Sports

Penders time runs thin

March Madness took the nation by storm last week, giving college basketball fans their first taste of the frenzied, 65-team NCAA Tournament that produces a national champion in less than three weeks.

Meanwhile, fans of the UH men’s basketball team are experiencing their own version of March Madness. Unfortunately for them, this madness will last well past March, and it comes without a shot at postseason glory.

This madness comes as a result of growing frustration with a program that’s lately been good for 20 wins and little else. A program that made its last NCAA Tournament appearance in 1992. A program that ended its recent campaign with a demoralizing 49-45 loss to Oregon State in the first round of the lowly College Basketball Invitational on Wednesday.

Tom Penders has been the architect of the UH program for five seasons. But some fans think it might be time for Athletics Director Dave Maggard to make a coaching change.

It’s highly possible that the program has gone as far as it will go under Penders’ watch. If that’s the case, bringing in some fresh blood might be what’s needed to complete the work that Penders has started.

Yet, the argument for making a change this year isn’t overly strong. Although Penders hasn’t been great, he hasn’t been too shabby, either.

Penders, who has three years left on his contract, is 102-61 during his tenure with the Cougars, including three seasons of 20 or more wins. He has led them to three upsets of Top 25 teams. If you count the Cougars’ two trips to the CBI, he has directed them to four postseason appearances, including berths in the National Invitational Tournament from 2005-06.

‘Turnaround Tom’ has been just that, reviving a UH program that had previously been saddled with head coaching disasters in Alvin Brooks, Clyde Drexler and Ray McCallum. Now that the preliminary turnaround is complete, fans would like to see ‘Turnaround Tom’ become ‘Tournament Tom.’ For the record, they’re referring to the ‘Tournament Tom’ that has 10 NCAA Tournament appearances on his r’eacute;sum’eacute;.

Maggard also would like to see a little more of ‘Tournament Tom.’

‘If we’re not good enough to be in the NCAA or the NIT, we will not participate in the CBI,’ Maggard said Thursday in an interview with Houston television station KRIV Channel 26. ‘We have to continue to have expectations to be in the NCAA or the NIT. Our expectation and goal should always be the NCAA.’

Maggard’s statement might not have been intended as a warning to Penders, but it’s not exactly a vote of confidence, either. Penders has been in the coaching business long enough to know Maggard’s patience with appearances in second-tier postseason tournaments has run its course.

Of course, Penders is doing everything he can to get the Cougars (21-12, 10-6 in Conference USA this season) to the NCAA Tournament. But he’s been hampered by a lack of top-notch recruits, including highly-talented big men, membership in a conference that would be irrelevant without Memphis, an apathetic (or pathetic, if you will) fan base and other unfortunate circumstances, such as a devastating foot injury suffered by former point guard Lanny Smith in 2006.

Still, one gets the sense Penders is running out of time. Next season could be his last with the Cougars if they fail to gain serious consideration for an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament.

A coach at a prestigious program such as Kentucky or North Carolina would have long received the boot had he gone five years without an appearance in the NCAA Tournament. But UH, long removed from the glory days of legendary coach Guy V. Lewis, no longer qualifies as a prestigious program; it simply has a prestigious history. Thus, Penders has a little more leeway with the Cougars.

However, that leeway grows smaller by the day, along with Penders’ chances of being the coach who leads UH back to the Big Dance.

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