My goodness... we are Negadelphians through and through. Can't we at least enjoy the run and wait until it's over before we start talking about moving on from the coach that got us our first CAA championship? Good lord.

(03-11-2021 09:44 AM)dan10 Wrote:  

(03-11-2021 08:34 AM)hiroshimacarp Wrote:  i don't feel like this is the time to have any discussion about needing a new coach.

Its still worthy of discussion as to the direction we are headed and whether this was an accidental blip due to covid or if its real progress. Next year will be quite telling.

no...it's not worthy of discussion. i'm with jcohen.

"blip due to covid"? you make it sound like covid made things easier. there were many things i'll remember from tuesday night...and besides watching my kids have a good time despite spending 9-10 hours in the car that day...my favorite memory will be spiker walking up towards the stands in tears...waiving to his family. it occurred to me he might not have seen them much at all in recent weeks or months. they are probably making big sacrifices since 1 slip up can result in a positive covid test which would shut the whole thing down.

if you think covid's over...the lehigh valley phantoms got pulled off the ice before the second period of their game last night in newark.

are the circumstances different? yes. will they ever happen again? god...i hope not. we all get a gold start just for making it through the last year. anybody who has managed to find success in all of this has gone another level and made sacrifices they probably don't even realize...in the face of people trying to downplay it all.

I will say this, playing fewer games with more time to recover is beneficial in a sport like basketball, so yes in some sense covid helped. We are likely to be the team with the fewest games played entering the tournament. To keep a clean program without pauses this season is nothing short of remarkable and the staff players and athletic program deserve far more credit than any of us can give them for successfully navigating this season and its challenges.

The aftermath from the staff showed their dedication. The players reactions showed theirs. Spiker allowing the trainer to go up the ladder first to cut the net was ridiculously telling as well. All of these things are positives about our program right now. There isnt a single fan who didnt enjoy this game, the outcome and everything along with it. I also agree that bumping this thread didnt have to happen either, but discussions should always be welcome. Few discussions had on these boards or elsewhere are out of bounds or unfair discussions, IMO

(03-11-2021 01:42 PM)dan10 Wrote:  I will say this, playing fewer games with more time to recover is beneficial in a sport like basketball, so yes in some sense covid helped. We are likely to be the team with the fewest games played entering the tournament. To keep a clean program without pauses this season is nothing short of remarkable and the staff players and athletic program deserve far more credit than any of us can give them for successfully navigating this season and its challenges.

The aftermath from the staff showed their dedication. The players reactions showed theirs. Spiker allowing the trainer to go up the ladder first to cut the net was ridiculously telling as well. All of these things are positives about our program right now. There isnt a single fan who didnt enjoy this game, the outcome and everything along with it. I also agree that bumping this thread didnt have to happen either, but discussions should always be welcome. Few discussions had on these boards or elsewhere are out of bounds or unfair discussions, IMO

Can't speak to the Tier 1 precautions and protocols, but the Tier 2 ones were excellent and I never felt any corners were cut and everything was well thought out and well done inside the DAC. For the first time in forever, we had room side to side at the table and room for player substitutions!

(03-11-2021 01:42 PM)dan10 Wrote:  I also agree that bumping this thread didnt have to happen either, but discussions should always be welcome. Few discussions had on these boards or elsewhere are out of bounds or unfair discussions, IMO

I had planned to start a separate "Praise for Coach Spiker" thread. But I think that everything that would potentially be said on that thread has already been said here.

if i seem dispassionate it’s because i’ve been on a multiyear break from the program, because seeing us turn into the perennial loser didn’t make me feel good anymore. i wouldn’t have know we were playing tuesday if metsox hadn’t brought it to my attention.

everything about this year is a fluke. i don’t think it should influence anyone’s opinion of the spiker era, .321 conference record.

maybe he was the greatest coach at managing covid protocols. perhaps a job in sports administration or management is where his true talents lie.

i am still going to enjoy seeing us in the big dance. i don’t want to bring the thread down any further so i’ll leave it at that.

(03-11-2021 02:16 PM)relaxing Wrote:  if i seem dispassionate it’s because i’ve been on a multiyear break from the program, because seeing us turn into the perennial loser didn’t make me feel good anymore. i wouldn’t have know we were playing tuesday if metsox hadn’t brought it to my attention.

everything about this year is a fluke. i don’t think it should influence anyone’s opinion of the spiker era, .321 conference record.

maybe he was the greatest coach at managing covid protocols. perhaps a job in sports administration or management is where his true talents lie.

i am still going to enjoy seeing us in the big dance. i don’t want to bring the thread down any further so i’ll leave it at that.

You say you don't want to bring the thread down any further, after you:

• Admitted to not paying attention to this team
• Dismissed this entire year as a fluke that means nothing
• Suggested that the coach would be better off as a sports administrator
  

No, you don't get a free pass for that. You've already brought the thread down. This team has deserved everything it's earned.

Does anyone think Spiker may get poached by bigger name school? I think no for this year but, if we are back in NCAA next year he may be gone. ABC is close vs Texas, Shaka Smart could be fired this year.

(03-20-2021 09:53 PM)Dragon For Life Wrote:  Does anyone think Spiker may get poached by bigger name school? I think no for this year but, if we are back in NCAA next year he may be gone. ABC is close vs Texas, Shaka Smart could be fired this year.

Shaka let his hair grow out. Strange after seeing him bald for so long.

(03-20-2021 10:24 PM)Timer Wrote:  

(03-20-2021 09:53 PM)Dragon For Life Wrote:  Does anyone think Spiker may get poached by bigger name school? I think no for this year but, if we are back in NCAA next year he may be gone. ABC is close vs Texas, Shaka Smart could be fired this year.

Shaka let his hair grow out. Strange after seeing him bald for so long.

Commentators said the same thing haha

(03-20-2021 09:53 PM)Dragon For Life Wrote:  Does anyone think Spiker may get poached by bigger name school? I think no for this year but, if we are back in NCAA next year he may be gone. ABC is close vs Texas, Shaka Smart could be fired this year.

Overall he has a rather poor record, and I'd have a hard time seeing an AD for a power school trying to sell to their fanbase that he/she is hiring a coach with a career .400 winning percentage as a mid-major coach. Maybe they'd be interested after he wins a few more championships at Drexel? Let's hope it gets that that.

Not this year. If he goes back to back then yes.

I think Shaka is done. He was already on the hot seat, so this is a big disappointment again for them. CAA should target bringing in Gregg Marshall, Shaka etc. Make the league interesting again. And yes he looks so strange with hair

(03-20-2021 10:49 PM)Dragon For Life Wrote:  

(03-20-2021 10:24 PM)Timer Wrote:  

(03-20-2021 09:53 PM)Dragon For Life Wrote:  Does anyone think Spiker may get poached by bigger name school? I think no for this year but, if we are back in NCAA next year he may be gone. ABC is close vs Texas, Shaka Smart could be fired this year.

Shaka let his hair grow out. Strange after seeing him bald for so long.

Commentators said the same thing haha

Sort of has that chia pet look.....

(03-21-2021 09:17 AM)J.B. Wrote:  

(03-20-2021 09:53 PM)Dragon For Life Wrote:  Does anyone think Spiker may get poached by bigger name school? I think no for this year but, if we are back in NCAA next year he may be gone. ABC is close vs Texas, Shaka Smart could be fired this year.

Overall he has a rather poor record, and I'd have a hard time seeing an AD for a power school trying to sell to their fanbase that he/she is hiring a coach with a career .400 winning percentage as a mid-major coach. Maybe they'd be interested after he wins a few more championships at Drexel? Let's hope it gets that that.

Yep agreed, a 12-7 season and an appearance as a 16-seed will not move the needle for anyone. Now, if everyone on this team returns, everything goes our way, and we wind up with a best-case scenario of something like 25-6, a 12-seed, and an upset win in the NCAA tournament? Then we might see teams have interest. But other than that, I can't see Spiker leaving anytime soon except of his own accord.

Earl Grant moved to BC which is a step-up. They haven't won a Tourney game.

Earl Grant has a winning record.

(03-22-2021 11:25 PM)relaxing Wrote:  Earl Grant has a winning record.

are you willing to give spiker any credit at all?

i just saw your post from 3/11 a couple days ago. i've been as frustrated with this program as anyone over the last decade. i mostly keep coming here 1. as a place to vent my anxiety when it's taking too long to check somebody in or 2. to avoid cesspools like cable news sites and social media. it's not because i've enjoyed drexel basketball.

saying everything this year was a fluke and especially saying spiker should go into another profession is unfair. we should meet somewhere in the middle with jcohen's post that he still has something to prove. sadly once he proves it to us...he might be on his way out. i hope we have that problem.

and how about the coaches who were exposed this year? you make it sound like winning in a pandemic doesn't mean anything. coach k and calipari got exposed for their one and done non-sense that has been killing college basketball for years. they actually had to coach this year and maintain discipline/focus in their programs.
it didn't go well for them.

If I'm searching for a head coach, I'm looking for stability. I want a coach that can win allow my team to compete at the top of the conference every year, put themselves in a position to win championships, and hopefully even win some championships. In addition, I want that coach's goals to be about teaching and mentoring at the level that he's at, and not have it be about personal goals about trying to move up the ladder to win a national championship. I'm hoping the Coach Spiker can win more than just one championship at Drexel. But I also hope that he likes it here enough and his family like Philadelphia enough that he'll want to be here for a long time, and not just until he wins enough to move up the ladder. I envy the coaches that spend 10-20 years at the same mid-major school and win there as well. Not the coaches that use mid-majors as a personal stepping stone.

I have no sympathy for the coach who win a lot at a mid-major, take a better job for more money, and then gets fired 3-4 years later because he didn't win 20 games a season at his new job. That's the risk they took.

(03-23-2021 07:02 AM)hiroshimacarp Wrote:  

(03-22-2021 11:25 PM)relaxing Wrote:  Earl Grant has a winning record.

are you willing to give spiker any credit at all?

i just saw your post from 3/11 a couple days ago. i've been as frustrated with this program as anyone over the last decade. i mostly keep coming here 1. as a place to vent my anxiety when it's taking too long to check somebody in or 2. to avoid cesspools like cable news sites and social media. it's not because i've enjoyed drexel basketball.

saying everything this year was a fluke and especially saying spiker should go into another profession is unfair. we should meet somewhere in the middle with jcohen's post that he still has something to prove. sadly once he proves it to us...he might be on his way out. i hope we have that problem.

and how about the coaches who were exposed this year? you make it sound like winning in a pandemic doesn't mean anything. coach k and calipari got exposed for their one and done non-sense that has been killing college basketball for years. they actually had to coach this year and maintain discipline/focus in their programs.
it didn't go well for them.

I don't want to come across as a hater. I'm sure he's a nice guy. But I wasn't enthusiastic about the hire, due to his W-L record at Army, and I haven't seen anything to change my mind. I give him credit for having his team prepared and taking down 2 higher seeds in the tournament. But then he also has to own .321 in the CAA and .448 lifetime record. And people think that deserves and extension and a ticket to the power conferences? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills

Of course this year is a fluke. You have one winning year, and it happens to be the pandemic year when every program is thrown into disarray? And you want to count that year over all the others? Get outta town. Apparently he was skillful in managing the team in the face of the pandemic, great. He is quite clearly not a master in recruiting or gameday X's and O's. It's too easy to say we would've won the games that didn't get played. Way too easy, given that history tells us otherwise.

I'm not a "winning is everything" type. Character matters too. But people said Bruiser was a good ambassador for the program too, and he managed to win a little.

(03-23-2021 08:32 AM)relaxing Wrote:  

(03-23-2021 07:02 AM)hiroshimacarp Wrote:  

(03-22-2021 11:25 PM)relaxing Wrote:  Earl Grant has a winning record.

are you willing to give spiker any credit at all?

i just saw your post from 3/11 a couple days ago. i've been as frustrated with this program as anyone over the last decade. i mostly keep coming here 1. as a place to vent my anxiety when it's taking too long to check somebody in or 2. to avoid cesspools like cable news sites and social media. it's not because i've enjoyed drexel basketball.

saying everything this year was a fluke and especially saying spiker should go into another profession is unfair. we should meet somewhere in the middle with jcohen's post that he still has something to prove. sadly once he proves it to us...he might be on his way out. i hope we have that problem.

and how about the coaches who were exposed this year? you make it sound like winning in a pandemic doesn't mean anything. coach k and calipari got exposed for their one and done non-sense that has been killing college basketball for years. they actually had to coach this year and maintain discipline/focus in their programs.
it didn't go well for them.

I don't want to come across as a hater. I'm sure he's a nice guy. But I wasn't enthusiastic about the hire, due to his W-L record at Army, and I haven't seen anything to change my mind. I give him credit for having his team prepared and taking down 2 higher seeds in the tournament. But then he also has to own .321 in the CAA and .448 lifetime record. And people think that deserves and extension and a ticket to the power conferences? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills

Of course this year is a fluke. You have one winning year, and it happens to be the pandemic year when every program is thrown into disarray? And you want to count that year over all the others? Get outta town. Apparently he was skillful in managing the team in the face of the pandemic, great. He is quite clearly not a master in recruiting or gameday X's and O's. It's too easy to say we would've won the games that didn't get played. Way too easy, given that history tells us otherwise.

I'm not a "winning is everything" type. Character matters too. But people said Bruiser was a good ambassador for the program too, and he managed to win a little.

Nothing you said here is incorrect. But I want to point out some things to note in Spiker's defense.

1. He took over a program in complete disarray. After Damion Lee, Bruiser was not bringing in top level talent. The only top level player they had was Terrell Allen, who transferred after Bruiser was fired. Spiker had to build a program completely from scratch. Sometime it takes 2 years to recruit players. Spiker didn't have the luxury. He brought in some guys who could help out of desperation, like Kurk Lee and Iceman and transfers like Harper and Isabell who had a lot of talent, but might not have been ideal players for this program. Take a look at the 2016-2017 roster. It was REALLY BAD.

2. He's been here for 5 years and his teams have improved 5 years in a row. If most of the team sticks around, it's likely to be 6 years next year.

3. Other than Coen, he's the only current CAA coach to have won a championship. He's one of 3 coaching hires in 2016. He's the only one of the three to have won a championship. JMU's coach who was hired that year didn't even make it to year 5. Pat Skerry has been at Towson for 10 years and hasn't won, despite having a brand new arena and the CAA tournament in their backyard for two years.

4. The goal of a CAA coach is to win the championship. He was the best coach out of 10 this season. He's the only coach to accomplish the ultimate goal.

5. Since he's been at Drexel, the program has had ZERO infractions and ZERO disciplinary issues. Discipline issues was an occasional problem with Bruiser.

6. While Bruiser won a lot of games, his CAA Tournament record was horrible. Spiker is 5-4 in the CAA Tournament. I think it took Bruiser 11 years to get 5 wins.