Patrick Reusse: Coaching situation at U ever more complicated

Joel Maturi had to be feeling as though he was standing in tall clover on March 23, 2007. The University of Minnesota athletic director was about to make it official that Tubby Smith had agreed to leave Kentucky to become the men's basketball coach for the Gophers.

Two months earlier, Maturi had hired Tim Brewster to replace the fired Glen Mason as football coach. Brewster's over-the-top rhetoric was playing well with the maroon sweater crowd -- the people who would be occupying the high-priced seats at a new stadium in a couple of years.

As Smith was being introduced at Williams Arena, Don Lucia's hockey team was in Denver, where it would attempt to advance to another Frozen Four. The Gophers were coming off WCHA titles in both the regular season and in the playoffs.

It had not been a great winter for Pam Borton, the women's basketball coach. Four important players had left the program in the spring of 2006, leaving mediocrity in their wake for the 2006-07 season. But her résumé did have the four years from 2003 through 2006, when the Gophers were 8-4 in four NCAA appearances.

Overall, things couldn't have been looking much brighter for Maturi with the four coaches making big money: Smith was one of the 10 biggest coaching names in Division I basketball.

Brewster clearly was relentless as a recruiter and a promoter. Lucia had spent the season dominating the WCHA. Borton's program was regaining its footing after the mass defections.

Three years later, Maturi's situation with his costly four has gotten more complicated. Consider:

The fact that the university is committed to compensating him with $8 million -- plus bonuses and guaranteed raises -- does not seem to have made Smith content to fulfill his contract.

Behind the scenes, Smith has become more insistent that Maturi produce a practice facility -- and more frustrated when told by the AD that, as a priority, it ranks behind a new Siebert Field for John Anderson's long-deprived baseball program.

What's obvious is that Smith will listen to any team in a power conference that wants to bring a job offer. And with the tensions over a practice facility, suspensions and ineligibilities, Maturi might sleep easier if his "power coach" accepts a ransom from Nike's Phil Knight to go to Oregon.

• The Gophers are 6-18 in the Big Ten in Brewster's three seasons, yet the coach was able to convince Maturi of the need for a contract extension to protect recruiting. He's now signed through 2013 at $1 million per year.

He starts collecting bonuses if the Gophers win seven regular-season games. Bad news with Play for Brew: It would only cost $200,000 to fire him.

• Maybe it's the Iron Range connection, but insiders say Maturi (Chisholm) continues to have high admiration for Lucia (Grand Rapids) -- even though things came apart after The Don's Gophers lost to North Dakota in the 2007 West Region final.

Since then, Lucia's lads haven't won an NCAA game, they are 33-37-14 in the WCHA and have finished seventh, fifth and seventh in the standings. It has to be killing Maturi that his guy Lucia, in three years, has managed to transform the Yankees of college hockey into the fourth-best team in Minnesota.

• Borton's Gophers were picked to finish third in a vote of Big Ten coaches before this season. They finished 11th.

Maturi has no option to address this severe decline in performance and attendance, for two reasons: A) Borton has a contract through 2014 that pays her roughly $500,000 per year, and B) she is well-protected by a university administration that is willing to overlook plummeting attendance and a quality of play that gives shoddy a bad name.

Tubby's tense, Coach Brew's getting heat, Lucia's on the ropes and Borton's looking up at the entire league.

Patrick Reusse can be heard noon-4 weekdays on AM-1500 KSTP. • preusse@startribune.com