Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
Yep, agreed. It's not weird for us not to have heard anything about Groce being fired, not one bit. It IS weird that - if Groce were to stay - we haven't heard public support from Whitman.
2017 Coaching Carousel
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Yep, agreed. It's not weird for us not to have heard anything about Groce being fired, not one bit. It IS weird that - if Groce were to stay - we haven't heard public support from Whitman.
TownieMatt
CU Expat
- Chicago
Given how quickly JW pulled off the Lovie hire, I would be very surprised if JW doesn't handle this well given the amount of time he's had to plan.
mattcoldagelli
- The Transfer Portal with Do Not Contact Tag
Presumably you are only talking about if the decision is to retain?
If it is to announce a change, I think post-Selection Sunday is entirely appropriate. You do have to wait until we are officially not in the tournament to be able to fall back on things like "the way we want to measure success here is to be competing for championships in the NCAA tournament."
No, if the decision is to fire, sorry.
If the decision is to retain, I agree with you, every second is worse than the previous one.
Agree to disagree I guess.
Either way, I really think he'll coach in a potential NIT bid. There is not the hurry that it seems.
Any time someone says something like this, I go and look at that person's previous posts. One of this guys' is "We will lose to Rutgers"
illinoisfan11
- Peoria, IL
BananaShampoo
Captain 'Paign
- Phoenix, AZ
So really, the major argument I've seen over why Keatts wouldn't be a great hire is because his amazing turnaround and superior coaching record as a head coach happened in a far inferior conference and might not translate to the P5 level. But is the CAA really that inferior? If you look at conference RPI rankings going back, it's been above or right around on par with the Horizon league - a conference that until recently included some school named Butler.
See here: https://www.teamrankings.com/ncaa-basketball/rpi-ranking/rpi-rating-by-conf
Like the Horizon, it's been far from the bottom of the barrel for D-1 basketball conferences. Butler turned it's success in that conference into a springboard to the Big East, along with DePaul. Oh, and the last Horizon league coach to make the successful jump to a B1G coaching gig? Some guy named Bo Ryan, who had a similar level of success at Wisconsin-Milwaukee as Keatts has had at UNC-Wilmington (and actually, I'd argue Keatts has been even better than Bo was).
See here: https://www.teamrankings.com/ncaa-basketball/rpi-ranking/rpi-rating-by-conf
Like the Horizon, it's been far from the bottom of the barrel for D-1 basketball conferences. Butler turned it's success in that conference into a springboard to the Big East, along with DePaul. Oh, and the last Horizon league coach to make the successful jump to a B1G coaching gig? Some guy named Bo Ryan, who had a similar level of success at Wisconsin-Milwaukee as Keatts has had at UNC-Wilmington (and actually, I'd argue Keatts has been even better than Bo was).
I think tenure length is the primary concern. At least it's my concern. But really, that is a minor knock on his resume.
Would this be standard? I think it seems a bizarre choice...
I honestly don't know, but I remember losing to Alabama in the NIT after they fired Grant & they had an assistant coaching.
I know it's already been talked about, but I think Anthony Grant is more of a comp than some realize, and I think even more of a "unicorn" type resume.
Yes, he inherited a better situation, but he took them to 3 straight outright titles. For Keatts, he took over right after the conference lost its top programs. VCU left the CAA in 2012, George Mason and Old Dominion after 2013. Losing arguably the 3 historically strongest programs from a conference can crush it.
Grant was coaching in a much stronger conference at the time. He had significantly more assistant coaching experience. His last 4 seasons at Florida he was Associate Head Coach.
He was really a great hire on paper.
Yes.
Herb Sendek coached Arizona State in the NIT two years ago and then got fired. Brian Gregory coached Georgia Tech in the NIT last year and then got fired. Billy Gillispie coached Kentucky in the NIT the year he got fired.
I'm not aware of an interim coach ever replacing a fired coach for the NIT.
sacraig
- The desert
Also keep in mind that if Groce is retained, it would require extending him to avoid hurting recruitment, so there would absolutely need to be some kind of announcement.
mattcoldagelli
- The Transfer Portal with Do Not Contact Tag
If someone were to run "Operation Keep the Recruits", using the NIT as a way to signal your intent/hopes for certain assistants would be something that would cross your mind.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
I think given the apparent (and often talked up) desire to keep Walker in a perfect world, it makes a ton of sense to fire Groce before the BTT and let Walker coach the team.
Grant was a great hire, I agree.
But like, this thing about the relative strength of the CAA...do you see how that doesn't fit?
What Grant and Keatts have in common is that neither one ever had to play against VCU, y'know? How do you get credit for a stronger conference when you're AT the program that's making it a stronger conference?
It's not the craziest idea in the world. But gun to my head, it would not be my prediction.
Minimizing the time, and the twitter news cycles, between job opening and job closing is another big consideration that weighs in favor of Groce coaching the NIT. If there's not much you can do search-wise during the opening weekend of the NCAA's (and there's not), then don't let the public perception clock run against you during those days.
Yes. Also, there is a PR/marketing aspect to this. It would look bad to recruits and the basketball community if you canned Groce before having a professional face-to-face back in Champaign. It would look bad to have players and recruits hitting social media saying they were blindsided because Groce/Whitman didn't tell them in advance of the press disclosure. You want this to go down in a controlled, professional way if at all possible.
If you are confident you'll hire a top shelf replacement, you also want people paying attention to the transition. It will come with some bad press (jokes about how far the program has fallen), but there will also be an acknowledgment of historical relevancy. If you hire any of Archie Miller, Monty, Keatts, Larry K, Musselman, Dan Majerle, Anthony Grant, or several other names mentioned in this thread, there will be at worst a vivid discussion about whether they can bring the program back to previous heights. It will be good press overall.
The only way for this to go poorly in terms of PR is to get publicly (or semi-publicly) rejected by multiple preferred candidates, let the process drag on for 3-4 weeks while the recruiting class disintegrates, and then hire somebody like Dan Muller (who I actually think is a good coach - just wouldn't go over well). I don't think that will happen. I get the sense that Whitman is competent and detail-obsessed. I think this will be surgical.
BananaShampoo
Captain 'Paign
- Phoenix, AZ
To counter that, again using Ryan as an example, he was only at UWM for 2 seasons before being picked to be the Wiscy head coach. Before that he was at D3 Wisconsin-Platteville for a long time. He literally only had 2 seasons of D1 coaching experience before moving on to the P5 level. Keatts has 3 years now, plus was an assistant at D1 schools Marshall and Louisville (almost as bigtime as it gets). I'd wager he's at least as ready if not more than Bo was at the time he was hired by Pat Richter, UW's AD at the time.
Oh, another guy who had only a few years of D1 coaching experience before moving on to P5, after having a lot of lower level (HS, D3, and D2) coaching experience? John Beilein.
Keatts. Train. While I agree with your thoughts, what if he gave Groce his word, make the tourney and you're back? If you're a man of your word, your hopefully a man of your word. Until the Illini are definitely eliminated...
That would have been an inadvisable promise to make (what if we had won the BTT as a 14 seed or something?), but sure, I guess that makes as much sense as anything else.
To counter that, again using Ryan as an example, he was only at UWM for 2 seasons before being picked to be the Wiscy head coach. Before that he was at D3 Wisconsin-Platteville for a long time. He literally only had 2 seasons of D1 coaching experience before moving on to the P5 level. Keatts has 3 years now, plus was an assistant at D1 schools Marshall and Louisville (almost as bigtime as it gets). I'd wager he's at least as ready if not more than Bo was at the time he was hired by Pat Richter, UW's AD at the time.
Oh, another guy who had only a few years of D1 coaching experience before moving on to P5, after having a lot of lower level (HS, D3, and D2) coaching experience? John Beilein.
This is true. But, keep in mind that most people with Bo's resume would have failed miserably. It just did not predict the success that he has had.
I'm sort of on the Keatts train. I also like Musselman and Monty. Each of them has strengths and concerns. That's OK. Just because I point out a limitation in a resume, does not mean that I don't think he is a strong candidate.
BananaShampoo
Captain 'Paign
- Phoenix, AZ
1. That would be wrong. He was head coach at Hargrave for a rather long time. That said, why would him being a HC for 3 years be a knock when he's obviously demonstrated a great deal of success over that 3 years already? He turned around a dumpster fire in ONE year!
2. So what? A lot of the candidates being bandied about don't have deep Midwest connections. That aspect is overrated IMO.
3. Maybe not a name, but as hashed out previously there is a good chance at least a few of them would stay, especially after meeting him. He did a very good job of recruiting as as assistant at Louisville. He has from all accounts an engaging personality, and he's AA which though it shouldn't matter almost certainly doesn't hurt. Win a lot early on and the "name" things stops mattering really quick. He'd establish his own name here.
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