Bennett all but locked up

PULLMAN – There are many details left to be hammered out, but Washington State was in no mood to wait for someone to pluck its coach with a plum offer.

The school announced Wednesday that it has reached an agreement in principle to restructure the contract of men’s head basketball coach Tony Bennett, whose star is on the rise after leading the Cougars to the second round of the NCAA tournament in his first year as head coach.

“It’s said by a lot of people that if you can have a good year, boy, this is a place where you’ve got to take a look to go elsewhere. It’s a hard place,” Bennett said. “I don’t feel that way. I think the journey has just started. … We don’t want to be just a flash in the pan.”

In a hastily assembled news conference with athletic director Jim Sterk appearing in person and Bennett over the phone from Salt Lake City en route to the Final Four in Atlanta, the two announced that the framework for a seven-year deal is in place, extending Bennett’s contracted tenure through the 2013-14 season.

“We’re thrilled, obviously, to continue the momentum of the program,” Sterk said. “It’ll take a little bit of time to cross the T’s and dot the I’s, but we plan to work on that after the Final Four.”

Sterk declined to go into specifics about the nature of the contract since negotiations are still ongoing, but Bennett has told Sterk that he intends to return next season with the new deal in hand. The athletic director suggested that it could take as much as a month to complete the paperwork before the parties can sign on the dotted line.

Sources in the athletic department have indicated that the contract will probably pay Bennett somewhere between $600,000 and $700,000 in base salary and collateral compensation next season, a significant boost from the $375,000 he was scheduled to make in the second year of the contract he signed after ascending to the head coaching job last spring.

The deal will probably also include a retention bonus should Bennett stay in Pullman for a yet-to-be-determined length of time. Other new incentives that aren’t in his current contract are a possibility as well, and Sterk said that deferred compensation will also end up being used as a part of the contract to help spread out the financial burden on the department. The team’s assistant coaches are also going to receive a pay raise, but after all of that Bennett and his staff are likely to remain among the lower-salaried basketball coaches in the Pac-10.

“We’re not extending (our budget),” Sterk said. “We’re not putting the department at risk. What we needed to do was reward (Tony) and ensure continuity.”

Bennett’s buyout, which was a paltry $50,000 under the terms of the current contract, will go up significantly with the new agreement, but an exact number has not been released. Sterk was never contacted by another athletic department for permission to speak with Bennett about other coaching jobs, but a source close to the situation said the 37-year-old coach, largely through his agent, was contacted by Michigan and Iowa about their head coaching vacancies. Michigan was especially vigorous in its pursuit of Bennett, and it appears that he was one of a handful of coaches being considered by that prestigious program.

“I don’t want to go into it. I really don’t,” Bennett said, when asked specifically about the Michigan job. “I had no conversations with athletic directors or anything.”

Bennett did confirm that he had multiple opportunities to interview with other schools, but turned them down when he decided to stay with the Cougars.

“I let them know – I’m probably not a great negotiator – that my plan is to be back here,” Bennett said. “I was leaning toward coming back here (after the season). I just wanted to think about some stuff, take a moment.”

Cougars players, who had been adamant and consistent during the season about the fact that they expected Bennett to return, were both relieved and pleased to have their coach tell them directly that he would be back.

“I never thought he was going to leave because he’s such a loyal person and I know he loves it here,” Daven Harmeling said. “From an outsider’s perspective, it may have looked like he’d want to explore other options but we were always confident that he’d be back.”

As for the timing of the news conference, Sterk and WSU seemed anxious to stage the announcement before the Final Four, where many coaching interviews take place and countless rumors are started about possible job changes.

Even with a large portion of the negotiating still to be done, Sterk seemed pleased that he could take his flight to Atlanta without worrying about whether his head coach would be coming back with him after the weekend.

“It was a high priority for me, I’ll tell you that,” said Sterk, who was in touch with both outgoing WSU President V. Lane Rawlins and incoming President Elson Floyd about the Bennett contract. “This is an endorsement that you can have success here.”