No Aldrich?
Itās just getting a lot harder to hire guys away. The stupid amounts of conference money have evened the playing field between schools a lot. There used to be a massive resource gap between Kentucky basketball and everyone else, but I think that has shrunk a lot.
Also specifically with Kentucky, I think Billy Donovan was genuinely on the table for them, but they couldnāt wait on him, and Mitch Barnhart definitely went a little rogue on the Pope hire. His clear #1 was Scott Drew, and once that fell through the donors pushed Hurley, then Mitch decided he was just gonna get his guy even if it was too early and the donors werenāt on board. Early good vibes are starting to run out on him though. Honeymoon ended after the Arkansas game. That hire is still an incomplete grade.
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Eric Olen has my attention. Blew out Russ Turnerās UC Irvine squad on the road. Scored 53 in the 2nd half. UCSD now top 50 in KenPom, just a few years into their transition to D1. Olen seems like a rising star. Probably wonāt factor into our search but Iām becoming increasingly convinced heās going to be a successful high major coach in the near future.
Olen is who people think Bucky is.
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Arenāt you telling fans they should have no reaction to a win? Again, if you only like Virginia Basketball when itās in a āmeaningfulā game (ranked opponent? Conference title? Postseason game?), do you really like Virginia Basketball? Seems you missed a lot of what Tony talked about in his 15 years here.
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You can feel how you want about the win, but saying it means we should keep Ron is dangerous. Thatās how we end up with him long term.
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See we say that here but in another thread talk about how cut throat it is and detrimental that we must get to either the SEC or B1G or we risk having the nicest facilities in the Sun Belt right? Itās not harder than itās been the difference is the top jobs all had lifetime coaches that were essentially in the twilight stagesā¦. We have no idea how some of the top programs would do hiring because they either still have a HOF coach (Kansas) or went with an assistant (Duke, UNC). Kentucky is really all we got and the results of that donāt really say theyāre head and shoulders above everyone else.
The exodus of established coaches over the last few years has really thinned out the pool.
And last yearās coaching carousel was fairly robust, which further thinned out the pool of likely gettable coaches given the quality of guys in their first years at current schools.
What hurts us further at the minute is that many of the ābestā coaches that might be gettable also come with baggage or potential culture mismatches (e.g., Beard, Cronin, Buzz, wade, maybe Mccasland)
The list of ābestā coaches that would be a culture fit thus is pretty limited (otz, Shaka, drew), and each of these have strong reasons not to leave.
So whatās left is the coaches absorbed by the carousel last year (byingron, May, Devries, smith, Kelsey) who may be tough to steal after only 1 year.
Then you are dropping down to less establish mid major up and comers (Odom, Calhoun, McCollum, etc).
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The conference thing and resource gap is way more important for football than basketball. Basketball programs are comparatively cheap to run. Should have specified I was only talking about basketball.
I think this is made clear by the fact that Auburn has the #1 basketball program in the country.
Oh I agree there. Heās going to have to chalk up a lot of wins down the stretch here to warrant that. At least in the short term I can appreciate the guys playing hard and winning games. Yesterday was the first time that JPJ has felt ānormalā in quite some time. Of course the added energy with the TB recognition had something to do with that big game feel, but at least we got it back if only temporarily.
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You donāt think thereās any correlation to the conference thatās currently demolishing the field this season and the money coming in? Resources are attractive to top coaches. And theyāre certainly attractive to top players.
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Too late - would have had to have gone 3-1 in one possession games instead of 1-3 so far and then 5-2 and also 2 wins in the Acc tournamentā¦ that would have been 21-13 by the end of the Acc tournament and respectable to even have a chance.
Outside of that - win the Acc tournament and a round in the madness and that would do it maybe.
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It definitely helps, but I do think current SEC basketball dominance is as much a quirk of every big time ACC coach retiring in the last couple years as it is conference resources. I think a lot of these players making the SEC schools so good right now would be playing for ACC legend coaches if they were still coaching. I obviously have no evidence of that, just my unsubstantiated 2 cents.
The Big 12 and Big East are not well-resourced conferences and they also have great basketball.
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He might be but Bucky also is who I think Bucky is
Kinda reminds me how when we were the best team in the country we expected to recruit and land the best players in the country
Who are the best coaches in the country now?
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coaches always say stuff like this. Itās an unwritten rule that no matter how good or bad a coach is, other coaches have to prop them up. Remember when Gillen was on the hot seat, roy said something to the effect of āhe has more knowledge in his little finger than all of our fans combinedā.
But as a fan, stuff like this comes off as self serving and insulting. Roy loved beating up on Gillenās teamsā¦and at the same time he was letting the UVa fans know that they donāt deserve anything better, youāre just UVa. I thought of this every time Tony kicked the shit out of Roy which if I recall was 6 or 7 straight before Roy hung it up.
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Ding ding ding
Hire Ron
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Wish I had more! Was only recently given that nugget with nothing further. Donāt think I expected a serious candidate this early.
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Wow that Dayton win was big for Odom
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Iām torn about Ron. Heās a good coach, he got dealt a tough hand, the team struggled early but seems to finding its stride. Itāll be interesting to see if this is real improvement or weāre just beating up on bad teams. Even so, Iām not sure a hot finish should win him the job ā just as I didnāt think a sluggish start should lose it for him.
What I do know is that I am starting to like the team and its players, and I wish we could keep the core intact, but I think thatās going to be impossible regardless of who is hired. As someone said, these kids came to play for Tony, not for Ron and not for whoever comes next.
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