Right.
Is this a scenario like where Maryland pissed off Willard and then ended up pivoting to Buzz (and paying at a higher rate)? Which was a good hire for them (as much as we hate Buzz) but not as good as retaining Willard (as much as he is a dick).
Or did we just chase away our Coach Cal and land our Mark Pope?
Hoping the latter! Either way not my money and could have been much worse. Time will tell.
Very happy with how quickly this happened. Carla zeroed in on who she identified as her top target and got it done as soon as she possibly could, there was a rumor floating around that she made a trip to Durham last week and I have to think that was true. By all accounts this is a homerun, A grade hire for us. Would equate it to hiring a Scott Drew in college basketball (not exactly a 1:1 comparison) in terms of the level of slamming our dicks on the table.
There’s a handful of guys I’d love to poach from Duke, both from their current roster and their recruiting class. The HS guys might be more important than their returning guys to be honest, Duke’s 2025 class is REALLY strong with six players ranked in the top 100 on Perfect Game. Some will be draft risks but Pollard has a good history of getting those type of prospects to college. I also think we’ll have a good chance of retaining a chunk of our roster currently in the portal.
Positive tweet from Kevin Jaxel about the new coach,
The key players I’d be watching out for:
Gracia would be the big prize here. He’s considered a potential top 10 pick in the 2026 MLB draft. Macon Winslow is also a potential top 5 round pick in 2026 and a former top 100 prospect on Perfect Game. Same for Kyle Johnson, has a ton of talent but hasn’t quite put it all together. Duke has plenty of talent they could bring over, will be a balancing act for Pollard to determine who all he wants to bring from his side and also who he wants to try and keep from ours, both our roster and our HS class. Again the roster size has to be at 34 not 40 now with the House Settlement.
Who from our side do you think we’ll have a decent shot at retaining?
It’s tough to tell without knowing who all we’re bringing in. One would hope based on Hav’s comments that Walker Buchanan would be open to coming back, I think from a hitting standpoint he fits what Pollard typically wants very well. Aiden Harris I know wanted to stay prior to O’Connor leaving but we’ll see. I think Eric Becker is likely a longshot at this point but who knows.
The good news is that outside of the initial group that followed O’Connor to MSU, we haven’t had a ton of our portal entries commit elsewhere. Which means a lot of them have probably been waiting to see who we hired, and with how good of a coach and recruiter Pollard is I’d have to imagine he’ll be a good sign for a lot of those guys.
??? Pollard was the obvious hire.
Donors raised the money and had it ready. Carla didnt have that money before hand
@chavlicek15 kinda made it known the donors and those behind the baseball team already keyed in on Pollard
Not sure what that has to do with anything - people treat her as if she’s completely incompetent, unable to make correct decisions, even those as “simple” as the obvious hire.
Not really on this site tho. Unless it’s one of the dudes I’ve muted lol. There are Carla supporters and detractors but not the straw man you’re arguing against.
In addition to keeping your hall of fame coaches happy, you make your bones as AD by mining great coaches in sports that are sputtering, not replacing hall of fame coaches with obvious targets. In our case those are football and women’s basketball. The results aren’t in for men’s basketball or baseball but those were the most obvious hires of all time, almost certainly had universal backing of big $$$, and were obvious step-ups/dream jobs of the prospective candidates. Where Carla would deserve special praise/blame would be if she went outside those picks and was unusually successful or failed miserably. As is, she deserves some praise for not screwing it up and keeping everything quiet, but doesn’t deserve special praise or blame based on the ultimate success of Odom and Pollard, as nearly everyone supported the hires.
Good call. Also, looks like Gibb’s replacement on NCIS, the former FBI guy.
I actually think our athletic director should get credit for hiring a really good coach and doing it quickly. Hot take I guess
I am a Carla skeptic, but I will give her her due here. Good hire wrapped up quickly is hard to knock. Clearly the best available hire she could have made imo.
One of the big name assistants from Vandy or Tennessee may very well end up better long term, but that’s impossible to predict. A HC already succeeding in your conference at a similar academic institution with a similar recruiting pipeline is a slam dunk, and has a much much higher floor.
I was a little nervous about the process if he said no, but I have a hunch this was done privately pretty soon after Oak left, so no concern needed.
Shaka to Villanova in 3 years.
Can we not go down the “Carla shouldn’t get credit for this hire” route? It’s a really stupid road to traverse that we’ve seen plenty of times before.
“WaLLy waLKer acTUaLlY HIreD toNy bEnNEtt”!
So when’s the first commit or post about staying lmao? Need the train to start rolling!
Based on things I heard from people close to the program, I had question marks about how the O’Connor situation went down and whether or not we handled it the best we could. But that’s past history at this point, no reason to dwell on it anymore.
With that being said, I think Carla and our administration handled this hiring process about as well as we could have possibly imagined. Identify your top guy, zero in on him, make him an offer that’s good enough to get a deal done, and then announce it the day after his season ends along with his entire staff at Duke so we can get right to retooling our roster. Still a little behind in terms of the portal but we went through this process about as fast as we could have, which is a great thing. And it seems that Pollard already has a ton of support from donors and former players.
It’s been an up and down offseason, but the future still looks bright for this program. Great job Carla.
A little confused at what we’re arguing here (or if we’re even arguing), but if people seriously don’t think this is a coup for Carla, then they’ve shown their hand and their complaints about her can’t be taken seriously.
Pollard turned down South Carolina. He turned down Miami. We just had a HOF coach leave allegedly due to unhappiness with the relationship with and support from AD/administration. While it’s a nice story on paper about the VA guy coming home, this shouldn’t be considered an “easy” hire.
Pollard could have easily milked Duke for more and gotten a promise to upgrade the stadium. He’s already proven he can win at the highest level at Duke (despite the SR results). He also would’ve been considered for any other ACC or SEC job that could be coming available if he thought he had plateaued in Durham.
All of these options were on the table for a guy like Pollard. This is an undeniable W for Carla. Full stop.
Its just as obnoxious as the “see carla did something every criticism of her is therefore invalid”
Literally nobody is saying that.
There’s a contingent of people who will clearly always be anti-Carla no matter what, to the point where their immediate reaction to objectively good news for UVA is to dampen any praise towards her.
It makes you wonder why this contingent of people are so vehemently against her and whether there’s even anything she can do about it.