Agree with MacConnell, Perri, Brown, Gallagher, Martelli, Bopp, and Kuntz.
Jason Smith at Brewster is outside the box. Not against it, but it's a different world telling the elite HS players in the country that playing for you = big-time college basketball or even NBA to Durham, NH just hoping to win a recruiting battle against Binghamton or Northeastern. It is a very high risk, high reward because there is no doubt that he's a very good coach.
Cain at Keene is a no for me. There are way better D3 coaches out there who win at higher levels or jobs that have challenges and advance further in the postseason. Not that Keene doesn't have challenges (it's in Keene), but the Little East is a league where you can basically cast a 200-mile net in any direction and find enough guys who are pretty good to win your games. Keene has a great program, and Cain inherited one, but we all saw firsthand how a Little East coach when Walsh made the jump to D1 in terms of on-court coaching. And Walsh had D1 experience! This guy doesn't have any, while I don't think it's the be-all-end-all if you're not winning at a seriously high level, I think it matters that you've done it before in D1.
As for Schnieder...he'll have to ask his boss if he has future plans to move to Worcester or somewhere else. If yes, he's the internal candidate and probably the favorite at UVM, but, I do not believe he would be a lock. There are some other factors at play and not just the off-court stuff people know about. It depends on which university stakeholders decide to have input on any potential UVM change. However, at this current moment in time, I don't foresee John Becker coaching anywhere besides UVM next year, so again, if he wants to be a head coach, and legitimately he can be a candidate at UNH, you have to go for it.
I'm not going to defend Sydney Johnson's coaching career. I think it's totally average, and he's not terribly inspiring but I don't think he'd be a disaster at UNH either. He'd probably be just as good as Herrion has been on the whole (winning 44% of his conference games), and I think bringing a personality like him into the fold might help the athletic department especially when it comes to schmoozing with any donors or people who might fork over money. And, Fairfield, while I agree you should be somewhat successful there, they haven't been to the NCAAs since 1997 and that might have been the biggest fluke conference tournament run ever. Paul Cormier-coached team that went 11-19 and 2-10 in MAAC play won the conference tournament, save for Holy Cross under Carmody a few years ago. They really kinda lucked into having a special coach for the time they did (Cooley), and he only got to an NIT. Now, they have a brand new facility and people do care there in the administration, but it seems they can't get out of their own way, at least on the outside. To me, it seems like a gig that's challenging because nobody is able to get it right, which then leads me to believe there's more going on, or they're in the wrong league if they have different priorities.
