mattcoldagelli
- The Transfer Portal with Do Not Contact Tag
This is 100% where I'm at.
2017 Coaching Carousel
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This is 100% where I'm at.
When the poets turn against you, then you know it is over
Nice, by the way.
No- he's got a good thing going at ND and plenty of job security. He's basically an institution there at this point. 17 years in one place is not so common anymore.
I can't think of any reason he would leave honestly. He would be making a lateral move to start from scratch. Unless his working conditions or relationships there have frayed or we can offer a dump truck full of money, Brey is not coming.
I don't think Jerrance is ever going to be considered for Illinois. There is a lot to unpack with that relationship.
And I think Groce has proven that he can establish relationships and recruit well. Now the coaching and motivation part seems to leave a bit to be desired...
illiniCA
- DC Area
:thumb:
The "Snacks" lovers would do well to research his actions while he was in CU and then reevaluate their opinions. The information is out there if you look in the right places.
Wittsdream
- Chicago
Absolutely, and that was the point I was making in my original post. It's almost unthinkable nowadays that a NC caliber team would allow opponents to shoot 46 FG% on the season, but that '89 group possessed a special level of chemistry, and, most of all, athleticism, which allowed them to employ full and 3/4 court pressure relentlessly, which would allow them to convert those TOs into points more than the layups they were giving up by overplaying. Henson unleashed his junkyard dogs on the college basketball world, and let them have FUN, which was a major component to their identity.
Anyway, I believe it was Billy Packer that season who said you could have handed that Illini team a baton, and they'd have finished near the top of the Big Ten in track & field.
My favorite Illini team, by far, and one that was both intensely focused yet playfully loose by equal measure.........a rarity!
Haha!! That's just a bunch of smoke n' mirrrors.
I don't go for the fear angle at all. And I also don't really think the upside/downside calculations can be made as precisely as 82 pages of message board fodder tend to force them to be. If Cuonzo isn't the guy he isn't the guy.
Sounds good on paper, but hardly a realistic scenario. It presents a lukewarm, stepping stone scenario, which IMO will not happen, i.e., fire a coach because we start making the NCAA consistently but fail to proceed further. I have serious doubts that Illinois will fire someone for lack of "further elevating the program" given where we are. I do not see it happening in the next 10 years.
Whom to hire?
I think you go after Marshall hard and if he turns us down then JW needs to have 4-5 guys that he knows will take the job. I'm not sure I would start with Martin I just feel he is only a slightly better coach then Groce. He has NBA prospects on his team and he still struggles to win games? His career record looks okay but not great I'd start with either Musselman or McDermott after Marshall then Keatts then Martin.
I think you go after Marshall hard and if he turns us down then JW needs to have 4-5 guys that he knows will take the job. I'm not sure I would start with Martin I just feel he is only a slightly better coach then Groce. He has NBA prospects on his team and he still struggles to win games? His career record looks okay but not great I'd start with either Musselman or McDermott after Marshall then Keatts then Martin.
As I have written multiple times, if it was that easy, schools with a lot more money, bigger network, and connections (e.g., UCLA, Orgeon, OK. State) would have avoided embarrassing searches in the past. Avoid them with ease.
I like Mussellman
I like the idea of Musselman intrigues me a lot. He has NBA experience and he seems to have adapted to coaching in college with his record the past two years as well. He could be a good hire he has a lot of experience.
I like the idea of Musselman intrigues me a lot. He has NBA experience and he seems to have adapted to coaching in college with his record the past two years as well. He could be a good hire he has a lot of experience.
Last time we went to the Keady coaching tree all we got was a nut. I'll see myself to the door now.
mattcoldagelli
- The Transfer Portal with Do Not Contact Tag
I think I am higher on him than most, while still believing him to be the safest bet. I'm surprised at my own optimism that I think there are actually a few guys that could be "the guy" but we need someone that will get skeptics back on board starting April 2017, full stop. Not a lot of time for anyone to prove themselves.
Like I said, I feel if he's going to peak as a college head coach, he's going to do it in Champaign or in West Lafayette.
A nut who has k state borderline top 25. A nut whos players, on paper, would be considered much less talented then ours.
It was just the nuts time to move on from here. We would be in a better place if Weber was still here, but not by much. Hard to argue we wouldn't have gotten at least one more NCAA appearance in the last 3.5 years. I don't think the 12-13 team wouldve done as well with Weber though.
I dont want him back and the firing should've happened a few years earlier, but its hard to argue he would've done worse than Groce.
+1
And if getting the right guy were easy Blue Bloods like Kentucky and North Carolina would have never hired Billy Gillispie or Matt Doherty.
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I'm not a Weber hater I just don't think the Illinois job was the right fit for whatever reason. I'll also say that much like Groce, he was the recipient of some bad breaks and recruiting misses. As for his coaching, he can coach. Ask any SIU fans if they'd like him back. Dude is still adored here.
Weber over Groce
I would take Weber over Groce any day a coach that got to an NCAA title game although with another coaches players. I really think MT fired Weber just to get in his own guy and how did that turn out? No bueno!!
I would take Weber over Groce any day a coach that got to an NCAA title game although with another coaches players. I really think MT fired Weber just to get in his own guy and how did that turn out? No bueno!!
You're not crazy, but I think it's instructive to look at the kinds of hires we're trying to emulate and see what the qualifications of those coaches were when they got their jobs.
6 names spring to mind.
Thad Matta at Ohio State
Dana Altman at Oregon
Billy Donovan at Florida
Jay Wright at Villanova
Mike Brey at Notre Dame
Sean Miller at Arizona
All good non-blue bloods, all in times of uncertainty, all hires coming from open search processes, none of them were ridiculous Lovie or Buzz-to-VT-like coups, and all of them have brought those programs the kind of sustained success we crave.
Those links are to their Wikipedia pages. Check out their backgrounds before they got those jobs. I think you'll find that those resumes have a lot of similarities to the resumes we're looking at. Some comps just jump off the page, Sean Miller to his brother, Jay Wright to King Rice. Some aren't even all that impressive, Billy Donovan's resume is a poor man's Kevin Keatts, you could argue Altman as a poor man's Ben Jacobson or certainly a poor man's Greg McDermott.
Of course, you could easily compile another list of the Lickliters and Monsons and Paul Hewitts and John Pelphreys and Anthony Grants and on and on. You could pick nits here and there, but there's not some secret sauce that makes one group better than the other. It's taking a chance. The one thing you would say is that just on resources and bone structure it's a lot easier to compare Illinois to Villanova and Ohio State than to Minnesota and Alabama. That's the advantage we start with, but from there it's about putting your best foot forward.
To answer your question, if you look at the candidates we're talking about and think "gee, these guys aren't a guarantee of success" then you're exactly right. But Bill Self isn't walking through that door, and even he would not be a guarantee. The marginal difference between a Cuonzo and a Gregg Marshall in terms of expected future wins is frankly not enough to justify all the hysteria around coaching carousel season. It's all taking a chance.
But anyway, if you look at the candidates we're talking about and think "I can't envision any of these guys creating sustained long-term excellence at a school like Illinois", do look at some of the winning hires of competing schools and realize that that's wrong.
Hiring Bill Self from Tulsa felt different than hiring Archie Miller from Dayton might feel more because of what the intervening decade-plus has conditioned us to feel about Illinois basketball generally (misery, self-loathing and terror), not because of some underlying gulf in quality of the guy we're taking the chance on.
I'm with you on this, but remember the JFG era. Illinois basketball does honeymoons in a way Illinois football does not.
Our next coach will land a commitment from a four star recruit during their first year on the job, and will be treated like John Wooden for doing so. I hate that we do that, but we do that.
IlliniInOK
- no longer in OK! Centralia, IL
One thing about Cuonzo is that he hasn't been anywhere longer than 3 years yet, so he really hasn't coached a team full of his guys yet, so it's hard to say for sure that he can or cannot reach the highs that we would hope for like competing for B1G titles every year.
This actually makes sense with regards to Cuanzo. You put him in familiar territory with alot of connections and he may be a grand slam hire. I would be very interested to see how an African American coach would do up in Chicago. If he is in fact the guy that's a pretty high floor on this coaching search. Hopefully he is recruiting Ayo right now just in case.
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