Well yeah a wasted year sucks. Which goes to my point about these critiques being raised mostly now and not at the time.
If we are assessing his choices at the time of retirement, the relevant question is whether he knew the year would be wasted? If so, he must not be a fan of Ron.
More likely, he probably thought the team had some good pieces, or at least enough for Ron to do something meaningful. And it just hasnāt worked.
Thereās another timeline where they team gels, Warley sticks, Ron impresses and we make the tourney. He gets the job, thereās good continuity and the year isnāt wasted.
Donāt think he wouldāve advocated for Ron for the job if he thought that scenario was impossible. At worst, I think you can say he had bad judgment in October about our rosterās ceiling, or about Ron.
Thatās fair. Iāll just note Iāve been critical of the timing for months, but thatās neither here nor there.
The issue I have is that Tony is a good basketball coach. He should have been able to look at this roster after a full offseason of practices and know it had some serious issues and would have big growing pains (surely thatās why he talked about a two year plan in the offseason). And heās been around sports long enough to know a head coach bailing on a team two weeks before the season is going to tank morale and cause cohesion issues.
If he knows basketball at all (which of course he does) he had to know he was dealing Ron an extremely difficult hand and giving him next to zero time to figure it out. Success never seemed very likely in that scenario, at least to me.
So when I look at the decision making at the time, I donāt see any compelling reason to quit then versus end of season related to on-the-court performance, program health, or doing right by the players. The only things that leans in that direction are ensuring one of your guys is given a shot at the gig and just being so done you literally canāt get up in the morning and do it anymore. Which if itās the latter, I guess OK, but the season is like 4.5 months and I donāt think coaching basketball is a waking nightmare for Tony, but who knows.
So if he decided he wanted to go out by bringing on his entire family to the staff, tanked the program for five years, and committed multiple violations of various sorts while finishing at the bottom of the ACC that would be his right?
Obviously he would never do any of those things for a million obvious reasons. But I bring it up to point out the notion that programs should be beholden to the wishes of their HCs as they exit is ridiculous
LOL is your argument in this one hey heād never do this stuff, but if he did what do you do?? Seems irrelevant to meā¦
No one is beholden to anything. Players had a transfer window open, one used it. Program and AD are free to hire a new coach as soon as they wish.
So you got 1 year of a tryout for a longtime assistant? And it seems fairly consensus here even with CTB the team still wouldnāt be very good this year? Much ado about nothing on this. If anything itās a good thing as they have a full season to now vet their options for next coach. Could they have done that if CTB went in and told Carla hey Iāll coach this year out but Iām retiring after that? Sure, of course. But thatās not what happened and is a pretty inconsequential detail in the grand scheme of things, especially if you donāt think much of the current team.
And oh yeah, how much $ did the program save this way by not having to pay TB and paying Ron far less than potential market value of what a new coach would be? Seems that cash which could potentially open up more candidates with steep buyouts should matter?
To take a brief detour from the Tony Bennett Fall 2024- Post-Mortem, I was thinking some about what power conference coaches are āgettable.ā Generally speaking, the power conference-to-power conference moves from the last 4-5 years fall into one of several categories:
Alum tempted by the chance to come home (Mark Pope, Chris Beard): Slim pickings for our purposes.
Need to beat the posse out of town (Eric Musselman, Andy Enfield, Mike White): Polarizing category, because you never feel 100% good about these guysā resumes, even if they are sometimes successful (obligatory Shaka to Marquette mention goes here).
Whatever the heck Cal to Arkansas was
Better job opens up (Micah Shrewsberry, Kyle Smith): This is the category of hire that I think would be met with the least grumbling. But also the one that is hardest to triangulate, because ābetter jobā is kinda fuzzy, especially with revenue sharingās impact kind of uncertain.
So for that last category, who should we be looking at? From first principles, I guess it would be guys from schools who are gonna fund football at the expense of basketball being competitive? Or maybe schools that are gonna struggle with funding overall (certain Big East schools)? I donāt think itās going to be a deep category of names.
Rick Carlisle. Iām cheating and throwing in people who have coached at UVA before or have a connection: Odom and Byington are in this group for me.
Porter Moser. Mike White again probably. Rhoades. All coaches who are probably better than what they have shown stuck at football schools that have very little energy behind their bball programs.
Bobby Hurley, Shaka Smart, Jeff Capel
DeVries, Smith, Calhoun, Hoiberg. This group to me seems the hardest to pull from because of their buyouts being newly hires in the former 3 and Hoiberg being a Nebraska born. (Edit: not Calhoun though his salary we could buy out probably)
I would like to clarify my profile pic is now DeVries not because he has my backing but because Im reverse jinxing him since I have currently talked myself into Jeff Capel bringing Jaland Lowe and flipping Derek Dixon to UVA while keeping our front court and adding Cam Corhen
I mean the transfer window for players opening less than 2 weeks before the start of the season, didnāt do them any favors. Teams already had rosters filled out and had been practicing since early summer together.
Iād throw Matt McMahon at LSU into that last category. LSU doesnāt seem likely to want to care much about bball, Houston is all up in their recruiting area, and heās been perfectly respectable after Will Wade left the cupboard barer than bare. And his Murray State tenure was pretty positive. They will have an awful conference record this year though in that few conference, even if they improve as a team from last season.
How do people judge Shaheen Hollowayās resume? 2 solid seasons, but broadly in line with what Willard did there, but then the bottom looks like itās fallen out this season.
I know that Seton Hallās NIL situation is apparently dire, but to me thereās no excuse for how awful their offense has been this year. Their numbers put even the worst Bennett offenses to shame.
With $8 million total we can pay his buyout AND give him a substantial enough raise to strongly consider the job. Of course can turn up the heat with more money in the offer. Heās worth it IMO.
