Blame of Moccia in Painter flirtation doesn't fit

The beauty – and I use that word in its most sarcastic sense – of using sources to form the basis of an insider report is that you can turn one thing into something entirely different.

As an example I draw upon my long-ago junior high youth and a story I heard about shop class. The assignment, as I was told, was to construct a small wooden box – replete with fitted lid. The kind of thing your dad could put on his dresser to hold things like cuff links, his watch when he wasn’t wearing it.

Except that it took some real skill to make sure the box and its lid fit snugly together. More skill than many a young wood-working student actually had.

So when bottom and top did not fit well together, you simply threw away the top, cut four groves in the edge of what remained of the box and called it an ashtray. And never mind that ashtrays should not be made of wood.

I was reminded of this when I read a posting on the website Sportsbybrooks.com that – built upon the word of unnamed sources – blamed the problems Missouri athletic director Mike Alden had hiring a basketball coach upon former MU senior associate athletic director (now the AD at SIU-Carbondale) Mario Moccia.

Here is the nut graph of that post:
“Around the time Mike Anderson departed for Arkansas, former Missouri senior associate AD and current SIU Athletic Director Mario Moccia told Alden there was a chance he could help influence (Matt) Painter to depart Purdue for Mizzou.

Somewhat reassured by Moccia that a courtship of the former SIU coach was a worthwhile endeavor, Painter was head coach of the Salukis in 2004, Alden dove headfirst into the pursuit of Purdue’s highest profile employee.”

The posting ultimately got around to implying that Alden was being misled by Moccia and played by Painter, who never had any intention of taking the Missouri job as he hoped to force concessions out of Purdue.

Meanwhile, Missouri missed out on hiring Brian Gregory, the Dayton coach who took the job at Georgia Tech after supposedly letting Alden know he was interested in Missouri.

Intrigued, I talked to Moccia, whom I have known since his days at Mizzou. Something Sportsbybrooks.com apparently did not do. And I suggest this because after telling Moccia of the report, Moccia asked me who “this guy” was.

Moccia didn’t ask to go off the record. He admitted he knew about Painter’s interest in Missouri, that interest expressed to Moccia nearly a year previously while Mike Anderson was still the MU coach.

Moccia told me he was asked by Missouri to further help in its investigation of Painter that resulted in talks about Painter coming to Missouri.

Moccia did that because of his still-close relationship with Alden. "I love the guy," Moccia said.

Painter ultimately turned down what I believe was an offer in the area of $2.3 million a season to come to Missouri. But, Moccia said, only after Purdue – at the 11th hour – decided it had to match that offer and promise Painter it would provide whatever he needed to stay at his alma mater. The kind of things it had withheld from Painter previously, which helped create Painter’s consideration of leaving his alma mater.

It was not, Moccia said, a case of Painter playing Missouri. And that is the way I saw it as well. Or of Painter playing Moccia, he said.

Painter seemed serious enough about Missouri that he met with Alden and the MU search committee in Florida while on vacation. But when you get the same money, the same commitment, and don’t have to uproot your family and move to a new job, most people would stay.

Then there is the assumption that Gregory’s two NCAA Tournament teams in eight years at Dayton would have made him rise to the top of Mike Alden’s candidate list.

Hey, admittedly it was one better than the one NCAA Tournament appearance in seven years at Miami by Frank Haith, the coach Alden ultimately hired.

It seems arguable the hue and cry Haith’s selection caused would have been any less had Gregory been Missouri’s choice.

But heck, when you’re talking to unnamed sources, which just might have an agenda of their own, you don’t have to worry about building a solid wooden box.

When it doesn’t really fit together, you can just throw in some grooves and call it an ashtray.