College Basketball: Tubby time over at Minn.

Tubby Smith was hailed as a rescuer when he came to Minnesota from Kentucky in 2007, a championship-certified coach who would restore a once-proud program to respectability. But when new athletic director Norwood Teague saw progress stagnate, he decided it was time for a change. Smith was fired on Monday, one day after the Gophers lost to Florida in the NCAA tournament.

Smith was 124-81 (.610) in six seasons at Minnesota, and brought the first NCAA tournament victory since 1997 when the 11th-seeded Gophers beat UCLA last week.

But he went just 46-62 in Big Ten play and never finished higher than sixth in the conference.

A Bruins bow-out. Ben Howland kept it classy in departing as UCLA coach, thanking the athletic director who had fired him a day earlier while noting the high expectations that come with running a program that owns a 11 national titles.

The 55-year-old expressed gratitude for his 10-year run, the longest since John Wooden's. He had a 233-107 record that included three consecutive Final Four appearances and four Pac-10 titles, including this season, when the Bruins were 25-10. Their season ended with a 20-point loss to Minnesota in the second round of the NCAAs.

Going to Jackson. Jackson State hired Wayne Brent to be its coach. The 45-year-old is an accomplished high school coach, winning four state championships in six seasons with Callaway High in Jackson, Miss. He was a Ole Miss assistant for six years.

Bittersweet bye. Think Syracuse in the Big East. Or Maryland in the Atlantic Coast Conference. That's the sort of emotional tie George Mason had with the Colonial Athletic Association, helping launch the mid-major conference in the 1980s and making it part of basketball lore with a Final Four run in 2006.

That's why athletic director Tom O'Connor called it a bittersweet day when he announced that the Patriots were moving to the Atlantic Ten, the latest fallout from the ever-shifting conference alignments.