Cignetti and Byington were fellow coaches at James Madison who have since been hired elsewhere.
As if the Indiana men’s basketball coaching search hasn’t already gotten weird enough with an early denial of candidacy from Brad Stevens, somehow Curt Cignetti managed to get dragged into it.
Cignetti, who previously coached at James Madison, was reported by to have been pushing the athletic department to look at or hire Mark Byington of Vanderbilt, per Adam Zagoria. Byington occupied the men’s basketball coaching job at JMU while Cignetti was still the Dukes’ football coach.
Amid the Brad Stevens news &the Chris Beard chatter, one name to keep in mind at Indiana is Mark Byington
I’m told Curt Cignetti is pushing for him at Indiana & he presumably has juice now after the football season.
Vandy is 17-7 and Byington led JMU to the 2nd round last yr https://t.co/cjozfVLR6f
— Adam Zagoria (@AdamZagoria) February 15, 2025
Cignetti, however, is decently active on Twitter and evidently caught wind of the report. Not long after he responded directly, in a reply to Zagoria’s tweet asserting that athletic director Scott Dolson “knows alot more about basketball than I do,” and that he has his own program to focus on.
Not true. Scott Dolson knows alot more about basketball than I do. I have my own team to focus on.
— Curt Cignetti (@CCignettiIU) February 15, 2025
Outside of the humorous aspect here, it just goes to show how wild the discourse and noise around this coaching search is bound to become.