By Kevin Sweeney

Today was supposed to be a quiet day without college basketball.

It has been anything but that.

The coaching carousel continued to spin Monday afternoon, as Jon Rothstein of FanRag Sports is reporting that Cameron Dollar has been fired from his post as the head coach at Seattle University. Dollar finishes his tenure at Seattle with a 107-138 record, but will be remembered for helping lead the transition from Division 2 back to Division 1. Dollar is the only coach since the school’s retransition to Division 1.

Before Seattle, Dollar was an assistant at Washington under Lorenzo Romar. He brought the Redhawks onto the national scene with wins over Utah and Oregon State in his first season en route to Seattle becoming the first program to ever record a .500+ winning percentage in its first season of Division 1 play. He also led Seattle to a pair of College Basketball Invitational Tournaments in the 2014-15 and 2016-17 seasons. However, Seattle struggled this season to a 13-17 mark and a 6th place finish in the WAC, likely leading to his departure.

While Seattle lacks the recent success of other mid-major vacancies, the position still has its advantages. For one, the Redhawks play many of their home games in KeyArena, the former home of the Seattle SuperSonics.

There a few candidates that come to mind immediately when I consider this vacancy. One would be current Boise State assistant John Rillie. Rillie has helped lead Boise State to the top of the Mountain West despite being new to the conference, and has deep ties to the Pacific Northwest. Another candidate could be Tim LaComb, the current associate head coach at BYU. One wild card would be Brandon Roy. Roy, a former NBA star for the Portland Trail Blazers who saw his career get derailed by injuries, is now a highly successful high school coach. He’s young, a great basketball mind, and would energize the program. However, he’s not nearly qualified, so it remains to be seen whether he would even be considered for the vacancy.

Other candidates that have been mentioned in connection with the position are former Portland State and Washington State head coach Ken Bone, as well as former Stanford, LSU, & TCU head man Trent Johnson. Both of those guys would be more than qualified for the position, but might be a little old to want to build a program basically from the ground up.

Dollar certainly isn’t finished in the coaching business. At just 41 years old with a good reputation in the business, he’ll likely have a multitude of options for next season and beyond. It’s possible he could go back to Washington or some other Power 5 school as an assistant, or he could seek out another head coaching position somewhere else.