Everything that is wrong with college basketball is highlighted in the saga that has Duke basketball associate head coach Jai Lucas leaving the team after its regular season finale against North Carolina.
Hours before the Blue Devils battled Illinois inside Madison Square Garden in late February it had been reported that Lucas would be the next head coach at Miami.
Jon Scheyer addressed the reports after the Duke win and ironically enough his team played the Hurricanes in its next outing but things had quieted down surrounding Lucas until Wednesday when the deal became official.
However, the biggest update came when it was reported that Lucas would be leaving Durham after Duke's game against the Tar Heels on Saturday night and would not be on the bench for either the ACC or NCAA Tournaments in order to begin his duties with the Hurricanes.
There have been instances of college football assistant coaches agreeing to become the head coach of another program but finishing the year with their current school if they had the chance to win a title. Yes, college athletics are different from the pros, but it has even been seen in the NFL this year when Philadelphia Eagles offensive coordinator Kellen Moore was set to become the New Orleans Saints head coach but remained in Philadelphia with the Eagles were in the midst of a Super Bowl run.
Yet this feels like the first time that a college basketball assistant is leaving his current team – who is the favorite to win the National Championship – before the season comes to an end.
The biggest reason why Jai Lucas is leaving Duke is because the transfer portal opens March 24. If he wants to try and build Miami into a winning program quickly, he needs to be focused on recruiting for his new school and not game planning for the school he is set to leave in weeks.
It’s not Lucas’ fault that he has to call it quits when the team arrives back from Chapel Hill. It’s not Jon Scheyer’s fault, either.
It’s the NCAA’s fault that they can’t properly schedule its offseason to begin when its actual season ends -- which only seems like common sense.
There are differences from professional sports and collegiate sports – and that’s a good thing – but since college athletics is now in a system of free agency, why does that free agency process not start after the completion of the season?
NFL teams cannot sign free agents on January 15 when a handful of other teams are still competing in the playoffs, so why should college basketball programs be allowed to do so?
This entire problem could have been avoided if the transfer portal opens the Thursday after the National Championship. Let everyone enjoy the Final Four and the hard work and success of the teams that made it there before the chaos begins of portal season -- it would give other schools the chance to make coaching hires in a timely fashion and let them settle into the jobs too.
Transfer portal season will come eventually and it could lend for a much more intriguing offseason if the portal opens later and it would have avoided this mess in Durham if anyone at the NCAA thought about these things logically.
Instead, Duke is losing a key member of its coaching staff before its biggest games of the season.