A Marquette assistant and a coach who led his team within a three-point shot of the Final Four head the new list of candidates for Marquette's men's basketball coaching job.

Today's TMJ4's Lance Allan reports that four candidates remain to replace Tom Crean.

The two major names on the list include Bob McKillop of Davidson and MU assistant Buzz Williams, a former head coach at New Orleans.  Wright State's Brad Brownell and Chris Lowery of Southern Illinois also stand on Marquette's list, according to Allan.

Williams came back to Marquette to work under Crean during the 2007-08 season after a year as the head coach at New Orleans.  In that year (2006-07), Williams' team went 14-17, 9-9 in conference, after going 9-9 and 6-9 the year before.

The Journal Sentinel says Williams spent time in Milwaukee for formal talks with MU administrators about the position.

Under McKillop's direction, Davidson reached the NCAA Elite Eight, falling to Kansas by two points in their attempt to reach the Final Four.  McKillop, who's 57, has a 311-218 record in 19 seasons at Davidson. 

On his biography on the Davidson web site, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski described McKillop as "a sensational coach."

Brownell completed his second year at Wright State and brought the Raiders a 21-10 record.  In his first year, he took them to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1993, earning the Horizon League title.

Lowery ended his fourth year at Southern Illinois by delivering a 20-15 record to the Salukis.  He's 78-26 for his career and has taken his teams to the NCAA tournament for three appearances (2005-07), each of which had him as the youngest coach in the tournament.

The Journal Sentinel said that MU made inquiries into Tony Bennett of Washington State, Xavier's Sean Miller and Anthony Grant of Virginia Commonwealth, but that none of them seemed to want to discuss leaving their current position.