After three seasons, a 49-48 record and zero trips to the NCAA Tournament, Adrian Autry was fired earlier this week as the head men's basketball coach at Syracuse.

A former player under Jim Boeheim, Autry also served as an assistant coach under him for more than a decade, but his passion for the university just didn't translate into wins and on-court execution.

Immediately after Autry's firing was publicized, we heard that SU was gaining intel on six coaching candidates, but that list shrunk to five when Josh Schertz signed a new deal to stay at St. Louis.

And according to a report from longtime college basketball reporter Dick Weiss, Syracuse is working hard to get a deal done with another name on that list: Bryan Hodgson.

Bryan Hodgson of South Florida apparently has his choice between Providence and the Cuse. Orange working hard to get this one done.

A Western New York native, he's the current head coach at South Florida, where he's spent just one year with the Bulls. His team is 23-8 this season and went 15-3 in American Conference play. They will play in the American tournament on Saturday (3 p.m. ET) against Charlotte and are predicted to get a No. 1 1 seed in the most recent ESPN Bracketology. Just 37 years old, he previously coached at Arkansas State, where he had consecutive 20-win seasons. He was also an assistant coach at Alabama and Buffalo under Nate Oats.

Maybe? After all, we did hear that Hodgson is the leader in the clubhouse at Providence on Friday. So, if Syracuse really does view Hodgson as the top choice, they may feel the need to beat Providence to the punch, necessitating the urgency.

However, there is a lot about this report that should be questioned.

1) Hodgson's team is currently working to win a conference championship and gain an NCAA Tournament berth. Is he really going to work on finding his next job amid all that?

2) Syracuse just hired a new athletic director. Is Bryan Blair going to make a hire of this magnitude just days into the job? Or is someone else going to make the hire?

3) Does Syracuse want to let the NCAA Tournament play out in order to see what other coaching candidates emerge? Do they want to give Gerry McNamara a chance to impress them further?

They are all fair questions to wonder in an offseason full of them.

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