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It Could Be Worse: We Could Be St. John's


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After paying attention to other coaching searches, I can say that the coaching search wasn't done poorly.

UCLA and St. John's are two of the worst this season.

This board made it out to be bad, but UB did a pretty good job with it and it probably took longer simply because they were ambitious but it didn't have the chaos of these other searches with the public offers and coaches turning down the jobs which is embarrassing for a program.

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We had more to lose with a bad search, in my opinion, then those other two.  Heck...UCLA is still a blue blood...they convinced the TN coach to leave his team to come to UCLA (but wouldn't pay the buyout).  St. John's is a historic program.

We had one year of being ranked and nationally relevant.

If you want to convince yourself (in retrospect) that it wasn't bad since it wasn't as bad as two other terrible things, that's fine.  I can't make you think otherwise.    That's like when my son says "The average was a 70...I got a 55...but several people got below 40".

 

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, UB92 said:

We had more to lose with a bad search, in my opinion, then those other two.  Heck...UCLA is still a blue blood...they convinced the TN coach to leave his team to come to UCLA (but wouldn't pay the buyout).  St. John's is a historic program.

We had one year of being ranked and nationally relevant.

If you want to convince yourself (in retrospect) that it wasn't bad since it wasn't as bad as two other terrible things, that's fine.  I can't make you think otherwise.    That's like when my son says "The average was a 70...I got a 55...but several people got below 40".

I disagree.

The search wasn't bad.  No one in the college basketball world is talking about the search.  People are talking about the others in a negative way. 

We were antsy and bought a line that the players were going to transfer out if we didn't have a knee jerk reaction to Oats leaving.  We took the time to perform due diligence and we didn't lose the players.  The players at UB are committed to UB.   That is drastically different than Nevada or UMKC where they have one player on the roster after everyone is transferring out.

If you want to convince yourself that it is bad because you didn't get your way, that's fine.  I can't make you think otherwise.  That's like when my son says "I don't like this and I don't want to eat it.  It is the worst."  But he tries it and likes it and is too proud to admit it...

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7 hours ago, dutchcountry7 said:

I disagree.

The search wasn't bad.  No one in the college basketball world is talking about the search.  People are talking about the others in a negative way. 

We were antsy and bought a line that the players were going to transfer out if we didn't have a knee jerk reaction to Oats leaving.  We took the time to perform due diligence and we didn't lose the players.  The players at UB are committed to UB.   That is drastically different than Nevada or UMKC where they have one player on the roster after everyone is transferring out.

If you want to convince yourself that it is bad because you didn't get your way, that's fine.  I can't make you think otherwise.  That's like when my son says "I don't like this and I don't want to eat it.  It is the worst."  But he tries it and likes it and is too proud to admit it...

So...once again...your point is that "we didn't lose as many players as Nevada or UMKC so it isn't bad?"   You keep comparing to a worst case scenario.  It is the same argument as above, stated in a little different way.

The fact is WE LOST ALL OF OUR RECRUITS.  Could it have been worse?  Sure...but it was still bad.   You are trying to convince yourself otherwise, obviously...and others (since you started this thread).  

 

 

 

 

 

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8 minutes ago, UB92 said:

So...once again...your point is that "we didn't lose as many players as Nevada or UMKC so it isn't bad?"   You keep comparing to a worst case scenario.  It is the same argument as above, stated in a little different way.

The fact is WE LOST ALL OF OUR RECRUITS.  Could it have been worse?  Sure...but it was still bad.   You are trying to convince yourself otherwise, obviously...and others (since you started this thread).  

 

 

 

 

 

Considering the fact that practically every team that has had a coaching change has lost at least one ROSTERED player, then yes our situation was nowhere near as bad as other schools. 

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11 hours ago, UB92 said:

So...once again...your point is that "we didn't lose as many players as Nevada or UMKC so it isn't bad?"   You keep comparing to a worst case scenario.  It is the same argument as above, stated in a little different way.

The fact is WE LOST ALL OF OUR RECRUITS.  Could it have been worse?  Sure...but it was still bad.   You are trying to convince yourself otherwise, obviously...and others (since you started this thread).  

With the amount of drama in your posts, I have to assume that 92 was the year of your birth and not the year you graduated from UB...

Seriously... you've got unrealistic expectations if you think the staff going to Alabama wouldn't have any impact.  But it has had a minimal impact.  It has been great so far.

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11 hours ago, 961819 said:

Considering the fact that practically every team that has had a coaching change has lost at least one ROSTERED player, then yes our situation was nowhere near as bad as other schools. 

I hadn't realized you looked through all of the coaching changes (looks to be several dozen on this list) and checked.   http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/26382381/college-basketball-coaching-changes-2019-20

 

 

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2 minutes ago, UB92 said:

I hadn't realized you looked through all of the coaching changes (looks to be several dozen on this list) and checked.   http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/26382381/college-basketball-coaching-changes-2019-20

How many top-20 coaching changes?

Oh, you're comparing it to how smoothly the Presbyterian coaching change went.  Well, you have me there.  Maybe someday we will be like Presbyterian.  But I dream...

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2 minutes ago, dutchcountry7 said:

With the amount of drama in your posts, I have to assume that 92 was the year of your birth and not the year you graduated from UB...

Seriously... you've got unrealistic expectations if you think the staff going to Alabama wouldn't have any impact.  But it has had a minimal impact.  It has been great so far.

You have put words in my mouth.

I knew it would have an impact.

I wanted to keep as many recruits as we could (since it was projected to be the best class ever) OR if we were going to lose recruits, make a splashy hire and build on the momentum.

We did neither.  I am disappointed.  And now I am being told (here and on Bullrun) that "look...it could have been worse".   This, to me, is BS and I have seen it at various points throughout my career.  I am calling it out.

 

 

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I mean, I dont see it quite like this, however, Whitesell sold the job by getting buy-ins from the 5 seniors and the current 8-man roster. I'll take it, I'm still in the camp this should have taken 3 days like Oats, saved money with no search firm, and at least had a prayer to calm to waters with the Juco players and started hiring a staff. 

UCLA/St. John's could hire an assistant if they wanted too. They decided to stick with a National search and select the BEST possible names. Mick Cronin was a really good get after all was said and done. 

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5 minutes ago, Kevin said:

I mean, I dont see it quite like this, however, Whitesell sold the job by getting buy-ins from the 5 seniors and the current 8-man roster. I'll take it, I'm still in the camp this should have taken 3 days like Oats, saved money with no search firm, and at least had a prayer to calm to waters with the Juco players and started hiring a staff. 

UCLA/St. John's could hire an assistant if they wanted too. They decided to stick with a National search and select the BEST possible names. Mick Cronin was a really good get after all was said and done. 

Yea UCLA is going to end up fine. SJU is the one that's starting to look bad as a number of coaches are publicly stating they don't have interest now and a major booster kinda railed them on a radio interview.

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6 minutes ago, Kevin said:

UCLA/St. John's could hire an assistant if they wanted too. They decided to stick with a National search and select the BEST possible names. Mick Cronin was a really good get after all was said and done.  

This is no different than us.

We performed the due diligence and interviewed highly qualified candidates and hired the best candidate available for us.

We did it in a short period of time and did it without taking a beating in the public eye.

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SJU is an embarrassment. There’s in fighting between the President and AD. Boosters such as Repole are going on the radio and blasting administration and openly calling for a new president. The school is being cheap despite having booster money.  Wouldn’t shock me if the AD was gone because he is being handcuffed by the school President.

Theres a difference between doing due diligence and striking out on your top 3 candidates and having other coaches pull their name before even being considered. 

To me SJU had it easy...swing big with Hurley fall back to Cluess. They mucked it up. Thank god our search wasn’t like this. 

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13 minutes ago, DooleyBull06 said:

SJU is an embarrassment. There’s in fighting between the President and AD. Boosters such as Repole are going on the radio and blasting administration and openly calling for a new president. The school is being cheap despite having booster money.  Wouldn’t shock me if the AD was gone because he is being handcuffed by the school President.

Theres a difference between doing due diligence and striking out on your top 3 candidates and having other coaches pull their name before even being considered. 

To me SJU had it easy...swing big with Hurley fall back to Cluess. They mucked it up. Thank god our search wasn’t like this. 

The good thing about the president's interference at St. John's is that we got Whitsell out of it.

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5 hours ago, UB92 said:

I hadn't realized you looked through all of the coaching changes (looks to be several dozen on this list) and checked.   http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/26382381/college-basketball-coaching-changes-2019-20

 

 

Pretty sure I said PRACTICALLY every school lost a rostered player. Not every school. Practically every school. You have unrealistic expectations and seem to really have a naive understanding of how this industry operates 

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A month after St. John’s snuck into its first NCAA Tournament in four years, the program is once again an absolute mess. Their coach, an iconic and beloved figure at the school, is gone; they have struck out repeatedly in searching for his replacement. A bunch of players are leaving, and the program literally has no recruits coming in to replace them. The Red Storm are suddenly a disaster, and it’s starting to look like it could take years to clean it up.

https://deadspin.com/another-coach-rejects-the-disaster-area-that-is-now-st-1834139046

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5 hours ago, dutchcountry7 said:

This is no different than us.

We performed the due diligence and interviewed highly qualified candidates and hired the best candidate available for us.

We did it in a short period of time and did it without taking a beating in the public eye.

UB hired a head coach from a P5 program? How is this the same? UB did a full national search to hire their interim head coach. If you think he was the best candidate available, you are very naive. I like Whitesell, he brought the 8 player current roster to the table, no one else could do that. UB got him at a FRACTION of what they were going to pay Oats and made out big time after his buyout. 

I'm still going to die on the hill that I would like to have a week of recruiting/coach building back, especially now that we've had two blackout recruiting weeks.

UCLA made out fine, I would in no way say they are worse 

St.John's is in a unique spot, a really bad spot. That has nothing to do with any other team or search.

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5 hours ago, BrooklynBull said:

The good thing about the president's interference at St. John's is that we got Whitsell out of it.

Who was the president at St John’s? Levesque? He was the president at Niagara when Joe Mihalich was the coach at Niagara. They both left Niagara after 2013. Is Levesque Steinbrenneresque?

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Our search wasn't the disaster that St. John's is in the midst of, but I would argue it was poorly executed. We hired an internal candidate after a significant delay. Our recruiting class bailed during this transition- aside from Andre Allen, the decisions were announced deliberately, well into the search. A more decisive move to ensure continuity  (Whitesell or He Who Won't Be Named) may have prevented some of the defections. Our coaching hire was announced on the Saturday of the Final Four. The press conference was Monday. This prevented any appreciable networking/interviewing of assistant coaches at the prime event for such wheeling and dealing each year. As such, we are still down an assistant coach, and just hired our second. It also prevented us from regaining any recruiting momentum (hired during a dead period). Lastly, we wasted resources hiring a search firm only to select an internal candidate. This, alone, is damning. IMO, the decision (internal vs. external) needed to have been made months prior. Oats was walking- we all listened to "Gonzaga of the East" but he always added "leave for stupid money." Stupid money was surely coming this off-season. ADMA was not prepared. 

Love that Whitesell has the support of our returning players. I will accept the supposition that he is a superior basketball mind to Hodgson. Time will tell if he was the right selection. But the coaching search was poorly executed and cost us precious momentum, even if he ultimately proves to be the right man for the job.

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13 minutes ago, McBulls said:

Our search wasn't the disaster that St. John's is in the midst of, but I would argue it was poorly executed. We hired an internal candidate after a significant delay. Our recruiting class bailed during this transition- aside from Andre Allen, the decisions were announced deliberately, well into the search. A more decisive move to ensure continuity  (Whitesell or He Who Won't Be Named) may have prevented some of the defections. Our coaching hire was announced on the Saturday of the Final Four. The press conference was Monday. This prevented any appreciable networking/interviewing of assistant coaches at the prime event for such wheeling and dealing each year. As such, we are still down an assistant coach, and just hired our second. It also prevented us from regaining any recruiting momentum (hired during a dead period). Lastly, we wasted resources hiring a search firm only to select an internal candidate. This, alone, is damning. IMO, the decision (internal vs. external) needed to have been made months prior. Oats was walking- we all listened to "Gonzaga of the East" but he always added "leave for stupid money." Stupid money was surely coming this off-season. ADMA was not prepared. 

Love that Whitesell has the support of our returning players. I will accept the supposition that he is a superior basketball mind to Hodgson. Time will tell if he was the right selection. But the coaching search was poorly executed and cost us precious momentum, even if he ultimately proves to be the right man for the job.

This is exceptionally well said. The traditional "this" doesn't do it justice. 

The big questions, does coaching or recruiting win? We are going to find out. Whitesell struggled badly with recruiting at Loyola. He can coach, I've heard as much from the players. 

I still have an inkling that recruiting wins first. 

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I think the timing of the coaching change and the dead period is a good thing.  The new head coach is most likely using the time to re-asses the direction the HE would like to take the team.  The time is probably being used to evaluate prospective recruits that match HIS new direction.  Dead Period doesn't mean that nothing is done.  I'd prefer that once HE does contact recruits, that HE is going after those student athletes that fit HIS style.  I'd hate if HE had to contact recruits the same day that HE was given the new job, and didn't have time to create a plan for moving forward.

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