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Post by reformation on May 18, 2024 9:19:54 GMT -5
Fair assessment. I think Cooley has upgraded the team. People are upset because he did poorly in all aspects last year as everybody including the Univ, Cooley, and fans should be. The delta on wins could be more tied to better shooting than getting a defensive center--depends how good Sorber is. To actually win games we need to consistently make open/makeable shots--we did not have a team that did that last year. Not sure how much we've improved in that dept. We should have been scouting Intl's who can shoot earlier--this is an obvious miss.
Hopefully we've gone from a bad to a respectable team for next year. Real question for me is can Cooley get some elite talent to move us from a respectable to a good/great team or not. Not sure.
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Post by reformation on May 15, 2024 13:49:37 GMT -5
Interesting that Pitino has been aggressive in adding good OOC games, Kentucky, Georgia etc. Not sure what Cooley thinks or will do--even if he's not that confident I'd think he'd want to generate more interest in the program with some bog OOC games. Might be that his perspective is different always being at small regional schools. For many of the BE opponents, unless the teams are very good, there is not a ton of interest.
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Post by reformation on May 9, 2024 20:51:15 GMT -5
TBH seems like an easy decision for Ryan. Hope it goes well for him, excellent school, close to family, getting to play in ACC would be fun at Duke, UNC etc.
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Post by reformation on May 9, 2024 15:15:03 GMT -5
Cooley's comments mentioned a couple of pages back generally make sense. Only observation I would add is how is it possible that he/Gtwn did not focus on international recruiting earlier instead of starting in year 3. It's such an obvious thing with Gtwn that its incredible that it was not addressed when he came in. When coaches interviewed for the job, I'm sure part of the pitch would have been how to fix recruiting--which anyone with a brain would have included a section on capitalizing on Gtwn's intl name recognition--just did not get executed. Lets hope we can fix this going fwd.
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Post by reformation on May 7, 2024 13:10:15 GMT -5
Obviously a big get for STJ. They are still short a PF. If they get one they could be very good.
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Post by reformation on May 6, 2024 9:22:56 GMT -5
St Johns just landed Utah PG Devion Smith. They are still very weak upfront.
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Post by reformation on May 5, 2024 14:42:06 GMT -5
We should look at Intl kids more. Would have liked to have had Cliff but at 2mm that is crazy--he can be a piece on an already good team but is too one dimensional to tatally transform a mediocre team.
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Post by reformation on May 3, 2024 10:11:15 GMT -5
Kind of agree with the-way above. Cooley has a bit better talent this year and a real recruiting class. Let's see if he can add value as a coach and put the program back on an upward trajectory.
I've met him a few times and he is a charismatic guy-liked him personally. I witnessed a closed practice prior to the BE a few years ago--I was randomly at the place provy ws practicing and he let me and my daughter watch--he remembered my hs coach as he had recruited at my HS so I guess that was a factor--FWIW I thought he ran a good practice.
I think he had good success at Provy given limited resources. However, it's not like he's a celebrity coach that's going to be a magnet for top end talent either. Hope I guess is that he can do better than he did at Provy at a more high-profile place
I guess my own two cents with what he is doing basketball wise is that I don't think he puts enough premium on recruiting kids with better shooting ability-also I don't think he is leveraging Gtwn's brand recruiting intl kids.
From a program perspective, I'm hopeful for next year, but I think that next year will be pivotal in seeing what Cooley can really bring to the table. If things go well great, If, they don't the admin will have to begin to reevaluate again (which undoubtedly would take another year!) where the program is going.
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Post by reformation on May 1, 2024 13:53:55 GMT -5
Georgetown 4 or 5 kids a year to the Columbia program--demand has been increasing from Gtwn students. I would not be surprised to have Gtwn set up additional programs with other Univ's, e.g. Dartmouth, Caltech etc.
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Post by reformation on Apr 30, 2024 15:56:57 GMT -5
Maybe Georgetown should look at doing exchanges with some other US colleges--I can remember a bunch of girls from Wellesley doing a year or semester at Gtwn when I was there in the 80's. We could pick places with big time STEM programs and the kids from the other colleges could take 2 or 3 classes at Gtwn and get an internship. Might work well for both sides.
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Post by reformation on Apr 20, 2024 21:33:52 GMT -5
Seems like we have momentum which is good. I think the Rutgers kid would make a big difference--we'd have a much more balanced and athletic team by position with him. My biggerst concern is that Cooley seems target guys who are not really good shooters.
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Post by reformation on Apr 19, 2024 13:35:08 GMT -5
You are probably right, not realistic to change given both the low prob of BF coming to Gtwn and advanced stage we were at with Mack.
Having seen both Mack and BF up close I'd say there is a decent talent gap, though I do think Mack is a good add. Obviously, there's always a hs vs college gap in judging perf, though I did see BF light up other P5 recruits. BF replaced RJ Davis as his team's PG when Davis graduated--at the HS level BF was more talented (by a little).
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Post by reformation on Apr 19, 2024 12:13:48 GMT -5
Re Boogie Fland I guess Cooley either was too far down road with Mack and for whatever reason is protective of EPPS. Having seen them all play Boogie Fland would be my clear choice. Not sure what his attitude toward Gtwn is as I don't think Cooley went after him earlier either. I know his coach pretty well so will ask him his take.
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Post by reformation on Apr 15, 2024 21:23:45 GMT -5
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Post by reformation on Apr 15, 2024 21:18:21 GMT -5
In terms of philanthropy, I would say that top donors respond to what they are pitched (could be positive or negative). They will have their own philanthropic interests, e.g., biomedicine, but they will listen to pitches that fit their basic interests. I doubt that Gtwn's big money people (including McCourt-I've sat next to him at dinner a couple of times) would react negatively to a stem focused pitch. I think Gtwn's issue in this regard is actually coming up with and prioritizing a compelling pitch.
In terms of the board leading this type of issue, I don't think that it's really the case in a univ context (certainly makeup of Gtwn's board-5 priests, bunch of finance people, some probably quite capable) are going to lead some big transformation.
I think most univ boards expect the Univ President to lead strategy. The Gtwn board would set a change in direction by their choice of president.
I would think that marginal hiring of Profs, i.e., lets hire 3 history and 3 compsci vs 3/3 phil/theo is well within the President's chain of command.
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Post by reformation on Apr 13, 2024 14:13:23 GMT -5
Re Northwestern (which I know a lot about--my wife is on the board of one of their major professional schools) and Penn which I know mostly as a parent of kid looking at the college and also have lectured there a few times I would say that both of those places are run more like a business vs Gtwn. Both Univ's have clear strategic targets, are focused on rankings.
From an admissions perspective they are very focused on restrictive ED. That + the common app makes them seem much more competitive than Gtwn than they actually are.
I would say however re Penn and Northwestern specifically vs Gtwn, Wharton has really separated itself from other undergraduate business programs and has a big rise in popularity. Wharton has great joint degree programs in Science/Engr and Intl affairs that are more comparable to HYP in terms of admission than Gtwn or regular Penn for that matter. That was probably not the case 15-20 years ago.
Re Northwestern they have made major investments in things like CS and have a number of innovative undergrad programs (Integrated Science, Quant Social Science/) which are very competitive to get in. Thier biggest investments are in CS & Engr. They also have some decent joint programs between undergrad and Kellogg etc.
The guys who run these places are very pragmatic for the most part (excepting maybe the Penn pres who was booted), results oriented and have clear strategic goals and benchmarks. Gtwn has none of that TBH-which one can take as a good or bad thing. Northwestern benchmarks its clearly vs U Chicago, so it has a pretty clear goal to shoot for-we do not have the same focus or perhaps myopia depending on how one looks at it.
The guys who run most top univ's are generally top academics themselves. They have confidence to make strategic decisions that favor/disfavor academic departments/programs. My gut feel is that Gtwn's admin does not have similar confidence, so we are timid in making changes (even obvious ones).
Back to the main pt--some of the admissions selectivity gap is manufactured by restrictive ED and the common app--some probably also relates to perceptions re quality of STEM/offerings.
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Post by reformation on Apr 13, 2024 13:32:45 GMT -5
Re the whole Soviet Studies thing, the quotes from Cohen and Stansfield Turner came straight out of the Wikipedia entry on the subject. I think they are there to represent consensus opinion at the time, so Cohen's turn to being a Russian/Soviet apologist in his later years is not that relevant to the discussion-he was on Nightline all the time in the early 80's for ex as a leading academic expert etc. Same general idea goes for Stansfield Turner.
More to the point I don't remember any of the Russian/Soviet Studies people at Gtwn having a way out of consensus view re the Soviet Union. The only Gtwn person who could come close to having some prescience re the Soviet Union's impending demise was Murray Feshbach (an adjunct prof of Demography-who ironically given the discussion here had a very quantitative approach forecasting decline in Soviet Life expectancy etc.). Feshbach was the world's foremost demographic expert on the Soviet Union at the time. I would say that the academics who studied the Soviet Union in the US/Europe tended to break down into the Russ-European emigre and non-emigre camps with the emigre's generally being more hawkish, but few really saw the collapse.
Fyi my father-in-law was also a CIA guy focused on the Soviet Union and I had many friends in the agency, other friends running big multinationals there etc--I'm quite confident that the CIA did a full-scale reappraisal of its approach to its intelligence failures on the topic as have many in academia--conferences, articles etc.
There is nothing really uniquely bad or good re Gtwn's approach to the topic at the time. The idea however that the Soviet collapse did not cause people to reevaluate the utility the methods of traditional Area Studies in general just is not the case.
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Post by reformation on Apr 11, 2024 16:40:17 GMT -5
I wonder if Cooley is making any reach out to the Kentucky decommits. For all the talk re the portal guys we are pursuing, I'd take one of these guys in a second. Obviously i know this will not be easy but might be worth a try.
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Post by reformation on Apr 9, 2024 22:30:44 GMT -5
On Cognitive Science you are definitely correct that Gtwn recognized the potential of the field early--even earlier than you indicated as we had a collaboration with an Italian Pharma(Fidia Spa?) in the 80's that unfortunately went bankrupt.
The sad part is that we did not capitalize on our early work in the space and generally did not capitalize on Gtwn's linguistics dept or recognize the quantitative turn in the field, i.e., integration with Computer Science. It's probably not too late to catch up TBH.
Regarding the decision not to invest more in CS/Math, the idea was discussed/proposed in the Georgetown Faculty Senate in the late 90's early 2000's. I was told this directly by members of the econ dept (incl head of the faculty senate) as they debated Gtwn's competitive advantages in making investments in the sciences. The econ faculty argued specifically for the positive spillover effects generated by making a big investment in statistics would benefit econ/govt psych. The econ faculty also argued that the costs of post docs + hard facilities argued for more CS/Math investment at the margin vs hard sciences. They cited LSE & NYU as urban places that had made big investments in Math/CS respectively which yielded institutional rewards. If you really want to know the individuals involved, I can message privately.
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Post by reformation on Apr 9, 2024 22:03:59 GMT -5
Don't want to stray too far from the science discussion but briefly re the whole Soviet Studies thing: There is a whole literature about this: topic has its own wikipedia entry!--excerpt below: I get that there is a debate about this, but most people feel this a was a substantial miss.
In 1983, Princeton University professor Stephen Cohen described the Soviet system as remarkably stable.
The Central Intelligence Agency also over-estimated the internal stability of the Soviet Union and did not anticipate its rapid dissolution. Former Director of Central Intelligence Stansfield Turner in 1991 wrote in the US Journal Foreign Affairs, "We should not gloss over the enormity of this failure to forecast the magnitude of the Soviet crisis . . . Yet I never heard a suggestion from the CIA, or the intelligence arms of the departments of Defense or State, that numerous Soviets recognized a growing, systemic economic problem."[
Yes, you are correct that I am not a strategic or Russian Studies professional; however, I have some acquaintance with the subject, having also studied abroad in the Soviet Union and have done business in the region over the years, speak Russian etc.
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