He was a head coach for five years at Charlotte. He didnât win the regular season championship, didnât win the conference tournament, didnât make the NCAA tournament, didnât make the NIT, and then quit. He wasnât even close to the top of his own conference either - he never finished better than 4th in Conference USA. And thatâs not even a good conference.
And yeah if you compare his first year to his last year, his last year was better. But the middle years werenât some awesome continuous upward trajectory. His teams were ranked 314, 162, 252, 191, then 104 on Torvik. Thats ok, but what about that tenure is there to write home about?
Would UVA consider any other mid major coach who never won any conference title or won any tournament games of significance and their best finish in their own conference was fourth? No. Of course not.
I think itâs fair for folks to want to keep Sanchez. But vaguely pointing at Charlotte and saying he did a good job I think is overstating it. He did an ok job, and he might be a solid coach, but nothing he did there would warrant any P5 team hiring him.
Tough when youâre characterizing lots of disparate views, but hereâs my view, which doesnât seem out of the mainstream of the non-RIBers:
Your characterization: Ron shouldnât be considered for the jobâŚ
Your implication: Ron isnât being considered for the job.
Disagree - Ron is literally coaching the team and as long as there are games left, thereâs always a chance Ron could do something to convert even the hardcore anti-RIBers. Like win every game left and win the natty. My view: I think he needs to get into the tourney to merit the job, and at this point that means winning the ACC-T. But Iâm no fool - if he wins out and loses in the ACC-T final, and goes to the NIT, then I suspect we are Ronning it back.
Your characterization: Ron made a lot of poor coaching decisions
Your defense: So do HOF coaches
My view: Can we not do this? Coach K likes casinos. Haney has been to casinos. Therefore Haney and Coach K are both legendary college hoops coaches. Grrr⌠Letâs stick to evaluating Ron against his coaching peers.
Your characterization: Ron didnât do anything at Charlotte.
Your defense: Ron won 22 games [narrator: I wonder if that includes the 4 buy games in the CBI?]. Ron set them up for success.
My view: you moved into straw man territory here. My view: Ron did fine at Charlotte. Not very good. Iâd say he did âokayâ. Someone more charitable might even say âgood.â Iâd move on and say that he had serious trouble retaining talent. The way he set Charlotte up for success the year he left is by leaving at a time when it would have been difficult for his players to find a new landing spot (despite the 60-day window).
TLDR - Let me discard my âon the one hand / on the otherâ BS. Ron quit on his Charlotte team to take a job that was already filled by J-Willy. I continue to think that was a bitch move by both him (to do it) and Tony (to encourage it), even if you discard the potential motivation to try to give Ron the UVa job (that he doesnât merit given his coaching performace, absent AT LEAST a tourney appearance).
My point in bringing up Ronâs questionable decisions and comparing them to other coaches is simply to say that if youâre going to disqualify Ron from the search because he made some poor late game decisions early, an area where I feel heâs been better recently, than youâd also have to disqualify just about every coach from the search.
Pointing to the progress Ron made in the win column at Charlotte is not a straw man argument.
And if the primary criterion by which we consider Ron for the job is whether he makes the tournament or not, then what do we do if he wins out the regular season, makes it to the ACC tournament title game, and loses? Is that enough to make it? Probably not. What if he goes 3-5 in the next 8 games and then somehow pulls off a Kevin Keatts? Does he keep the job now? And as we have now seen with Kevin Keatts, just because you go on a heater for two weeks and get to the Elite Eight, doesnât mean youâre actually good enough to keep the job.
Iâm not even arguing Ron should keep the job or that heâs actually the best candidate. I just donât agree with some of the arguments people are using against him. And, truthfully, Iâm kind of playing devilâs advocate a bit as well.
Yeah, I got it. My point is that itâs context dependent. You evaluate Ronâs errors in the context of Ronâs body of work, and Selfâs errors in the context of Selfâs.
Yeah, agree. I wasnât gonna address every potential highly unlikely outcome. In the context of Ronâs career to this point, what does he need to do merit the job (or at least serious consideration)? Iâd say that, given Ronâs talent through his time here and at Charlotte, a good coach should have at least one postseason appearance. Ron has zero so far (not even NIT). My criterion would be NCAA. If someone wants to say NIT, then I wouldnât agree, but it doesnât seem unreasonable. But I donât think no postseason cuts it, even if heâs hitting vague measures like âthe team is showing improvement.â
ChatGPT came to a conclusion within 10 seconds on the question âIs Ron Sanchez a good coach?â.This board will still be debating whether Ron improved Charlotte this time next week.
Hard Hedge with fleet footed athletic 6â7-6â9 muscular forwards⌠a little different than the personnel we have tried to do it with the past few years.
I do keep coming back to the mediocre defenses heâs fielded (and is fielding). Like at that point is he even a continuity coach? I donât want our next guy to run the pack line, but itâs pretty integral to the Bennett regimeâs identity that RIBers seem to want to continue. Iâm not sure how you justify this as a Bennett continuity thing when Ron hasnât shown any real aptitude for defensive coaching. At some point itâs just a commitment to a slow paceâŚ
Iâm also not at all convinced any of these people actually think heâs the best basketball coach we could reasonably hire next month. I think 90% of this is guilt that weâre gonna kick a good guy to the curb manifesting into arguments they donât really believe.
That name keep popping up and nothing will disappoint and deflate me more than hiring a geriatric NBA retred with no proven college upside and likely a short runway before he joins the early bird special group at the Sizzler.
Im not that down on Carlisle, but it does seem foolish to give up next season because he wonât be able to recruit the portal very effectively when his tenure is already presumed to be fairly short.
The case for Ron: Heâs a great guy. Wouldnât it be amazing if he turns out to be a great coach? That he just needed some time to get his feet under him? Even better, wouldnât it be great if he retains this whole team and we turn out to be really good next year? That would (sincerely) be awesome.
The case against Ron: His coaching resume is far worse than that of other candidates. In fact, if he werenât the current interim coach, thereâs nothing in his resume that would even have him in the conversation.
Iâll never root against UVA but would Mike Young coaching circles around Ron again and running up the score against us wake everyone up from this RIB fever dream?
