After Scott Stricklin fired Rick Stansbury he had Marcus Grant, Phil Cunningham and George Brooks clean out their offices. What has interested me is how Scott decided to hire Rick Ray. Scott interviewed Kermit Davis at the final four. The first time Scott interviewed Rick Ray was at the final four on Friday. He was announced as our head coach on Sunday. Bill Self the head coach of Kansas had called Scott to interview his top assistant Joe Dooley. Dooley had been Selfs top assistant for years and very much wanted the MSU job. Scott would not interview him. Scott offered the job to 4 other people before Rick Ray. People would not take the job because of their concern in following Rick Stansbury and his winning an average of 21 games a year. Scott also said we would not involve AAU basketball and wanted to "clean up the program". Of course the program was never on probation under either Richard Williams or Rick Stansbury but we currently are on probation in football under Dan Mullen. Which brings me to Rick Ray. How did Scott decide to hire a coach at Clemson who was coming off a 16 and 15 record? He had no connections to Mississippi or the SEC. He had never been a head coach before or sucessfully recruited players from the South. I asked many successful high school and college coaches right after we hired him and nobody had heard of him. At this point Rick Ray is our coach but in the future if he is not our head coach do you feel confident with Scott Stricklin making the coaching hire?