No, the Sydney deal was part of it for sure. That whole thing derailed Stans here and he was never going to recover from it.
Ditch Jans....go get Pitino from St. Johns. nm
- Thread starter LOTRGOTDAWGFAN
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I read it all. You
You are right about the locker room, but Sydney was a later stage symptom, the CAUSES were other players, that are loved here. The bad hire was a DIRECT result of the way we fired him. We got the best guy we could.
Not only is it factually incorrect to say that the bad hire was a result of the way we fired Stans and he was the best we could do, it is completely divorced from reality and borderline retarded. Everyone on the board is dumber for having read it.
We crawfished into the tournament this year, and if there was a wealth of non sec teams this year, the committee could have drawn the line at us. Arkansas is playing with house money right now, the rest of us have in the bottom half have stunk up the joint.
I don't think we have the variety of prostitutes he would require.
Not according to my main source back then. He knew exactly what was going on because he was part of the process. Guy was always absolutely spot on. We got turned down by a TON of people. You have to look at the result man. Rick Ray was an absolute nobody, and everyone involved knew that. That was all we could get. Do you for one minute think we would have hired that guy if we could have done better? They knew exactly what they were getting when they hired him.
Being the best coach on our campus right now ain't setting the bar too high..........
I give props where props are due! Jans first year made the tournament WITHOUT a 3pt shooter. That is next to impossible!
Even more impressive, we made it this year without a 3 point defender.
We will be better if we just focus on shooting and ditch the trap.
We relied too heavily on players who are not a threat from outside. Basketball has changed. Unless you're a 5, I don't really have a use for you if you can't shoot it a little from deep.
We relied too heavily on players who are not a threat from outside. Basketball has changed. Unless you're a 5, I don't really have a use for you if you can't shoot it a little from deep.
There's a fine line between demanding some success and sabotaging your program back into the dark ages. It's frustrating, but not nearly as bad as the Ray and most of the Howland years.
The dubmasses are always the loudest (see Peaches).
Latest reports are Peaches bruised his thumb in the batting cage, says he got jammed. Supposedly he’s still got a great swing**
I think expectations were heightened to make up for the humiliating dumpster fire suffered on the gridiron.
It goes hand and hand but the worst of the Sidney drama was in 2010 and 2011, and we still gave Rick another chance after that. If he makes the tourney in 2012, even with all the drama, we don’t fire him.
Yea, I wasn't really trying to respond to the entire thread or even necessary the main point of your post despite quoting you; I was just sort of typing out loud about the single sentence I highlighted. Namely, that Stansbury didn't choke in the tournament nearly as bad as people say because he threw away two tournament teams underachieving into a 8/9 line and then playing the ones seeds to the wire (Duke/Memphis). And this year was very much like those, except we didn't even show in the tournament that we had underachieved. We just broke at some point late in the season.
**** happens. It counts against him, but in the context of his entire record. He's overachieved just to get in the tournament the first year. I would say overachieved to be on the 8/9 line last year. And underachieved somewhat to fall to the 8/9 this year.
I think he was building to this year and the team just wasn't right. It sucks, but I will view it as a one off unless and until there is a pattern.
I don't think we backed in to the tournament. We very much earned our way into the tournament, even if we fell off at the end of the year.
We didn't kick him in the nuts and hit him in the face with a pie before leaving him without transportation after an away game. We hired him to another position to pad his pension for a year or two while he figured out what he wanted to do.
I'm sure people weren't fired up to take over his locker room, but there is no doubt we 17ed up the hiring. The only argument you could make for 17ng up the firing is that good ADs don't surprised by who is and is not interested when they fire a head coach because good ADs know where there is going to be interest before they pull the trigger. But there is no way that we had to go to Clemson's 2nd assistant to hire somebody. That was just somebody completely 17ing up the hire.
Also, semi-OT, Stansbury was at Western Kentucky for 7 seasons (6 with a tournament b/c of covid) and he never made it. They made it 7 times in the two decades before he got there. Then didn't make it for 6 straight tournaments and i assume he wasn't going to make it the COVID year based on his record. Then they made it again the year after he left.
Your info matches what I heard as well. Stricklin failed in the hiring because I don't think he realized how bad our program was perceived outside. So we settled on Rick Ray. There was too much chaos and no one wanted to touch it. To me, Stricklin should have known that info before moving on from Stansbury.
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What I said was exactly what happened. He was the best we could get. What was botched was the firing, not the hiring.
Well, that was what happened....and it's the same guy no matter what was botched. Which brings up my original point here, we never should have fired Stan's like we did.
A conditional yes, and ONLY IF we had dry ink on a contract from someone of the stature of that list of guys that I just mentioned
The catastrophe with Stans was that we forced him to step down without having a plan for who was coming next. I would absolutely not consider firing Jans so that we could move on to an unproven coach or one of similar standing. This past season ended with disappointment, but getting to 3 straight NCAA tournaments is an achievement that a lot of other fanbases would love to have
That'st just idiotic. I don't doubt loafers was incompetent enough to get surprised at a lack of interest and then panic. But we didn't have time to get turned down by the 30 to 40 coaches (probably much more than that) that should have gotten a call before Rick Ray.
I think Stansbury's firing was warranted but you have to know as an AD what your options are once you fire him. So in a vacuum, yes to firing Stansbury. But firing Stansbury and ending up with Rick Ray - that's a no from me.
And that's how AD's are judged. Coaching hires and fundraising. Stricklin made up for it with bringing Howland in but we suffered for 3 years. There was instantaneous excitement when Howland was hired which included signing Malik Newman.
This is closer to the truth. There was lack of interest at our price point and risk tolerance. I know folks like to whitewash how great our program was but we were in a bad place at that time. But lack of interest had more to do with our attempts to try to hire someone on the cheap. It was completely bungled by Strick. And the counter option wasn't to keep Stans. The shlt was out of the horse at that point. It was to make a better hire. And "Rick Ray is the best we could do" is just not reality.
You can't evaluate a firing in a vacuum. Getting rid of a coach is only as good as the replacement.
Stricklin (and all the people calling for Stansbury to be fired) should be evaluated on the outcome: Stansbury > Ray
AD's should have a short list they're always operating from, and Strick either didn't have one, or it wasn't feasible. That's on him.
But doesn't change the slam dunk decision to can Stans. They are different decision points. Given where our program was trending, it's no slam dunk to say we would've been better off keeping Stans. We had become a laughing stock.
As a fan - you have no idea who we could get. We just knew we had not made the tournament in 3 seasons and completely imploded to end the season.
It is not a popular opinion, but our players lost those games down the stretch. We put all of our marbles in a player who was under 6 feet tall. He might shoot great one night, he might not, but he sure as hell could not play defense against somebody who was over 6 feet tall. Nobody else stepped up every night. '
We had some good players, but they were not great.
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Do results not matter?
Last five seasons of Stansbury:
| season | overall | conference | standing | postseason |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007–08 | 23–11 | 12–4 | 1st (West) | NCAA Division I Round of 32 |
| 2008–09 | 23–13 | 9–7 | 3rd (West) | NCAA Division I Round of 64 |
| 2009–10 | 24–12 | 9–7 | T–1st (West) | NIT second round |
| 2010–11 | 17–14 | 9–7 | 2nd (West) | |
| 2011–12 | 21–12 | 8–8 | T–6th | NIT first round |
First five seasons after Stansbury:
| season | overall | conference | standing | postseason |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012–13 | 10–22 | 4–14 | T–12th | |
| 2013–14 | 14–19 | 3–15 | 14th | |
| 2014–15 | 13–19 | 6–12 | T–11th | |
| 2015-16 | 14–17 | 7–11 | 11th | |
| 2016-17 | 16–16 | 6–12 | 12th |
In which of the above periods would you say we were a laughing stock?
True. Some fans thought it would be easy to hire a coach at least as good as Stansbury. They were wrong.
But even those fans can see the results and realize, in hindsight, that they were wrong about wanting a coach fired.
How is that any different than y'all, as fans, saying that Ray was the best we could do? I'll tell you how it's different....the former is common sense and the latter defies common sense.
Do results not matter?
Last three seasons of Stansbury:
| season | overall | conference | standing | postseason |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2009–10 | 24–12 | 9–7 | T–1st (West) | NIT second round |
| 2010–11 | 17–14 | 9–7 | 2nd (West) | |
| 2011–12 | 21–12 | 8–8 | T–6th | NIT first round |
First three seasons after Stansbury:
| season | overall | conference | standing | postseason |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012–13 | 10–22 | 4–14 | T–12th | |
| 2013–14 | 14–19 | 3–15 | 14th | |
| 2014–15 | 13–19 | 6–12 | T–11th |
In which of the above periods would you say we were a laughing stock?
Rick freaking Ray was NOT the best we could do. That’s ridiculous. We may have been limited in hiring a top coach, but we could have hired 1,000 coaches not as bad as Rick Ray. I will say in hindsight, I think we probably should have kept Stans for 1 more year.
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