(01-17-2020 12:39 PM)82hawk Wrote:  

(01-17-2020 09:45 AM)CG_Hawk06 Wrote:  One close game against Hofstra, a team that we've consistently competed well against during the McGrath era, is NOT enough for me to say or believe this was all some master plan to out McGrath and crown the prince.

McGrath was gone at the end of the season no matter what. I don't think there was a master plan to crown Burke. But, if there wasn't someone on the staff they thought could be a future candidate for the HC spot, it probably wouldn't have made sense to fire McGrath midseason. That's a big risk to take if you don't see the possibilty of turning the season around with an assistant. If the team continued to fail, the fallout would have been the same as if McGrath had stayed. The players would be demoralized and we'd probably see transfers whether it was McGrath or an equallly bad assistant.

I just think Jimmy saw something in Burke that made him believe he could make a huge change to this team and was willing to give him the keys to see what he was made of. And if he was right, we could potentially have our next guy in place. The upside is player retention and really good recruiting material that he turned a failing program around midseason, with the same players McGrath had. And those players would be your best recruting tool for recruits. It would also be an ideal situation to keep the whole staff, make Burke the HC, and bring on Blizzard as director of operations.

Lots of upside with little downside to bring on Burke at this time.

This is fair and I don't disagree. There's a lot of positive in retainment with him.

There's always the chance that the next HC could be NONE of the candidates we've discussed here so far and may be completely off our radar. Such was the case with Coach Keatts. He didn't really hit our radar until whispers were happening that we were in serious talks with a top assistant from a team in the Final Four. Prior to that, nobody had mentioned his name on the boards as a candidate.

I do like Burke's style though, a lot. So it's definitely a very nice and welcomed change of pace for all of us as fans, IMO.