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(04-12-2021 01:35 PM)levydl Wrote:  

(04-12-2021 12:52 PM)bearcatmark Wrote:  Repeat after me: There is no right formula for picking a basketball coach. Those with no head coaching experience have become hall of famers. Those who came up coaching smaller programs have become hall of famers.

You could trot out this argument to support any hiring. It's vacuous. Yes, the guy who ticks all your boxes might fail, and the guy who was your 7th choice might become a HoFer, but you should still have criteria for hiring someone and then get the guy who best meets them.

As far as I can tell, Martin's main qualification is he played on the 92 team. Admittedly, there don't appear to be any home-run hires out there. And it would be cool to have a former Bearcat leading the team. But he would be a pretty crazy hire IMO.

He's worked as an assistant under a hall of famer for 15 years as well. Multiple assistants that worked under Huggs have been successful head coaches. There are criteria. Yea if you could pluck someone who has succeeded at a head coach at this level that might be better. I think Archie would have been a safer hire for example because we know he succeeded at Dayton and his Indiana stint, while not great isn't egregiously bad either. But the reality is we were choosing between retreads like Archie, experienced assistants like Martin, or up and coming coaches at low majors like Brannen was when we hired him. We weren't taking a wildly successful coach at our level.

History tells us those three criteria types of hires all have their successes and failures. So you interview. You get a sense at who has the best plan for your job and you make the judgment.