Shaka Smart Not Actually Marquette's New Coach, Despite TV Reports

Here's a sampling of Milwaukee newscasts from this evening. They all assert that current VCU head basketball coach Shaka Smart is taking over for Buzz Williams at Marquette. One problem: that's not true.

Oh, sure, Marquette may land Smart in the end. But actual people who'd know—people like ESPN's Jeff Goodman—say MU's nowhere near signing the in-demand head coach. Then why did every news station report it as a done deal?

The truth is hard to sort out, because none of the stations identified their sources. But here's how clueless Milwaukee TV was today: they drove their trucks over to Marquette's campus for a hoax press conference—this after assuring viewers that "sources close to the Marquette basketball program" leaked them the info that Smart had signed on the dotted line. (Both Marquette and VCU insist nobody's spoken to Smart about a new job.)

It's worth noting that Marquette is a rudderless ship at the moment; it lacks both a president and an athletic director, so getting the kind of approval for a salary that can pull Shaka Smart out of Richmond would be quite the task to begin with, we're assuming. But, then, the Marquette athletic department is having its own bit of fun with all this. Amidst the erroneous TV reports, they promised an important announcement at 5:00 p.m. That announcement was this: