(03-17-2023 03:27 PM)UofToledoFans Wrote: https://www-thegazette-com.cdn.ampprojec...a-state%2F
After being told on the Isu message board that Fennley chose to leave Toledo, I had to look it up. He did. Took a pay cut and elevated a fan base of only 700 fans a game to one of the 10 biggest wbb fan bases in the country. Remarkable.
I seem to recall it being known at the time that he had always wanted to go back home to Iowa to coach. Didn't know about the pay cut, but I doubt it was a huge impact.
Girls/Women's basketball was always very popular in Iowa, as I have read. Just look at U Iowa's attendance numbers from back in those days. And the strange 6-on-6 girls HS basketball they played (well into the 90s I think), was reportedly hugely popular too, it's just that Iowa State was quite terrible up until he showed up.
He's definitely a heck of a coach. He did get some lucky breaks in recruiting while at UT. Jane Roman famously reported that she chose Toledo to transfer to because her mom liked Selgo. And Mimi Olsen had signed with Iowa, but her dad, as I recall, got upset with her HS coach for some reason and pulled her out of school her senior year, and Iowa then would then not admit her because she didn't meet some entrance requirement. By then, few schools had openings and Toledo was the one that got the lucky break. He still would have won without those two, but it might have taken a bit more time to really build the teams he did.
In recent years he's had some accusations of his mistreatment of some players. No idea if any of them are true, but I know ISU settled at least one such suit out of court. I believe there is a local reporter that has been trying to get him fired for a number of years, due to those reports.
He did single-handedly turn around a very bad program into a tremendous winning program, and deserves great credit for that. Nevertheless, I'm still hoping he loses badly on Saturday.