We knew that the three short-listed candidates for the Brandon University men’s basketball head coaching position made up a varied group, but Tuesday afternoon we got a glimpse into just how different they are.

Former Brandon Bobcat Keith Vassell took his hour in the public forum on Tuesday, one day after former UNB coach Thom Gillespie took the floor, and the two-time all-Canadian certainly succeeded in ingratiating himself to the crowd of some 50 interested spectators.

Vassell, who admitted to not being overly comfortable when talking about himself, was outgoing and made jokes that had the room laughing. He spent a chunk of time going over his vast list of experience as a player and as a coach. What struck so abruptly about Vassell’s presentation was how sport-heavy it was, a sharp contrast to Gillespie, who really stressed education and community involvement and even played the “holistic approach” card, a term Brandonites got to hear a lot of when Rick Nickelchok was the athletic director. It’s not that Vassell ignored or dodged the education angle, it’s just that he really spent much of his time on the basketball topics and, in the end, ran out of time before he could get to the final slides on his Power Point presentation.

Vassell also didn’t distance himself from Jerry Hemmings, the man the university dismissed in 2004. If there’s any thoughts that aligning yourself with Hemmings is a bad thing given the fact the school wished to go in another direction, Vassell wasn’t buying it. He said he considered himself a combination of Hemmings and former national team coach Jay Triano, and talked at length about Hemmings’ influence on him as a player, coach and human being.

The eight-person hiring committee is a diverse group with different interests. One prevailing thought is that the outside coaches somehow have to convince the other three BU coaches on the committee (volleyball coaches Lee Carter and Russ Paddock, and women’s basketball coach Jaime Hickson) and swing them their way because the logic goes that they have built up ties with incumbent Mike Raimbault.

So now we have seen two presentations that felt like binary opposites: Gillespie and the strength of his academics, and Vassell and his unquestioned history as a player and coach overseas.

Raimbault presents on Wednesday and might be well-advised to split it right down the middle. After two days of presentations, this job is by no means out of his reach.