Ridiculous Upside typically doesn't focus a lot on college basketball until right around the time of the NBA Draft, but there's an under-reported story happening with a former D-League coach out in Pocatello, Idaho, that seemed worth mentioning.

Deane Martin, former assistant coach for both the Dakota Wizards and Bakersfield Jam, is being lauded as a potential Coach of the Year candidate with the Idaho State Bengals.

Martin, a grinder if there ever was one on the basketball coaching circuit, took an assistant coaching job with Idaho State this summer after spending last season coaching in Mexico. He was promoted to head coach when Joe O'Brien resigned following a 2-8 start and has been working on turning the program ever since.

Comcast Sportsnet's Greg Crawford has more on Martin's impressive turnaround of the Bengals' program in this week's column:

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The Cleveland Cavaliers made an excellent addition to their coaching staff on Monday, hiring Tulsa 66ers head coach Nate Tibbetts as an assistant coach. Tibbetts' assistant with the D-League's 66ers, Dale Osbourne, will take over head coaching duties in Tulsa.

Tibbetts was hired as the 66ers head coach prior to the 2009-10 season after two years as head coach of the Sioux Falls Skyforce. Prior to his D-League head coaching positions, he spent time as an assistant with the Skyforce as well as the University of Sioux Falls.

"Nate comes from an organization that has developed a young core and a similar belief system in creating success with a defense-first mentality and Aubrey is an accomplished and respected player development coach that is going to be a great fit with all our coaches and our players," Cavs head coach Byron Scott said about Tibbetts and fellow hire Aubrey McCreary in a press release. "I am very excited for our group to get started with our team soon."

The 34-year-old also served as an assistant coach with the Oklahoma City Thunder during their playoff run last season and was most recently head coach of Team USA's entry in this fall's Pan-Am Games. It's an excellent hire by the Cavs and a much-deserved promotion for Tibbetts.

Eric Musselman is entering his first season as head coach of the Los Angeles D-Fenders, making his debut this weekend with a set of away games against the Dakota Wizards, after coaching the Reno Bighorns last year. The former head coach of the Golden State Warriors and Sacramento Kings was on NBA TV to talk about the upcoming season earlier this week.

Musselman's team will be led by Jamaal Tinsley, a player who started at point guard for the Indiana Pacers not too many seasons ago, but the rest of his team isn't quite as well-known. As I wrote in my power rankings, though, they'll still be a tough team to play.

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Darvin Ham has certainly paid his dues in professional basketball. It's paid off, too, as he was named an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Lakers on Monday afternoon.

Ham first burst onto the scene by breaking backboards at Texas Tech, went undrafted in the 1996 NBA Draft and eventually ended up playing eight years in the Association before ending his career in various stages of coaching in the NBA Development League.

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Joey Meyer has been around the NBA Development League for quite awhile. The veteran head coach began his D-League career in 2001 with the now-defunct Asheville Altitude, where he wound up wining two championships, and he's been around ever since -- most recently at the helm of the Fort Wayne Mad Ants for the past three seasons.

Suffice it to say, Meyer has been a part of his fair share of open tryouts -- and he knows what he's looking for when they happen.

"In the 10 years I've been in the league, I'll bet you five of those years guys have made my opening-day roster," Meyer told the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel. "Sometimes you find them. A lot of people come to the tryouts and say, ‘There's not that many good players.' Well, we're not looking to find 50. We're looking for a couple of good players."

Video of the interview, with what appears to be Steve Gansey working out Sean Sonderleiter, is embedded below.

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Updated with another quote from Majerus below. -- Scott

The Cleveland Cavaliers announced on Thursday that they have named their NBA Development League team the Canton Charge after earlier installing former Saint Louis University assistant Alex Jensen as head coach. While there seems to have been a good deal of people that are fans of these moves, Rick Majerus is not one of them.

Majerus, a coach made famous during his time at Utah for wearing sweaters and berating his players, is the current head coach at SLU. I don't know much of the man personally, but apparently he isn't happy that one of his assistants was able to move up in the world according to ESPN's Andy Katz.

Jensen abruptly left Majerus and the Billikens earlier in the week to work with the D-League team of the Cleveland Cavaliers. The move stunned Majerus, who had been close to Jensen since coaching him at Utah. Majerus was livid with the Cavs for hiring away Jensen now, right before the start of the season.

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The Cleveland Cavaliers announced that they have hired college assistant Alex Jensen as the first head coach of their still unnamed NBA D-League franchise in Canton, Ohio. Jensen's only coaching experience has been as an assistant under longtime Utah head coach Rick Majerus at St. Louis University.

Jensen, 35, spent his college career at the aforementioned University of Utah and then played professionally in Turkey and the CBA until transitioning into coaching prior to the 2007 season. He isn't a familiar name in coaching circles, but the fact that Wes Wilcox hired him probably means he'll work out well, a la Jay Larranaga.

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The Iowa Energy lost the only head coach in franchise history this offseason when Nick Nurse decided to take the same position with rival D-League franchise Rio Grande Valley. The team's head coach in waiting, Nate Bjorkgren, was hired by the Dakota Wizards right before that happened, however, leading to the team needing to go on a coaching search.

That coaching search ended on Tuesday, though, when the team's front office decided that former Utah Flash head coach Kevin Young was the right man for the job. Young was effectively a free agent due to the Flash ceasing operations at the end of the 2010-11 season after finishing with a 28-22 record and eventually losing in the first round of the NBA Development League playoffs to his new employers.

Young has had a rather interesting ascension to his current position.

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