Eric Musselman reportedly in the Cal coaching search, but he comes with baggage

The California Golden Bears are going to need a new head coach pretty soon. One potential candidate is Nevada head coach Eric Musselman. Adam Zagoria reports that Cal and Washington are likely to at least give Musselman a look.

There’s no doubt that Musselman has the most coaching experience out of any of the potential candidates. Musselman was the coach of the Warriors for two seasons and the Kings for one season in the 2000s, although he was fired from both gigs. He’s familiar with the Bay Area and I believe does have a house there.

But his main selling point would be his recent success coaching the Nevada Wolf Pack. Nevada went 24-14 last season and won the CBI, and this year went 28-6 and made the NCAA Tournament after winning the Mountain West Conference. Nevada was eliminated last night in the Round of 64.

But there are off-the-court issues that could sink Musselman’s candidacy.

One big issue is that Musselman hired former Cal assistant Yann Hufnagel, who was dismissed after a sexual misconduct case by the university. It’d be hard to imagine that Cal would be interested in getting anyone even one degree related to the Hufnagel case again, especially considering how that nightmare helped sink a fantastic Cal season on the eve of last year’s tournament.

The other issue is that Musselman has had a bit of a checkered history of his own. He had a DUI arrest as head coach of the Kings in 2006. He never really was known as a player’s coach before arriving at Nevada. He might have turned it around since then, but those are just additional issues that would.

Cal has been reportedly potentially interested in former Denver Nuggets head coach Brian Shaw, as well as former Cal player and current Laker assistant Theo Robertson.