Posted by Silent_Fulmer on April 24, 2008 at 5:59 p.m. (Suggest removal)

who

Posted by txsvol on April 24, 2008 at 7:15 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Lute's ex-wife has him in court for transferring $750,000 or thereabouts from their Charles Schwab joint account to his personal account the day following their filing divorce papers. He received the money from Nike, and they have a prenup. Doubt if Lute wants Kevin around any longer, as Lute intends to return to coaching after the post-divorce bickering is over. SAVol

Posted by UTfan4life on April 24, 2008 at 7:54 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Kevin O'Neill is a greatly underrated coach. I beleive he will find a opening somewhere.

Posted by buzz29 on April 24, 2008 at 8:03 p.m. (Suggest removal)

He'll find an opening somewhere until he finds the next opening. Hardly a model of reliability.

Posted by juicetke on April 24, 2008 at 9:09 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Underrated! What a joke. I have never seen a coach get more mileage from one sweet 16 appearance with Marquette. He has done absolutely nothing with any other team besides bore the audience to death.

I hope no kids are around the Arizona athletic office. They are bound to pick up some new words.

Posted by Bigger_Al on April 24, 2008 at 10:06 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Kevin just teaches ugly basketball. He is a great personality, recruiter and defensive coach, but man, how many games do his teams score in the 40's? Maybe he wins, but UGLY!

Someone told me they picked AZ over WVU in the tourney, and I said, "No way. AZ now plays UGLY ball, and you can't out-UGLY Bob Huggins!"

Maybe Kevin could take Tuscaloosa John's job?

Posted by bugman on April 24, 2008 at 11:18 p.m. (Suggest removal)

375,000 for an assistant coach????

Posted by toe.jams on April 24, 2008 at 11:36 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Kevin O'Neill is a used car salesman. He can recruit a team, coach defense, and destroy an offense. Kevin's ego destroys team chemistry.

Posted by bamacheats on April 25, 2008 at 12:34 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Kevin Oneill doesn't win ugly...he doesn't win period. He is the Isiah Thomas of college ball, a complete loser at every job he has ever taken.

Posted by superk on April 25, 2008 at 9:03 a.m. (Suggest removal)

He has not won anywhere AT ALL with the small exception of Marquette thus proving a blind hog will eventually find an acorn.How many jobs has he has since leaving UT? And how many of those has he retained?And how many of those did he leave with a winning record?

Posted by VolsorCat on April 25, 2008 at 10:22 a.m. (Suggest removal)

He is a JACKA$$!

Posted by wewhite on April 25, 2008 at 11:06 a.m. (Suggest removal)

But, but, but... GUUUUYS?! He knows MJ PERSONALLY! He talks with him, like, once a week or more! That's gotta count for somethin', right? I mean, it's MJ! DA MAN!!

Maybe he'll move over into the PR department.

Posted by juicetke on April 25, 2008 at 11:10 a.m. (Suggest removal)

wewhite: Are you thinking about Buzz Peterson or did Oneil know Jordan too. I know Buzz roomed with MJ in college and works for him at the Bobcats.

Posted by jrichas on April 25, 2008 at 11:42 a.m. (Suggest removal)

First of all, I doubt seriously whether any of you posters knew or know Kevin O'Neill personally. I did and do. He inherited an absolute mess when he came to UT. Most all of the players were on the verge of being ineligible and there was zero team discipline- the legacy of Wade Houston. I met Kevin at the 1993 Final Four in Charlotte, and he was a guest on my Chattanooga radio talk show from there via remote. He is salty for sure and is colorful to say the least. He is also a hard-nosed defensive oriented disciplinarian who was in process of building a foundation athletically AND academically for a fine program and excellent bunch of recruits that were inherited by Jerry Green. Kevin was at odds with Doug Dickey the control freak from the getgo. He decided to take the Northwestern job when they came after him mostly because of Dickey. Anyone who saw his Marquette team play in the NCAA regional finals here know what he was building at UT. I remember getting Kevin to speak at C J Black's Brainerd High School graduation, at which he gave one of the funniest yet profoundly motivational speeches I have ever heard. C J chose us over Roy Williams and Kansas because of that speech IMO. Kevin was an incredible recruiter- just relentless- and refused to buy players like most of his peers in the business. He just outworked them often being in the office till 4 AM writing notes to recruits all over the nation. He left a great base at UT. His teams here WERE boring, but at that point they had to win with defense because of lack of talent. With his incoming class he would have built a winner as did Jerry Green. I wish Kevin well in whatever he chooses.

Posted by GreerVol22 on April 25, 2008 at 12:23 p.m. (Suggest removal)

to borrow a phrase....yawn...

Posted by juicetke on April 25, 2008 at 12:44 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Congratulations you know Kevin Oneill. Can I touch you?

He's still fowl mouthed, overrated and coaches a boring style of basketball which were my initial points.

Ditto the yawn, greer.

Posted by TurboFan on April 25, 2008 at 1:09 p.m. (Suggest removal)

I remember listening to the KY broadcast of a UT-KY game in ONeill's last year when we were getting pounded by 40 points. The KY announcer said something to the effect of "I would have thought a Kevin ONeill coached team would be further along by this time."

ONeill definitely was a great recruiter and disciplinarian but he never got the respect out of his players, staff, administration or fans to make it work. I don't believe he would have.

Posted by superk on April 25, 2008 at 1:25 p.m. (Suggest removal)

jrichas, the problem with your post is......he never won.You are saying he won with defense. I say he didn't win but a few games, he didn't sniff the NCAA, and only got to the NIT once or twice. Sure he outrecruited UNC and Kansas for CJ Black. My question is,what did that get him? Nothing! CJ was a marginal D1 player at best.O'Neil had no talent. He recruited names and names only.The decent players that did sign never ever developed to their potential.Guys simply did not get better while at UT.How O'Neil coached teams have been to the NCAA or the NIT or the NBA playoffs since he left UT? How many collegians has he put into the pros?Suffice it to say he was a loud mouth who didn't really know how to lead a team.

Posted by juicetke on April 25, 2008 at 1:41 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Amen! Preach on Superk!

Posted by bamacheats on April 25, 2008 at 1:42 p.m. (Suggest removal)

I know Oneill, not well enough to call him up for lunch, but enough that he would remember. I like him o.k.
He is absolutely NOT head coaching material. He needs to check his ego and be one of the best assistants in college. Here's the facts:
Head coaching stats:
Marycrest - 17-14

Marquette - 86-62 (.581)

Tenn - 36-47 (.434)

Northwestern - 30-56 (.349)

Toronto - 33-49 (.402)

He gets a lot of pop from his last two years at Marquette in which he won 20 games. But remember, that was a conference that only lasted five years and their conference rpi was deplorable.

Who cares that he cusses...that he's not friendly...he loves to work and he loves to recruit. He just isn't cut out to be a head coach.

Posted by DanVegas on April 25, 2008 at 5:48 p.m. (Suggest removal)

I remember going to the games at UT when he was coach and fans would yell out how much they loved the guy. What happened to those fans?

Posted by General_Watermelon on April 25, 2008 at 5:53 p.m. (Suggest removal)

jrichas - you and Coach Huggins may be the only people on the planet that likes this guy.

Best defensive coach I have ever seen at UT, but also the biggest arsehole I ever met. I went to his coaches clinic. Man does he have a screw lose.
He ran a walk on the entire coaches clinic until he nearly died. Every so often he would scream at kid yelling you are embarrassing the entire f...ing hemosphere. What a Jerk.

Posted by General_Watermelon on April 25, 2008 at 5:56 p.m. (Suggest removal)

jrichas - also - not the only reason why O'Neill left UT. Ask his wife about the real reason.

Posted by maples on April 25, 2008 at 6:46 p.m. (Suggest removal)

You mean to say that someone actually married that freaky looking dude.

Posted by BillVol on April 26, 2008 at 12:50 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Great post, jrichas. People can bad mouth KO, but he did a lot for us. He is a big reason we have reached the heights we have now. We've never had a recruiter or as hard a worker as we had in KO. John Ward said that KO is the smartest coach he'd ever known. I wish Kevin the best. He did a TON for Tennessee.

Posted by bamacheats on April 26, 2008 at 1:11 a.m. (Suggest removal)

BillVol: I love talking to ignorants who make claims "He did a TON for Tennessee" but have no facts to back up those statements. What are yours?

Posted by johnlg00 on April 26, 2008 at 1:57 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Guess Lute wasn't pleased with what KO did to his team during Lute's absence. Clearly KO is a colorful, controversial person who people either love or hate, and it would seem that the latter group is the larger. A former UT player of his once told me that KO was "the most relentlessly negative person" he had ever met. He is at best a throwback to the days when a coach could get away with being a dictator. I have heard O'Neill speak when he was funny and charming, but he seemed not to be that way most of the time. Both a temper and a strong work ethic can be good in their place, but KO seemed to have a hard time expressing many of the other traits necessary to be a successful head coach in today's world.

Posted by kamikawa on April 27, 2008 at 12:04 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Agree with jrichas and johnlg00. Just a man out of place in the south.

Posted by jcvet on April 27, 2008 at 6:44 p.m. (Suggest removal)

I'll never forget listening to the post game radio show after a horrible loss at Vandy that I attended. A woman called in and told Oneill how embarrassed she was for her son as they sat way up behind TN's bench. She said she has never heard such language in her life. Her son was very disappointed. I was ashamed to be a Vol that nite.

Posted by General_Watermelon on April 28, 2008 at 12:31 a.m. (Suggest removal)

I predicted they would run off this arsehole in a year. For those of you who have never seen O'Neill up close or been to his practices, you should stop defending him. He's a bigger jerk than Bobby Knight.

Posted by brownsvillevol on April 28, 2008 at 11:14 a.m. (Suggest removal)

he did recruit well for tennessee but that's about it.

Posted by stevefrommemphis on April 28, 2008 at 12:50 p.m. (Suggest removal)

You have to admit that the way his departure from Tennessee was publicly announced was unusual. As I remember it, nobody knew for sure what he was doing until the attendant at a Pilot convenience store near McGhee-Tyson called a talk show to say that O'Neill "was just in here and bought a tank of gas and said he is headed to the airport to get on a plane to Chicago, and he's not coming back!"

Also, I remember when UT upset Vanderbilt at Nashville and he stood on his chair and gave a fist-pump toward the crowd in the end zone at the end of the game.

Posted by Volfantm on April 30, 2008 at 4:15 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Whether you like KO or not, doesn't this seem like unethical behavior by Arizona?