In the process of trying to decide on a new women's basketball head coach, Athletic Director Bill Scholl had only one regret. The transfer of power between former Athletic Director Tom Collins to Scholl forced the players to have wait longer for Ball State to decide a new direction.
"I felt a bit of a time pressure for our girls," Scholl said. "It was gut-wrenching on them to not know who their new coach was going to be and then suddenly they have a new guy doing the search who they barely had met plus we are going to Canada in August. I felt the longer it went the bigger handicap that would be for the new coach."
Ball State junior forward Katie Murphy said the waiting game wasn't easy to deal with for so long.
"It was super nerve-wracking that it just took so long, but it was worth the wait," Murphy said. "They got a very good coach."
Murphy knows first hand what new coach Brady Sallee is going to bring. He recruited her while he was at Eastern Illinois and Murphy said Ball State and Eastern Illinois were her top two choices before she committed. She said Scholl couldn't have made a better decision with the opening.
Scholl wasn't pressured by it being his first hire as Ball State's athletic director. The process began before he officially started on April 30 but no interviews were conducted until Scholl took over. He said his goal in his first hire isn't anything different than what Ball State should expect from different hirings.
"I truly hope my first hire and my 30th aren't going to be any different What I wanted to do was get a coach that I think will be a tremendous fit for Ball State and will be able to put the kind of team on the floor that we all want to see."
Sallee indicated a bigger view of what he wants the Ball State program to be, seeing the possibility for it to have some national recognition. Scholl said it's something he agrees with but wasn't a demand he made for each of the three candidates he interviewed.
"It wasn't because I initiated it. It's because he said it to me and it was very much in sync with what I thought when I came here is that the MAC is clearly a very competitive conference and winning MAC championships is a big deal, but I also think there are several sports where we can maybe go beyond that. I think this is one of them and I think Brady shows that."
But he admits it's not something that will be expected of each and every sport during his tenure as athletic director. He said the student athletes are his main priority.
"I do think you have to look at different sports a little bit differently. For the most part finding somebody who's going to give those kids the best experience we can give them is still the overriding goal."
Though Scholl came into Ball State as first time athletic director he said he participated in many coaching searches in his time at Notre Dame. His first hire has done nothing but please Murphy though.
"He's a very successful coach," Murphy said. "He does what he says he's going to do. I'm just really excited to play for him."
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