Report: Bucknell's Dave Paulsen a 'leading candidate' for Northwestern job

There have been a lot of lists of potential candidates for Northwestern's vacant coaching jobs, but there haven't been many concrete indicators of who the team is actually looking at - you know, besides the reports that Chris Collins is the major front-runner and will interview at Northwestern in the next few days. CBS' Jon Rothstein throws an expected name into the mix, saying that Bucknell's Dave Paulsen is one of the favorites for the job:

Bucknell coach Dave Paulsen has emerged as one of the leading candidates for the vacancy at Northwestern, per multiple sources....

— Jon Rothstein (@JonRothstein) March 23, 2013

Multiple sources, guys.

This is nothing unexpected - as you can see, he was one of the first people we profiled. Paulsen has a connection with one of the more important people possible: Northwestern president Morty Schapiro, leading the Williams Ephs to a national title in 2003 while Schapiro was president there. I have to imagine that will carry some weight - remember, Henry Bienen probably had a huge role in bringing in Bill Carmody from his previous job as an administrator at Princeton, so it's not unheard of for Northwestern's president to poke their nose into a coaching hire.

I don't think Paulsen would be a bad hire by any means, although there's no indicator he'd be able to recruit at the Big Ten level after living for the past few years on the back of future NBA big man Mike Muscala. The Bison were able to push Butler pretty far in the opening round game despite an awful outing from Muscala, mainly thanks to its awesomely bearded power forward dropping a career high, but, yes, Paulsen is now available with their season done.