Biggest Surprise In Basketball Today - Lon Kruger Is Retiring From Oklahoma And College Hoops Is About To Get Wild

First things first, Rothstein tweeting this in the heart of NBA Trade Deadline day is why he's the king. The scoop game doesn't sleep for anyone in college basketball. Love that he just snuck this in here. Second, this is fucking massive. Lon Kruger is one of the best coaches in the game. He truly might be the most underrated one too. He's been at Oklahoma since 2011 and took them to a Final Four. He had guys like Buddy and Trae Young. He made the Tournament all but two years at a football school, where expectations really aren't that crazy. But Kruger's entire career is damn impressive. Took UNLV to a Sweet 16, Florida to a Final Four and Kansas State to an Elite Eight. All he did was win. 

But what this is going to do is really make college hoops wild. We're about to see the coaching carousel start off even more. Right now we have Indiana, Marquette, DePaul and Oklahoma with open jobs. Marquette and Indiana are obviously the two best. We know about Indiana, Marquette has had success, has a ton of money and strong facilities. It's a good job. DePaul is likely going to hire Kenny Payne. Then there's Oklahoma. It's only had three coaches since 1994 which is kind of wild. It's had a decent amount of success as well making two Final Fours since 2000 to go with two more Elite Eights and another Sweet 16. That's successful for a football school where expectations for the basketball program isn't crazy.

So now the obvious question is who the hell takes this job? If they stay internally this is an assistant on staff: 

Then there are the mid-major coaches that make sense: 

But what about high majors. Remember there was a report yesterday that Mark Turgeon is looking for a power-5 job in the Midwest: 

Turgeon is from Kansas, so this gets him pretty close to home. He also wouldn't have the same expectations that he's had at Maryland. I don't know if Oklahoma would really want Turgeon or go after someone bigger if they go this route, but this is the job that Turgeon should go hard after if he's serious about leaving. Obviously if they do go with Turgeon that opens up another huge job. 

Then there are some other candidates. I wouldn't be surprised if BYU's Mark Pope makes a run here. We've seen Bobby Hurley's name pop up with DePaul, could it happen here? They could go completely off the radar and pull someone in that we aren't even debating because it's truly a good job. 

All I know is this is the one that can absolutely start the massive coaching carousel. As for why he's retiring? Who knows, Norlander says it happened a year early. But there is this video of his son calling him to tell him about the UNLV head coaching job, which Lon held before Oklahoma. Maybe he just wants to go watch his son coach and be around his family since he's moving to UNLV: