(03-05-2020 07:56 AM)dan10 Wrote:  I think this is worded poorly. They brought in an assistant from a power conference. He was not a big time HC. We would not be able to pull in a HC from a power conference because of money or job desire. We could get a retread that fell hard or had controversy, but definitely not a sitting HC from a power conference. Like all assistants, there is a gamble. Ask UNCW how the assistant worked. Ask JMU how it worked.

There's certainly a lot of risk and variance when you hire an assistant. But keep in mind the circumstances of JMU and UNCW's most recent hires. McGrath was not our top choice and never the top assistant for Roy Williams at UNC. He had no mid-major experience and no HC experience. Lou Rowe had even less experience, but was brought in because he was an alum.

Our prior hire, Keatts, was a MUCH safer "assistant". He'd been a HC at Hargrave Military, which has produced several NBA players over the years. He was the top assistant for a national champion, and was named the assistant that was the "most feared recruiter in the nation" by ESPN a couple years before we hired him. McGrath wasn't in the same universe as Keatts as a candidate.

Inglesby was much closer to the Keatts category than the McGrath/Rowe category when he was hired. Though he didn't have HC experience and only minimal mid-major experience (2002-03 - Wagner), he had vaulted to the top assistant spot and put in a lot of years of work at a successful program, like Keatts had. Inglesby and Keatts were essentially being groomed to become a HC somewhere else.

And as we've seen, there's risk in hiring a prior HC too. I liked the Spiker hire when you guys made it. He'd had some success at Army, and as history has proven, if you can win at Army you can win anywhere. But it didn't work out, and that's disappointing.