Usually basketball coaches get fired for losing.  Or cheating. Or both.  But the surprising news out of Houston that Tom Penders is stepping down as Houston's head men's basketball coach is baffling.

The Houston Chronicle actually said that Penders will "be announcing his retirement."  Gee, I wonder how that conversation with AD Mack Rhoades went? 

"Tom, have you ever thought about retiring?"
 "Well, Mack, I haven't really thought about it."
 "Tom, maybe you should. Like really hard and really, really soon."

Rhoades arrived on campus last summer after a stint at Akron as AD and seven years as an assistant in the UTEP athletic department.   He didn't hire Penders, and appears to be  anxious to put his stamp on the basketball program.  One of the names circulating as a successor to Penders is Billy Gillispie, the former coach of UTEP, Texas A&M and Kentucky.  That would be the same Billy Gillispie, who has three DUI arrests and was literally run out of the best college basketball coaching job in the country after failing to take Kentucky to the NCAA tournament in 2008-2009.  This has all the smell of a Chicago election.

In six years as the Cougar basketball coach, Penders has a record of 122-77.  That's pretty good.  But yet, there are alums who are not happy with the coach, siting his preference for juco kids over home grown Houston talent.  There's also some concern over attendance, which has been in decline for several years, even before Penders arrived on campus.

Yet the record and an appearance in the NCAA tournament wasn't enough to save him.  Overall, in stops at eight schools, most notably Rhode Island, Texas and George Washington, Penders record is 650-446.  That's not bad at all, especially in this era of ten scholarships.  He's also one of seven coaches to take four different teams to the NCAA tournament, guiding Houston there for the first time in 18 seasons.  One should realize that C-USA is a mid-major and doesn't get the kind of attention and multiple entries the big boys do.  If you play in C-USA, you can count on three teams tops, most likely two.  The rest of the time, your wining season is rewarded by a trip to the NIT.

Even so, Rhoades has obviously decided the time and climate are ripe for hiring his buddy.  You'll hear trite phrases at the press conference like "take us to the next level" and "return us to where Houston basketball should be." Except, they had a coach that was doing that already.   they should contact fans of the University of Iowa to ask them what the last few years there have been like.