Good news for anybody in the "I hope Tavaras Hardy is someday NU's head coach" camp the former Wildcat big man got hisself a promotion and will now be referred to as "associate head coach".
Previously, NU didn't really have an associate head coach, but with Mitch Henderson gone to Princeton, Hardy is definitely NU's most important assistant and it's good to see them treating him this way. Right now, the fear with Hardy is his ability to actually coach a basketball team: his recruiting credentials are pretty good and well known, however, he's never been a head coach anywhere besides the AAU level. Hopefully, this new position can get him more integrated in X's and O's in hopes that he can someday succeed his former coach. (Also, hopefully his higher pay scale convinces him to stick around should other teams come calling, which, although we haven't heard much of yet, will inevitably happen for a young coach with recruiting skills.
So, as for what this means in terms of actual basketball, probably not much. But it has implications for the future of the program and also ties into the football philosophy that assistant coaches need better pay embraced by Pat Fitzgerald notably over the past while.
Anyway, this is dope. Everybody likes Tavaras, so, hopefully he sticks around a while in whatever role. You should read this story my boy Robbie Levin wrote on him a while back for the Daily. I was also surprised and impressed to see the coach in attendance at last week's "race in sports journalism" panel, and even more impressed when he actually laughed at a joke Kevin Blackistone made about how "make the NCAA Tournament" clearly isn't in our university's mission statement. Serious bro.