

As for McCaffery, he's got Midwest ties from 11 years as a Notre Dame assistant. His wife is from Minnesota. But that's not all that important. History says he'll turn around the Hawyeke program.

* As a 26-year-old, he coached Lehigh to the NCAA tournament in 1986.
* In 1999, he took the job at UNC Greensboro, which had lost 59 games in its three previous seasons. In his second year, the Spartans were in the NCAA tournament.
* When he took the Siena job in 2005, he had four scholarship players on the roster. The Saints are now three-time defending champions of the MAAC.

It's interesting to watch St. John's struggle to find a coach. The school has appeared burdened by the presumption that the next coach has to be a New York guy who can massage the seedy underbelly of the city's AAU crowd. Now comes word that the Johnnies are interviewing Steve Lavin, who is as West Coast as anybody can get. The guy lives two blocks from Venice Beach. But he'd be a great hire. I'm not sure it would be the best move for Lavin, who has a good thing going as an ESPN broadcaster, but ignorance of the geographic labels is the first step in the right direction for any school that needs to change its losing image.