Coaching changes in college basketball happen every offseason. There is a coaching carousel like every other sport. But this year it was different. A few hirings and firings happened. Most believe that was due to the COVID-19 crisis. Out of the absolute blue on Sunday afternoon, UW-Green Bay basketball fires their head coach, Linc Darner, who has been successful over the last few years out of nowhere. Their whole staff is fired as well. The Athletic Director of Phoenix cannot comment on the manner. Many college basketball reporters were stunned by this decision.

BREAKING: Green Bay has parted ways with Linc Darner, source told @Stadium. Darner was 92-80 in five seasons was 12 games above .500 in Horizon play, and his contract was through 2026.

Darner and his staff were completely blindsided.

This one is baffling.

— Jeff Goodman (@GoodmanHoops) May 17, 2020

There are truly only two things that can explain what happened here. One, there is a big story about to drop about what the coaching staff did and the university dismissed everyone. It is not worthwhile to speculate what that might be for the program. The other is the economic situation with COVID-19 hit the university very hard, and they started to make some cuts. But if that were the case, wouldn’t they have looked to smaller revenue-driving programs? And if that were the decision, would they have said something like ‘We’re mutually parting ways with Darner due to our financial situation.’

In the stuff we can laugh about part of this is the jokes about Aaron Rodgers getting another coach fired in Green Bay. And the potential of Tony Bennett wanting to come back to his alma mater because he needs a bigger challenge than Virginia. I’ve enjoyed both of those subplots of what is a bizarre situation.

We’ll see if more news comes out today about Darner’s dismissal.

Charlie.