Looming deal for Taylor keeps a good thing going

Blaine Taylor has every reason to feel a greater fondness for Old Dominion today.

The salary and security that come with a seven-year contract extension that's in the works buys a lot of love.

It's good to feel wanted. As for Taylor's dalliance with Stanford, who can blame him? Any coach in his position would have tested the waters and used his leverage to swing a better deal at his current place of employment.

"I'd like to think the Stanford situation didn't weigh into all of this too much,"

Taylor said, but it's safe to

assume that recent events gave ODU the gentle nudge it needed to lock up its coach for the long-term.

Now, barring the unforeseen, Taylor is looking forward to sinking his roots even deeper into the community.

"Things grow on you," he told The Virginian-Pilot on Saturday. "Once you've been a part of something and feel a sense of ownership, it seeps into your being and your family's being."

Because Taylor has been a part of ODU basketball for seven seasons, becoming a popular figure in Hampton Roads, it's sometimes hard to recall what an unusual hire he was for the Monarchs. Coming here from out of the West - as a Stanford assistant and before that a player and coach at Montana - Taylor appeared to be anything but a natural choice for a school that usually selected its coaches from close to home.

But if Taylor was an awkward fit, no one ever would have known. By all rights, he should have had no feel for this area and ODU's special problems. Yet, he swept in and immediately charmed alumni and boosters desperate for relief from the drab final days of Jeff Capel.

At 50, perhaps Taylor foresees one more move in his future. Only if or until another opportunity happens along will we know. Ambition and wanderlust are hard-wired into most coaches and ODU has a reputation as a stepping-stone school.

But, for the time being, stability prevails. Taylor, the converted Westerner, is becoming a bigger part of the Eastern establishment.

Stanford's hiring of Johnny Dawkins, a Duke assistant with no head coaching experience, raises questions about the options ultimately available to the school. After a two-wee k hunt, did the final decision hinge on a phone call from Mike Krzyzewski?

Who knows how Taylor fit into the search process? He says he wasn't overeager and that he told Stanford's athletic director that, at ODU, "we've got a good thing going."

Besides being true, his comment has the additional benefit of playing well with a Monarch audience. If Taylor serves out the full length of his extension, he'll exceed by four years the ODU careers of Paul Webb and Sonny Allen, who each worked 10 years on Hampton Boulevard and became coaching icons to earlier generations of fans.

Webb and Allen played integral roles in the school's basketball growth, but Taylor has led ODU into an era of new challenges and opportunities created by greater coverage on TV and over the Internet, along with more demands to fill seats at the Constant Center.

Now ODU's got what it wants from Taylor: a constant presence. With a cast of young, promising players, the program appears to be on the verge of another uptick.

Armed with a new contract, Taylor's got a good thing going.

By extension, so does his team.

Bob Molinaro, (757) 446-2373, bob.molinaro@pilotonline.com