Donnie Tyndall had an impressive run in his time as the head coach at Morehead State.
After going 12-18 over all and 8-12 in the Ohio Valley Conference in his first season with the Eagles, Tyndall never again finished below .500 for the season -- a fairly impressive feat for a team that makes up the majority of their non-conference schedule with guarantee games -- and won at least 10 league games in each of his last five seasons. Tyndall also led Morehead State to two NCAA tournaments, orchstrated an upset of Louisville in the first round of the 2011 tournament and turned a player (Kenneth Faried) that had one other scholarship offer coming out of high school into a starter for an NBA playoff team as a rookie.
Not bad at all.
And it should be no wonder that Tyndall ended up capitalizing on that success by signing with Southern Miss to replace Larry Eustachy, who got a job with Colorado State.
Now, USM is far from what one would consider a dream coaching job. There is a reason that Eustachy left to take over a program that is at essentially the same level of basketball. But coaching the Golden Eagles does have some perks. From Rick Bozich’s blog:Here is one benefit of becoming the basketball coach at Southern Miss:
You receive a congratulatory text message from former Southern Miss QB Brett Favre.
“I haven’t met him yet, but I hope to after everything settles down,” said Donnie Tyndall, who left Morehead State to become the head basketball coach at Southern Miss. “He’s sent me a few texts.”
Favre’s still allowed to text people?
I can only hope that the messages Tyndall got from were different than the ones Jenn Sterger received.
Rob Dauster is the editor of the college basketball website Ballin’ is a Habit. You can find him on twitter @robdauster.