Maryland Basketball Assistant Coaches Not Underpaid Anymore (Crazy, Right?)

Anybody remember Assistantgate? That whole thing about how Maryland's basketball assistants were the lowest-paid in the ACC and made less than the women's basketball assistants? I'm guessing most of you do.

Patrick Stevens, who wrote the original piece, thankfully updates the significant upgrades in pay the staff has received. The entire thing is worth a read, so I won't use a quote summary, but I did find this particularly interesting:

Ranson is guaranteed $177,440, a figure only three of the 24 ACC public school assistants surpassed last season. All three --- Virginia's Ritchie McKay, North Carolina's Steve Robinson and N.C. State's Monte Towe --- are former head coaches. Ranson is not.

That's about $40,000 more than Chuck Driesell, whom he replaced, made. Considering Ranson's relative lack of experience, that's surprising, but also extraordinarily encouraging. You can be a top-flight program without stuff like this, but it certainly helps a lot. It should also keep Ranson from testing the waters at "higher" programs too much, not that that was too much of a worry to start with.

Also, Rob Ehsan is now making more with Keith Booth and all is right with the world. I love me some Booth, but Ehsan has brought a lot to the game in the recruiting aspect. I'm sure Booth contributes, but I'm not quite sure in what capacity. Of course, that doesn't mean he doesn't contribute, but for now it seems logical that Ehsan, an extraordinarily active recruiter, gets a slightly larger pay bump.

As a whole, they'd be in the middle of the pack among ACC public schools, Stevens says, in 4th place of 9 total schools. Considering Maryland's general lack of funds and lack of a superstar on the staff, that's pretty encouraging and about where they should be.

(Note that I wasn't really up-in-arms about the entire thing to start with. Coaches coach for experience, not money. With a well-respected guy like Gary, I don't think there was any target we wanted that we didn't get or anyone we wanted to keep that would've stayed had they been paid more. Realistically, it wasn't a big deal. However, it did send a message that we really shouldn't have been sending.)

Before you go singing the praises of new AD Kevin Anderson too much, I do recall - perhaps incorrectly, because I can't find the link right now - that Debbie Yow reportedly did increase the assistants' compensation before she left. No idea if she got them up to this or if Anderson contributed to a bump of his own, but I find it tough Anderson would make such a drastic change so quickly after joining the program.

Regardless: progress.