Bennett denies contact with Indiana

It didn’t take long.

The rumors of the demise of the Tony Bennett era at Washington State started early Saturday morning, with a report on FOXSports.com that Indiana University had offered Bennett its head basketball coaching position.

Within hours, Bennett denied to ESPN that he had been in contact with Indiana and Washington State athletic director Jim Sterk stated no one had contacted the school asking for permission to speak to his coach.

“Tony has not been offered another job,” Sterk said when reached by phone Saturday, adding he had talked earlier in the day with Bennett, at home in Pullman.

Asked if any school had contacted him about speaking with Bennett, Sterk answered, “No,” adding, “Tony will have them – whoever it is, if institutionally they call – he’ll have them contact me first.”

The Fox report wasn’t the only one floating around.

The San Francisco Chronicle stated in Saturday’s edition: “Tony Bennett is expecting to leave the Cougars,” citing unnamed sources in the WSU athletic department. The paper added Bennett is considered one of two front-runners for the vacant California position.

Spokane attorney Brad Williams, who serves as Bennett’s agent, said no one from Indiana had contacted Bennett as of Saturday morning, when the two talked, and Williams hadn’t received any contact from Indiana either.

The Star also reported Indiana University athletic director Rick Greenspan was sighted at 6 p.m. Friday at the Hoosiers’ spring football practice, so any offer would have to have been made by telephone, an unlikely proposition according to WSU sources.

Indiana hopes to fill its head coaching position by Thursday, according to an ESPN report.

When asked about his future last Thursday, following the season-ending 68-47 defeat to North Carolina in the East Regional semifinals, Bennett declined to address the question, saying instead, “Right now, I’m the coach of Washington State. I want to talk about the seniors and what’s going on with this.”

He did, however, address WSU’s future.

“I understand that a lot of people say there is a ceiling at Washington State,” Bennett said in a hallway outside WSU’s Charlotte, N.C., locker room. “I don’t buy that.”

He understands it won’t be easy.

“There will be some rebuilding and recycling,” Bennett said. “Washington State is the kind of job where you have to rebuild and recycle and grow some kids up.

“The next step is to get us back to this point. Whether it’s a year, two years, whatever it takes, but we have to try to get back to this step, like we did last year, and get a step further and keep going.

“It’ll be a challenge, though. It will be hard.”

Sterk has been working to ease the challenge through fund-raising, recently asking Cougars boosters to increase their giving to a fund earmarked for the men’s and women’s basketball programs.

The athletic director wants to use charter travel for the teams and upgrade the money available to entice non-conference opponents to come to Pullman, among other program improvements.

When asked Saturday how the fund-raising was going, Sterk said, “It isn’t as significant as last year, but it’s just kind of getting started again.

“We just started it during the tournament last year. It picked up a few weeks after.”