Mizzou 2010 Hoops

[JL21]

I personally don't understand the fuss about it. Missouri very rarely makes bad coaching decisions. Even Quin Snyder had a good record, an elite 8 finish, and 4 NCAA tournament entries in 7 years. Not terrible results, just a terrible end.

You'd think people would put a bit more stock into the guy who hired the guys who turned around both basketball and football at mizzou in the last decade.

As far as Strauss' report goes, I'd put zero stock in that. Strauss relishes in trolling Mizzou fans. [expletive] that guy.

As for Alden, I generally like the guy and I'm certainly not part of the torch and pitchfork crowd when it comes to the job that he's done. Nor do I think he should be canned if the Haith hiring doesn't work out.

Having said that, the Haith hiring is a real head scratcher and a lot of the things people are pointing to- graduation rates, the poor state of affairs of Miami hoops, his recruiting skills- all feel like rationalizations to me. Maybe I'm wrong and hopefully Haith makes me eat everything I've said since finding out about it. It's just hard to have a lot of hope about a coach who's made one NCAA tournament in seven years; has never had a winning conference record; and is barely over .500 for his career.

I understand that the coaching market gets really thin beyond Painter and Smart (who would've had his own question marks, and it turns out he isn't going anywhere anyway). And I didn't want Jacobson, either. I guess I'd rather they take a chance on a mid-major guy (who isn't Jacobson) who has yet to prove that they can't win at the BCS conference level.

[redbirdjazzz]

I personally don't understand the fuss about it. Missouri very rarely makes bad coaching decisions. Even Quin Snyder had a good record, an elite 8 finish, and 4 NCAA tournament entries in 7 years. Not terrible results, just a terrible end.

You'd think people would put a bit more stock into the guy who hired the guys who turned around both basketball and football at mizzou in the last decade.

As far as Strauss' report goes, I'd put zero stock in that. Strauss relishes in trolling Mizzou fans. [expletive] that guy.

As for Alden, I generally like the guy and I'm certainly not part of the torch and pitchfork crowd when it comes to the job that he's done. Nor do I think he should be canned if the Haith hiring doesn't work out.

Having said that, the Haith hiring is a real head scratcher and a lot of the things people are pointing to- graduation rates, the poor state of affairs of Miami hoops, his recruiting skills- all feel like rationalizations to me. Maybe I'm wrong and hopefully Haith makes me eat everything I've said since finding out about it. It's just hard to have a lot of hope about a coach who's made one NCAA tournament in seven years; has never had a winning conference record; and is barely over .500 for his career.

I understand that the coaching market gets really thin beyond Painter and Smart (who would've had his own question marks, and it turns out he isn't going anywhere anyway). And I didn't want Jacobson, either. I guess I'd rather they take a chance on a mid-major guy (who isn't Jacobson) who has yet to prove that they can't win at the BCS conference level.

++

[Transmogrified Tiger]

This is going to be in bullet point form since it's easier than taking the time to weave it into a paragraph.

- It's much easier to recruit to Columbia and its world class facilities and crowds upwards of 15 thousand people than it is to recruit to Miami and it's off campus arena that draws about as well as an AAU tournament.

- To me, there's 3 portions to a coaching job: In game coaching, player procurement/recruiting, and player development/"coaching 'em up". From what I can gather, Haith is decidedly above average as a recruiter, decidedly below average in game, and the jury is out on player development.

- Contrast that to the other options(Jacobson, Marshall) that are good in game guys, complete unknowns in recruiting, and probably at least average at player development. There's not a gulf between them, and it's mostly a matter of preference.

- If you have to pick an aspect that is most crucial for the new coach, recruiting is probably at the top. He won't have to coach up next year's roster very much, and he has to replace 9-10 roster spots in a year, which means an unknown recruiter could sabotage the team for 6 years or so if they didn't do enough with those schollies.

- People are having such a visceral reaction to the fact that he didn't win at Miami without understanding the context that they fail to realize that on the whole Haith is just a different way to a similar overall value, like I talked about above.

- With the news that Smart is staying, and that all indications are guys like Stevens and Mack are staying too, I don't know of a single option that I can consider a clear upgrade over Haith. If you'd rather see Gregg Marshall or the like, I don't begrudge that. But the kneejerk negative reaction strikes me as talk-radio level stuff by people who don't stop to think about things for more than a millisecond.

- Mike Alden is great at his job and I love the way he has handled things these last few months.

[TheoSqua]

I read somewhere that he has 6 of the 10 best seasons (by SRS) in Miami history.

[lukethedrifter]

I did not know that we had Alden's nephew on the board.


/kidding

[phins]

Haith can recruit. I think he'll get some solid kids in there. Can he be Leonard Hailton, who was under .500 in conference in ten years as a Miami coach, then moved on to Florida State and has elevated that program.

Maybe this question isn't as obvious as it sounds, but don't you think it's easier to recruit kids to come to Miami (or even Texas) than it is to Columbia, Missouri (or Iowa, or whatever the case may be)?

Oh no, it's much easier to recruit to Mizzou than to Miami. Miami is a tiny private school with 10k enrollment and all anyone talks about is football. No tradition, a tiny arena (though new and pretty nice), and no culture of winning in the ACC.

You'll have your niche kids, but there are three kids playing in the Final Four and something like 16 in the tourney from Florida. Obviously, Miami didn't land any of them.

Dave Hyde summed up my feelings on it pretty well. I'll post his article.

[phins]

This is going to be in bullet point form since it's easier than taking the time to weave it into a paragraph.

- It's much easier to recruit to Columbia and its world class facilities and crowds upwards of 15 thousand people than it is to recruit to Miami and it's off campus arena that draws about as well as an AAU tournament.

Miami's arena is on campus, is nice, and is about as old as Mizzou's. If you win, they'll come. It's only a 7k arena, but Duke's is around there as well and it doesn't hamper them (obvious different levels of basketball)...just win games and you'll fill it up.

[phins]

http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/sports/ ... _by_t.html

After seven seasons where he didn't have a winning record in the ACC and made one NCAA Tournament, Frank Haith sure made things easy for the University of Miami and himself.

He got the job at Missouri.

Problem solved. This looks like a win-win for both. Haith gets a better job and doesn't have to wonder if he'll be fired after next season. And Miami gets a fresh start to decide what kind of basketball program it really wants.

Haith had some support. Mike Krzyzewski at Duke and Roy Williams at North Carolina went out of their way to tell media Haith was doing a good job. Of course, that was after they beat Miami again.

It's not the easiest of jobs at Miami. But it's a lot easier than when Leonard Hamilton took it to three straight NCAA tournaments. Back then, the question wasn't just community apathy. It was the lack of an on-campus arena. Well, the on-campus arena came and, suddenly, the unsolvable problem was apathy. Uh-huh.

When three South Florida kids are in the Final Four, when the state of Florida has more players in the Sweet 16 than any other state, it says there's talent in the recruiting pool. So why wasn't Miami getting any of that?

It always spoke of how smartly Haith worked the media that everyone apologized for him. Reporters liked him with good reason - he was a likeable guy. And called up writers to tell them they were being "objective" and how much he liked a certain article. Some of that was a coach whose program needed publicity assuring he got some. Part of that was a coach knowing human nature is to be nice to people who are nice to you.

It worked, too. Haith won less in his field than Randy Shannon did in his field. This isn't to defend Shannon. It's just to show how far below the radar Haith worked. On the one hand, he complained about the lack of attention. On the other, he was that lack of attention's biggest benefactor.

Haith? Nice guy. OK coach. The bottom-line is he did himself and Miami a favor by taking the Missouri job.

[MrCrowesGarden]

Still looking for a link, but the word is the Presseys have transferred to Arkansas.

[Lesson]

Still looking for a link, but the word is the Presseys have transferred to Arkansas.

Matt's going to have to pay to play since he already transferred from JUCO.

And also, [expletive].