There has been no official confirmation from Oklahoma or from Porter Moser, but it is now being reported widely that they two sides have reached an agreement for Moser to become the next Oklahoma head coach. This makes a lot of people who predicted Moser would not leave Loyola look a bit silly.
Money is usually the determining factor. So unless Moser pulls a Dana Altman, it looks like he is gone to Oklahoma (
recall that Altman accepted the head coaching job at Arkansas in 2007, then quit and returned to Creighton a day and a half later).
Oklahoma is one of the richest college sports programs in the country. A USA Today survey from a couple years ago ranked their athletic budget #8 among all colleges-
https://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances
Most of that money is derived from football, but it allows Oklahoma to spend lavishly on all their sports. Beside the doubling or tripling of his salary, Moser will have a recruiting budget that will dwarf any school in the MVC, and he will be able to pay each of his assistant coaches hundreds of thousands of dollars more than what assistants in the MVC earn.
It will be interesting to see if he takes any of his current assistants with him. He lost his top assistant coach (Associate Head Coach Brendan Mullins) 2 years ago when Mullins left to join his brother at SIU. Now his assistants are
Jermaine Kimbrough, who has been an assistant coach at various colleges for over 20 years, but has been at Loyola for only 2 years,
Drew Valentine, who is in his 4th year with Moser, and whose claim to fame is that he is the less heralded brother of Michigan State and Chicago Bulls guard Denzel Valentine, and
Matt Gordon, who has been at Loyola the longest (this was his 7th season as an assistant coach). He is an Illinois State grad, but never played college basketball.
Loyola coaching staff-
https://loyolaramblers.com/sports/me...roster-coaches
IMO, Moser would be smart to retain Jim Molinari, who was an assistant under Lon Kruger. But I would expect he will most likely hire an all new staff.
I wonder how many players from Loyola will enter the transfer portal now
Would Cameron Krutwig consider transferring to Oklahoma for his final year of eligibility?