RE: New AD's Huge Decisions
Let me preface this by saying that I hate the name of this thread. The issue here is the relationship between the College and MBB. There is no need for attacking individuals with whom we don’t have personal relationships – and if we do have personal relations with folks we don’t need to be airing them on a message board..
And let me apologize for the novel below. The subject matters a great deal to me and this is the only forum I have in which I can express myself.
This has been an agonizing month for me.
I contribute to the College because I believe it is my duty as an alum to give back. I give to W&M athletics in part because I believe the school’s best and brightest are its athletes in non-revenue sports.
On the other hand, I give to W&M basketball with passion. W&M is my school and basketball is my sport. It’s as simple as that. I became addicted as a student and young alum in the Balanis/Parkhill era. It wasn’t just beating UNC. It was Satterthwaite almost single-handedly challenging an undefeated, top Ten Rutgers team. It was going toe-to-toe with ODU and VCU. It was beating VMI (then a top 20 caliber team) on a Dave Montgomery goaltend at the buzzer. It was playing the best 20 minutes of defensive basketball I have ever seen against Navy (gritty man-to-man, denying every pass).
And it included the one time we should have gone to the Dance: the 1983 heartbreaker to JMU.
Then Bruce left and Barry couldn’t keep the magic going. It was Swenson and Boyages. I remember actually leaving a Tribe basketball game in the 1980s with 5 minutes to go out of disgust. Ironically, I ran into a classmate of mine who was leaving the game at the same. Two basketball junkies going cold turkey on a poor product.
Charlie Woollum was not able to re-kindle my love although I remember the heartbreak at the Robins Center when we were the one seed. And the first few years under Shaver didn’t do it for me. I went to the Finals every time we made it and I still remember watching at home, jumping (and screaming) for joy when Laimus Kisielius hit that shot to beat VCU. But in all those years I never thought we had a shot. I never bought a CAAT tournament ticket book even though I lived in Richmond.
I flew to Baltimore in 2010 after we beat Towson (who had beaten us twice in the regular season). The end of the game was crushing but that night, for that stretch when two freshmen led us from double digits down to six up, I fell in love again. And I had hope.
The last five years have been special. And now it’s gone.
There are folks on the board who have more information than I who are saying they understand the move. They are counselling patience and I’m trying.
But as others have said (albeit in an altogether different context), insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. And yet College continues to try to compete in MBB without providing the necessary resources and expecting to win.
Only in the last five years have I come to understand how little the College has been committed to MBB. Whether it’s coordinating with the Admissions Office, funding foreign trips or summer school, or opening the Hall for practice during snow days, the College has had to be dragged kicking and screaming to support the program. Basically I feel I have had a greater commitment to MBB than the College.
Given its traditional level of funding support, Tribe MBB should always be inferior to Northeastern, Hofstra, UNCW and CofC. The College should be more competitive with, but slightly behind, JMU and Delaware. The expectation should be a lot of CAAT play-in games and not many victories in them. We’ve been there and done that.
So if the College is going in a different (more supportive direction) with MBB, then certainly they can choose a different coach. If not, if they think they can hire someone who can magically draw winning schemes, lock down defenses and attract high-major talent through some Gene Hackman, Hoosiers magic WITHOUT increasing their support for MBB, then …
It’s too early to tell which path the College is taking. Since today is OTOD, I have to make some giving decisions based on incomplete results.
Here is what I see so far:
Head Coach: this looks a Lou Rowe hire to me. Young assistant, may be a home run, maybe not. No experience as a head coach and certainly comes cheap. No way we’re paying $700,000 for that resume.
Assistant Coach: the only hire we’ve made is to retain our most junior assistant from the prior regime. Fischer was named two weeks ago. That he hasn’t hired anyone yet suggests he might be short some industry contracts or, more likely, he isn’t able to offer attractive salaries.
Retention: I have to give Fischer a pass on this. Everybody on the board knows everything on this but no two folks have the same story. I know transfers are endemic in the sport now so, like I said, a pass. (My totally uniformed opinion is that we would have lost Pierce and that’s it. However, on this I make Sergeant Schultz look like a genius.)
What no one has explained to me is why, given an (hopefully) extra $300,000/year to spend on MBB, the College thought the best use of that money was coaching. Maybe if we had spent some money to make it a better job, we could have attracted a home run candidate in a few years.
The College does not owe me an explanation. I don’t require more transparency; no need to air dirty laundry to justify a personnel move. If it was an X’s and O’s decision, I know what I see and I can form my own opinions.
I will continue to give out of a sense of obligation. I am willing to be convinced.
But actions speak louder than words.
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