No guts or just silent?

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Penn was not the only college sports program with a coaching search this year.

When Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute hockey coach Dan Fridgen resigned, the middle-of-the-road Division I program was forced to begin a search.

But there were some challenges. RPI is an engineering school with a strong commitment to academics located in Troy, N.Y., known as the "armpit of America," and it's a Division III school in everything else.

But RPI Athletic Director Ken Ralph showed some guts in two phone calls that he made.

His first choice for the job was Andy Murray, who had just been fired as coach of the NHL's Los Angeles Kings. Murray interviewed, was offered the job and turned it down.

When that failed, the Engineers went after 31-year-old Seth Appert, who was an up-and-coming assistant at Denver, which won national championships in 2004 and 2005. Appert was named coach last week.

A man who had just left his position at the sport's highest level and a rising star assistant at a major program. Sound familiar, Penn fans? You're right. It doesn't.

Let's run through the candidates. Steve Donahue: no success at a low level of college basketball. Fran O'Hanlon: no success at a low level. Billy Taylor, some success at a low level. Dave Duke (as a head coach): no success at a low level.

Then there's our winner, Glen Miller. Miller produced a couple of winning seasons at Brown but no titles, and he was playing some of the worst competition in the nation, both in conference and out of conference.

Category 1, the man with experience at a higher level, and category 2, the assistant coach from the sexy program were nowhere to be found on that list.

Instead, Steve Bilsky and his team conducted its entire search on two of the lowest rungs of the college basketball ladder -- the Ivy League and the Patriot League.

Or maybe they didn't.

Maybe they talked with former big-time coaches and current assistants left and right.

They just aren't telling anybody.

The hush-hush search turned into a game of "I spy: Weightman Hall edition," as we the media could only speculate based on unnamed sources and who we saw entering or leaving what building.

It is my hope that now that the search has concluded, Bilsky and Co. will come out and tell the public a little bit about the search.

Lest the rest of us make the ridiculous assumption that you only considered guys from the Ivy League and the Patriot League.