Head Coaches Discussion

[prhoya]

Dec 23, 2022 9:21:57 GMT -5 alleninxis said:

Gates was the total package and matched perfectly for Georgetown at the right time. If only we had someone in the building with ties to Cleveland State..

I thought so too, but the basketball program is broken feom top to bottom. It needs an established figure like Pitino to come and fix it.

[hoyajmw]

Dec 23, 2022 10:01:46 GMT -5 Elvado said:

Dec 23, 2022 9:49:48 GMT -5 hoyajmw said:

I see what you did there…And right you are all around (except I think his office is in McDonough)

Not the guy who really needs to go…

44 years is long enough.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying the guy with ties to Cleveland State whose office is in McDonough needs to go (and don’t think that was the original poster’s point either). It is that we had/have someone around who would know Cleveland State and Gates while there and thus could’ve acted last year — but for the guy you point out correctly DOES need to go….

[RBHoya]

Dec 22, 2022 23:26:56 GMT -5 prhoya said:

Dec 22, 2022 23:14:18 GMT -5 cas92 said:

Gates and Missouri now 11-1 (the lone loss a beatdown by Kansas), dismantling the 16th ranked Illini 93-71 in St. Louis - leading @ one point by 35 points.  W/ 11 new players in the fold in Columbia (albeit including 2 familiar faces from Cleveland State).

Our turnaround can be that quick. It’s time.

1000%. I'm sure Gates will have bumps in the road to come, but he was so obviously the move last spring if this university and program was not so dysfunctional about this kind of thing.

But the bigger point is, the old timelines for a turnaround are gone. It used to be that you had to give a new coach 4 full years to recruit his own guys before you really knew if he could do the job. In today's world with the transfer portal and no redshirt year, it's much much faster. But that cuts both ways--there's potential to turn a program around much faster, but also, if you don't make some significant improvement in the first 1-2 years, players are going to abandon ship and recruits are not going to have the confidence in you to commit. It used to be that if 2 years in you were still struggling the narrative would be "He's still building this thing, give him time." And while the media talking heads might still say that kind of thing, the vibe on social media and message boards is going to be "We hired the wrong guy", and recruits and transfers are going to opt for someone with a stronger track record. This is why I'd argue that it's imperative to get off to a reasonably strong start in today's environment. New coaches generally come in with positive buzz and momentum, and you need to cash in on that right away or the job gets much harder.

And this, to me, is why it's critical that we resolve the Ronny situation immediately. Putting aside for right now the scenarios where we do not make any changes at all, or they make a change at head coach but let RT make the hire from his small network of cronies, because I can't bring myself to contemplate this disaster getting even worse at the moment... But here's another bad timeline that I think is very plausible:

-Jack decides that the dignified/respectful thing is to let the season play out before making changes of any kind

-The season ends in mid-march after the first night at MSG, and the university STARTS negotiations some kind of separation with the head coach. Also, very quietly, the Chief of Staff is relieved of his duties.

-Now we're at the first week of the NCAA tournament, and not only do we not have a new coach lined up but there's tremendous ambiguity around who is actually making the hire. Is it Lee Reed? Is it somebody different being hired into the Chief of Staff role? Is it some committee led by Paul Tagliabue or something? Meanwhile, the transfer portal is being flooded by players whose season has already ended.

-A couple weeks later, early April, we finally get our s--t together and make a hire. Assume it's someone like James Jones--an upgrade, but not a name that is going to grab a ton of headlines (ala Pitino).

-Because we're well into April by now, a lot of the big name transfers will have already committed to new homes. If you don't believe me, just take a look at how quickly this all moved in football over the last month. Guys end their season, they're in the portal literally the next day, and they're committing somewhere new a week later. It moves FAST. Just about all of the top high school recruits will be spoken for at this point as well, and most of the talent on the current team will hit the portal themselves.

-With no good transfers or recruits because we got a late start, and very few quality returning players, next year is yet another rough year on the court. We are once again at the bottom of the league, and while the coaching is better, the talent is actually worse than this year. Attendance stays low, the new coach doesn't have any deep roots in the area or any experience making NIL deals happen, and it's tough to get recruiting momentum. 17 and 18 year old recruits who have 0 memory of Georgetown ever being a good team are not interested in attending unless they have no other high major interest.

-With talent continuing to be at a deficit, year 2 is slightly but not significantly better than year 1. It's not enough to get recruiting momentum, and even though our coach is basketball savvy, we can't pull together the talent to get over the hump and we continue to languish in the bottom half of the conference. That just continues for a couple more years until the point where we eventually move on and start the whole thing at square 1 again, with any memories of Georgetown being a prestigious basketball program long forgotten by most.


Maybe this sounds dire, but to me it seems completely plausible. I personally think the best thing for all would be to clean house BEFORE the end of the season, or at least announce that our HC will be stepping down at year-end. But if they want to let him coach out the year, fine. But we MUST have clarity on who is making the decision on the next head coach, and remove any impediments to hiring the right person, PRIOR to the end of the year. We cannot afford to start figuring all that out after the BET. We have to give the next guy, whoever it may be, a fighting chance. There are more than enough obstacles already without hamstringing him even further by giving him a late start after most of the top talent is already spoken for. At other schools the AD makes these decisions, and any half-decent AD always has a short list of ~5 potential coaches to call if a change needs to be made. Whomever is going to be in that position for Georgetown needs to be there BEFORE the season is over, so as soon as the buzzer sounds in our last game we are making moves and calling agents. Otherwise we are putting the next guy at a significant disadvantage, and unless we somehow land a really big fish who can overcome that, we're going to struggle again next year and it's going to be very difficult to get positive momentum back.



-

[SSHoya]

Dec 23, 2022 10:39:21 GMT -5 RBHoya said:

Dec 22, 2022 23:26:56 GMT -5 prhoya said:

Our turnaround can be that quick. It’s time.

-Now we're at the first week of the NCAA tournament, and not only do we not have a new coach lined up but there's tremendous ambiguity around who is actually making the hire. Is it Lee Reed? Is it somebody different being hired into the Chief of Staff role? Is it some committee led by Paul Tagliabue or something? Meanwhile, the transfer portal is being flooded by players whose season has already ended.
-

Paul Tagliabue is 82 and was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 2018 so it seems unlikely that he will be leading any search committee.

[RBHoya]

Dec 23, 2022 11:16:20 GMT -5 SSHoya said:

Dec 23, 2022 10:39:21 GMT -5 RBHoya said:

-Now we're at the first week of the NCAA tournament, and not only do we not have a new coach lined up but there's tremendous ambiguity around who is actually making the hire. Is it Lee Reed? Is it somebody different being hired into the Chief of Staff role? Is it some committee led by Paul Tagliabue or something? Meanwhile, the transfer portal is being flooded by players whose season has already ended.
-

Paul Tagliabue is 82 and was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 2018 so it seems unlikely that he will be leading any search committee.

Thanks, I had forgotten about the Parkinson's diagnosis. I know he was supposedly leading the "search committee" last time.

I've said this before but I'd really be happy to have a younger perspective. Ewing was a "boomer" hire, in a lot of ways. I don't mean that pejoratively to those in that generation, but there's no doubt that people of a certain age have for many years loved the nostalgia of the 80s Big East, Big Monday, 6 fouls, "The Sweater Game", etc. etc. and to basketball fans in that demo, hiring Ewing to be head coach was monumental. Problem is that you're trying to convince kids born in the late 90s (or now, the early to mid 2000s) to join your program, and they could not possibly care less about warm fuzzy mid 1980s nostalgia.

This time around, I hope there's a more modern perspective. The hire himself doesn't necessarily have to be young, but someone with strong knowledge of what it's like to be a teenager in the 2020s, specifically someone with a strong understanding of AAU/youth basketball today, would be great. If the hire IS made by a committee, I hope there's one or more people in the room emphasizing the importance of that.

[CTHoya08]

Agree with RB wholeheartedly (as pretty much always do when reading his posts). The emphasis on the 80s is so tiresome. Ewing’s playing days were FORTY years ago. And the program has actually had some success in the interim! Why wasn’t there anything last year to honor the 15-year anniversary of the 2007 BET/FF team? Ewing’s kid even played on that team! The Kids These Days probably even know who Jeff Green is, even if they don’t remember watching him as a Hoya. But instead it’s just the same old, same old, “remember Michael Graham?” stuff.

[hoyajmw]

Dec 23, 2022 10:39:21 GMT -5 RBHoya said:

Dec 22, 2022 23:26:56 GMT -5 prhoya said:

Our turnaround can be that quick. It’s time.

1000%. I'm sure Gates will have bumps in the road to come, but he was so obviously the move last spring if this university and program was not so dysfunctional about this kind of thing.

...
Maybe this sounds dire, but to me it seems completely plausible. I personally think the best thing for all would be to clean house BEFORE the end of the season, or at least announce that our HC will be stepping down at year-end.
...


-

Thank you for the extremely thoughtful analysis, RB, and especially about the need to act NOW and the risks of waiting until the end of the our season to do anything. And as "dire" as that is, there is an even more dire -- and I sadly think likely scenario -- than Jack acting but acting late on the coach issue:

-- At the end of the year, Jack does nothing, as he continues to believe "loyalty" is more important than winning. A few Big East wins along the way perhaps provide a fig leaf or patina of "justification", perhaps in some pablum of a press statement ("See? Patrick is turning things around!") if heat gets too intense, but Jack doesn't need those wins in his mind to justify doing nothing. So even 0-20 doesn't lead to change.  Big time donors essentially don't care as they have other things to do/invest in (Ted Leonsis trying to figure out how to make the Nationals, Wizards or the Caps beyond Ovie relevant. Or donors/other vocal fan bases worry much more about other things, athletic and otherwise, on the Hilltop).

-- Board does nothing, as they are in Jack's corner generally/don't want to make him look bad on the last legs(?) of his presidency and also are a little conflicted as to whether they want to force out a "legend" and pay out a big number to start anew and/or whether they want to dive into the (cess?)pool of today's big time college sports scene.

-- Patrick does nothing, other than perhaps say "I'm not a quitter" and sure doesn't volunteer to walk away from dime one of what he is owed. After all, like the Richard Gere character (Mayo) in "An Officer and a Gentleman" he knows "I've got nowhere else to go."

-- The '23-'24 season repeats this year's or the year's before with the basic over/under on wins in conference 2 (I won't speculate on the composition of that team, other than to say it probably has a lot of new faces trying to climb onto the last life raft after the Titanic has completely sunk). And the out-of-conference schedule is akin to PE's first year, with the Hoyas still in a series of nailbiters.

-- Attendance at the inexplicably still-homecourt Cap One arena settles in at about 3000 announced/1500 in the building per game -- for the Big East games (the nail biter OOC games against the bottom feeders of KenPom half that). GU refuses to consider any alternative, like refurbishing McDonough, because "we ARE Georgetown/play in a big time place. Don't you remember the 80's?"

It doesn't HAVE to be this way or the "dire" way RB thoughtfully lays out, but I don't want to end up like one of those Japanese soldiers they found in the 60s on the Pacific Islands: The war has ended, I just didn't know it. GU basketball has been a HUGE part of my life for just short of 50 years, great memories and friends made along the way, for which I am extremely grateful But at some point....

[SSHoya]

That point for me is likely next year after 42 years as a season ticket holder and 7 years of playing in the Pep Band (college & law school - hence my terrible GPA!).

[bluegray79]

Iona up by 20 with 12:30 left in 2nd half. Not sure when to sigh deeply and let that one solitary tear just run down my cheek.

[bluegray79]

Over Pepperdine

[bluegray79]

Blue Jays up by 11 at half.

[bluegray79]

Sorry -- wrong thread.

[wrestlemania]

Dec 24, 2022 8:53:27 GMT -5 hoyajmw said:

Dec 23, 2022 10:39:21 GMT -5 RBHoya said:

1000%. I'm sure Gates will have bumps in the road to come, but he was so obviously the move last spring if this university and program was not so dysfunctional about this kind of thing.

...
Maybe this sounds dire, but to me it seems completely plausible. I personally think the best thing for all would be to clean house BEFORE the end of the season, or at least announce that our HC will be stepping down at year-end.
...


-

Thank you for the extremely thoughtful analysis, RB, and especially about the need to act NOW and the risks of waiting until the end of the our season to do anything. And as "dire" as that is, there is an even more dire -- and I sadly think likely scenario -- than Jack acting but acting late on the coach issue:

-- At the end of the year, Jack does nothing, as he continues to believe "loyalty" is more important than winning. A few Big East wins along the way perhaps provide a fig leaf or patina of "justification", perhaps in some pablum of a press statement ("See? Patrick is turning things around!") if heat gets too intense, but Jack doesn't need those wins in his mind to justify doing nothing. So even 0-20 doesn't lead to change.  Big time donors essentially don't care as they have other things to do/invest in (Ted Leonsis trying to figure out how to make the Nationals, Wizards or the Caps beyond Ovie relevant. Or donors/other vocal fan bases worry much more about other things, athletic and otherwise, on the Hilltop).

-- Board does nothing, as they are in Jack's corner generally/don't want to make him look bad on the last legs(?) of his presidency and also are a little conflicted as to whether they want to force out a "legend" and pay out a big number to start anew and/or whether they want to dive into the (cess?)pool of today's big time college sports scene.

-- Patrick does nothing, other than perhaps say "I'm not a quitter" and sure doesn't volunteer to walk away from dime one of what he is owed. After all, like the Richard Gere character (Mayo) in "An Officer and a Gentleman" he knows "I've got nowhere else to go."

-- The '23-'24 season repeats this year's or the year's before with the basic over/under on wins in conference 2 (I won't speculate on the composition of that team, other than to say it probably has a lot of new faces trying to climb onto the last life raft after the Titanic has completely sunk). And the out-of-conference schedule is akin to PE's first year, with the Hoyas still in a series of nailbiters.

-- Attendance at the inexplicably still-homecourt Cap One arena settles in at about 3000 announced/1500 in the building per game -- for the Big East games (the nail biter OOC games against the bottom feeders of KenPom half that). GU refuses to consider any alternative, like refurbishing McDonough, because "we ARE Georgetown/play in a big time place. Don't you remember the 80's?"

It doesn't HAVE to be this way or the "dire" way RB thoughtfully lays out, but I don't want to end up like one of those Japanese soldiers they found in the 60s on the Pacific Islands: The war has ended, I just didn't know it. GU basketball has been a HUGE part of my life for just short of 50 years, great memories and friends made along the way, for which I am extremely grateful But at some point....

Your thoughtful post reaffirms that age brings wisdom (although I'm still waiting for mine to arrive). I hear more and more alumni (not a ton, but enough to be noticeable) agreeing with your last sentence, i.e., after adding everything up and considering how entrenched the school has become in how it does things (failure notwithstanding), maybe it is time to accept reality and concede that the basketball program is unlikely to be much more than a curiosity even if Ewing departs. And that GU simply does not have the necessary will or people in place to take a hard look at everything and find a sensible solution that does not have John Thompson's name on it. Fair enough -- I can live with Pickleball.

[bluegray79]

That would be a tenable point of view were it not for the major money the school puts into the program (someone in a recent post put the amount at $15M - PE's almost $4m + $11M of everything else?) If the Admin were cutting money from the budget and making coded messages to the press and student body about the need to turn over a new leaf, etc., etc., I could concur, but an old economics professor once taught me that if you want to understand the values and priorities of a group -- club, family, state, country, school -- look at where it puts its money. If you accept that logic -- and I do, it has helped me understand a lot about the world -- then you have some reconciling to do considering the money it devotes to MBB. Now it may indeed lack the will -- or, as I prefer to think of it, the vision, the courage -- and it may lack the people in place. But, if you have been in HoyaTalk for any length of time, you know that it's the people in place that are a big part of what holds the program back from evolving and being better. Plus, as you know, there is no shortage of good people out there with lots of know-how about running a good program; you just have to put good people in charge of finding them and bringing them here.

All of this, I'm afraid, will probably not come to pass until there is a changing of the guard in the Admin and a thorough housecleaning in the program. Yes, it seems to be entrenched in ways that make change seem unlikely, but I can't believe that the majority of the Admin and the Board are made up of members who are O.K. with a) spending those kinds of resources without respectable results and b) becoming irrelevant and a source of derisive amusement and pity around the league and D1 MBB world. Therefore, I like to believe that change may be coming sooner than later. We'll learn a lot about the vision and courage of those in charge from the decisions made then.

[hoyajmw]

We may all be saying roughly the same thing. MY point simply that the administration doesn’t seem to have the will to do anything other than stay the course for the time being —  maybe/both out of a sense of loyalty to PE and from an unwillingness to really go for it in today’s big time college athletics  environment.  Continuing the sunk cost of Patrick’s contract and not doing anything (like radically reducing hoops funding and creating a hue and cry that is more extensive than the wailing of us fervent few on this Board) certainly would be of a piece with an effort to give PE plenty of opportunity and also to allow the program to simply die on the vine. When the next administration comes in it may just be a fait accomplii that downsizing is the right path forward and the legacy of the current administration won’t be that it formally ended big time hoops; simply that it gave the favorite son the chance to revive it, it was not to be, and so the new president made a tough (but not that tough) a call to euthanize the program. So current investment levels don’t indicate a whole lot as far as I’m concerned in terms of what the future really holds — or really caring about the current situation for that matter — especially when Jack leaves. Step up or step out is the question then, and right now I think odds may favor step out…

[prhoya]

Dec 26, 2022 23:58:27 GMT -5 hoyajmw said:

We may all be saying roughly the same thing. MY point simply that the administration doesn’t seem to have the will to do anything other than stay the course for the time — maybe/both out of a sense of loyalty to PE and unwillingness to really go for it in today’s big time college athletics Continuing the sunk cost of Patrick’s contract and not doing anything (like radically reducing hoops funding and creating a hue and cry that is more extensive than the wailing of us fervent few on this Board) certainly would be of a piece with this effort to give PE plenty of opportunity to allow the program simply die on the vine and when the next administration comes in it may just be a fair accomplii that downsizing is the right path forward. So current investment levels don’t indicate a whole lot as far as I’m concerned in terms of what the future really holds, especially when Jack leaves. Step up or step out is the question then.

Investment levels on the basketball program will depend on what happens with the next BE TV rights contract. Without it, GU could not pay the Top 15 compensation package of our inept coach and have the $15M to pay the Thompson friends & family budget.

[hoyaguy]

Dec 27, 2022 0:06:32 GMT -5 prhoya said:

Dec 26, 2022 23:58:27 GMT -5 hoyajmw said:

We may all be saying roughly the same thing. MY point simply that the administration doesn’t seem to have the will to do anything other than stay the course for the time — maybe/both out of a sense of loyalty to PE and unwillingness to really go for it in today’s big time college athletics Continuing the sunk cost of Patrick’s contract and not doing anything (like radically reducing hoops funding and creating a hue and cry that is more extensive than the wailing of us fervent few on this Board) certainly would be of a piece with this effort to give PE plenty of opportunity to allow the program simply die on the vine and when the next administration comes in it may just be a fair accomplii that downsizing is the right path forward. So current investment levels don’t indicate a whole lot as far as I’m concerned in terms of what the future really holds, especially when Jack leaves. Step up or step out is the question then.

Investment levels on the basketball program will depend on what happens with the next BE TV rights contract. Without it, GU could not pay the Top 15 compensation package of our inept coach and have the $15M budget to pay the Thompson friends & family.

That’s why at this point I’d rather they slash the budget and give it to football so we can’t be a crony palace anymore even if we take a cheaper young coach and then at least our football team can be quite good at their level (like I saw a couple of Ivy players in the nfl this weekend and it’s kind of depressing compared to the current gtown situation)

[SSHoya]

Dec 26, 2022 23:58:27 GMT -5 hoyajmw said:

We may all be saying roughly the same thing. MY point simply that the administration doesn’t seem to have the will to do anything other than stay the course for the time being —  maybe/both out of a sense of loyalty to PE and unwillingness to really go for it in today’s big time college athletics  environment.  Continuing the sunk cost of Patrick’s contract and not doing anything (like radically reducing hoops funding and creating a hue and cry that is more extensive than the wailing of us fervent few on this Board) certainly would be of a piece with an effort to give PE plenty of opportunity and also to allow the program simply die on the vein. When the next administration comes in it may just be a fair accomplii that downsizing is the right path forward and the legacy of the current administration won’t be that it formally ended big time hoops; simply that it gave the favorite son the chance to revive it, it was not to be, and so the new president made a tough (but not that tough) a call to euthanize the program. So current investment levels don’t indicate a whole lot as far as I’m concerned in terms of what the future really holds — or really caring about the current situation for that matter — especially when Jack leaves. Step up or step out is the question then, and right now I think odds may favor step out…

I agree with this. Jack D has given himself every possible out with his London comments. One of the reasons I heard that he remained at GU (beside sticking around through the pandemic) was that Jack D wanted to parlay his time at the NCAA into the NCAA Commissioner's job which has gone to Charlie Baker.

[drquigley]

Okay, why not back to the future? Assuming we can't, or don't want to, find an experienced, successful college coach to replace Ewing why not Nickens?

www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/26/rob-nickens-gets-400th-win-meridian-embraces-pit-bull-mentality/

[beenaround]

Dec 27, 2022 11:13:21 GMT -5 drquigley said:

Okay, why not back to the future? Assuming we can't, or don't want to, find an experienced, successful college coach to replace Ewing why not Nickens?

www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/26/rob-nickens-gets-400th-win-meridian-embraces-pit-bull-mentality/

Never heard of Nickens prior to this article. However, I would hire him as our head coach in a second. Has to be better than what we have.