Holly Aprille
- Thread starter ej6687
- Start date
Shit that is bad news. She was one of our best coaches and was poached in-conference. I get that UL is a better program with better resources, but please tell me she didn't have reasons to look elsewhere due to the new athletic administration.
It also looks like the pulled the original article on PittsburghPanthers.com but it is cached on Google. UL not ready to announce?
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This crap is getting old.First Joe,now her??Do you guys really think we'll find equals or better for either one? I don't.Coaches that have success you reward not let go,especially in Holly's case.Joe maybe not so much recently,but he ran a decent program for the most part.
I'd love to know what the reasons were. If you can't say on the board, but would rather email that would be much appreciated. John.judd@linde.com. I had met her a few times and have had many email conversations with her too.
There were legitimate reasons to make a change in baseball; not softball. This could have been Holly's choice, for any number of reason including the obvious of moving to a better program. I hope it was her choice, because otherwise it is pretty awful.
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If Pitt can't do better than Joe Jordano then they might as well shut the program down.
Wasn't she a career .530 coach or close to it? I'm not going to be too upset that we lost a coach who only made the post season 1 time in 10 years.
Contract situation. It was obvious that she wasn’t going to have job security going forward so she chose to try to move, and she was successful in short order.
If it was what I've heard, it was an insulting offer that no one would take. An Oval Jaynes move. You might as well just terminate the relationship and be up front about deciding to change directions. But primarily, I worry about how the rest of the department's coaches perceive something like that, particularly those that were hired by prior ADs. Actually, I don't know how else they could perceive it. I mean, change can be good, but sometimes it's just a cliche. Everyone is pretty impressed with Lyke's high profile hires thus far, but I wonder about how the atmosphere is shaping up within the department, because sometimes people are obtuse to the side effects that some actions can cause to an internal environment.
No matter what, it will be fairly easy to evaluate this particular move over the next five years since Aprile will be competing directly against the program she laid the foundation for.
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so going by the account that she got a bad offer, that means HL has others in mind.
listen fellas, this is big boy time. a new AD with a mandate to improve things is going to cut out the dead wood. and if heather knows anything, it's softball.
things aren't always fair. we all know that any olympic sport was a train wreck forever. if PG and the board told heather to hire who she sees fit, then so be it. that's how these things work. was it fair for april? i don't know. maybe, maybe not. fair has nothing to do with it, though. let's see who she brings in (good bet on a florida state assistant).
listen fellas, this is big boy time. a new AD with a mandate to improve things is going to cut out the dead wood. and if heather knows anything, it's softball.
things aren't always fair. we all know that any olympic sport was a train wreck forever. if PG and the board told heather to hire who she sees fit, then so be it. that's how these things work. was it fair for april? i don't know. maybe, maybe not. fair has nothing to do with it, though. let's see who she brings in (good bet on a florida state assistant).
Oval Jaynes, lol. I'm guessing she had an option year left and unlike Barnes last time, was told no extension/raise this time, ie move on. I thought she did enough this year to warrant another one.
Yes. Absolutely we will find equal or better for both. Already did with baseball and there are very good options out there for softball.
Let’s hope Lyke knows softball better than Barnes knew basketball or Pedersen knew football.
But I agree, it is totally Lyke’s perogative to make any change she wants. And as I stated, compared to many changes, this on will be very easy to evaluate a few years down the road.
impossible to be less.
You guys spout off like Pitt has some top-10 athletic program with some great history of achievement.
Ooo... a bunch of loser coaches have to worry about job security. About f'n time!!
Ooo... a bunch of loser coaches have to worry about job security. About f'n time!!
LOL. I love when people show how f* clueless they are about coaches and college athletics.
She wasn’t a “loser coach”. She went to a regional and won a division championship. Do we have a lot of ACC division championships? No we don’t.
A lot of Big East division and conference titles too.
See, that is what was lacking with our other coaches: continual fear for their job security if they win a conference trophy and COY honors. Maybe they'll finally start working hard now for fear they'll get shoved to a higher profile program with more money and better facilities.
Lord knows I applaud most of what Lyke has done, but there have been some head scratchers to go with them. No one bats 1000, but we just have to hope she as good as we want. She's obviously a very good saleswoman. But her toughest sales job is in front off her with victory heights. It's still very, very early.
Also, this will be interesting to see if this supports my budding theory that most ADs can't help meddling, to ill effect, in the sports program that they have the biggest background in.
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Undoubtedly some coaching changes were needed. I don’t think we needed to run off Holly Aprile
agree, with all the other changes, the easy thing would have been just to extend her. But she seems on a mission to wipe clean the olympics.
Don't get me wrong, softball is the only coaching change I've been surprised by. It wouldn't have been a move I would have made but we'll see in 4-5 years if Lyke was right. My other head scratchers have been some of more under the radar things like staff changes, but not the higher profile head coaching changes. IMO, all the other coaching changes were warranted, and her handling of men's basketball and her women's soccer hire were masterful. It sure is nice to step into a Pitt AD chair with ACC money and projected network money coming down the pike. Regardless, I think overall our coaching stable has been SIGNIFICANTLY upgraded in the past couple of years and Lyke is a very big part of that, but the caveat is a lot of these coaches haven't even gotten to the start of season one yet so it is largely theoretical.
And it appears that Lyke is on her way to being the savior of Pitt basketball which could cement her legacy, and being a critical revenue driver, the reality is that is far more important than anything that happens in the olympic sports programs as far as the overall health of the department, so she's on her way. But that doesn't mean people that care about, support, and have history in the athletic department can't be concerned about things that happen in the non-revenue sports and behind the scenes.
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there's a 50-50 chance that the biggest decision will be narduzzi in the next 2-3 years. to clarify, i'm not saying he isn't going to work out. i'm saying if he keeps along the mediocre path, that doesn't fit the standard and he'll have to be replaced. that would really decide her legacy.
As I said before, it amazes me the amount of apparent love and respect that Pitt fans give to so many mediocre (or worse) coaches. One NCAA tournament berth in 10 years. One. Three years ago. And she built on the momentum of that accomplishment by winning 1/3 of her conference games the following two seasons. Then she finally has a second good year, certainly not a great year because once again she missed the NCAA tournament, and now all the sudden all these superior Pitt coaches are going to be beside themselves wondering if they are next because she didn't get a new contract.
Look at how many people were upset at the firing of a baseball coach who made the ACC tournament once, because the ACC expanded the tournament to 12 out of 14 teams and we slipped in at 12th, not because his team was any good. It's as if some people are so used to these programs losing that they simply cannot fathom even the possibility that these teams could be anything more than that.
What was her career record? One NCAA tournament bid. I guess only folks like you and taco think this is some kind of great achievement.
She could purge the entire coaching ranks and there would be no great loss. Again... please tell me of all of the accomplishments of Pitt athletics? Zero. Nothing.
Context. People that don't know what they hell they are talking about don't have it, which is funny, because it should be had by anyone that supposedly has followed the Pitt athletic department for any length of time.
I don't come here to waste my time viewing and responding to repeated, vapid comments. Welcome to my ever growing ignore list.
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When she took over the program we played on a poor high school field and the program was poorly supported overall. People fail to realize that.
The hilarious thing is that the person who is celebrating mediocrity as the best that Pitt can possibly do is worried about vapid comments. Let's just put it this way, and this is a repeated comment too, in the hopes that someday you'll actually learn something, the Athletic Director agrees with those of us who thinks that Pitt can and should do better. You are on the side of sustained, institutionalized sub-mediocrity.
It's pretty easy to see which side Pitt fans should be on, but I guess for some of you one good season out of every ten brings such excitement when it happens that you're more than happy to ignore the other nine.
Anyone repeatedly throwing up that 10 years & 1 NCAA is so clueless to where the program started they really aren't worth engaging with further.
In the last four seasons, her teams have had three 30+ win seasons, including setting a record for win numbers while competing in a much more difficult conference than the Big East, with at least one player earning 1st team all-conference each of those 3 (for a total that is only one less all-conference players than the entirety of the previous history of the program in the BE), played in two ACC tournament championship games, won a Coastal Division title, earned the program's first ever national ranking, and played in the program's first ever NCAA tournament where they advanced to the Regional Final. She's also had two different pitchers throw perfect games, and won COY honors herself. This was done with Pitt's highest pre-season selection in the ACC all 4 of those years being only 7th (out of a then 11 teams). The only season they failed to live up to their preseason pick was last year, after which she did a clean sweep of her coaching staff, which led to a rebound this year that saw them make a huge turnaround mid-season, take home a Division trophy, and get to within one out against the eventual national champions from a conference tournament title and NCAA birth. And it took 2 seconds for a historically and financially superior program to snatch her up after being offered a laughably insulting and impossible to accept extension. People that haven't followed Pitt athletics over the years, other than for headlines for revenue sports, easily expose themselves.
If Lyke hires someone better, great. All of her coaching searches have been laudable with the exception of whiffing early in the wrestling coaching search which can't be entirely pinned on her, but we'll easily find out the result of this change a few years down the road, and I'll be more than happy to give Lyke credit for doing something I wouldn't have if Pitt regularly has more success than Louisville over that time. None of that, nor the some of staff changes I've questioned, alters my overall support for Lyke or positive approval for her first year. She appears to be, at this point, the best athletic director we've had in decades.
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In two of those four seasons we went 8-14 and 7-17 in conference. All winning 30 games in that 7-14 conference season showed is that if you stack up enough crap like St. Bonaventure, Mercer, Georgetown, St. Francis and the like that you can make your record look a lot better than your team actually is. Some might call it the Joe Jordano gambit. That team played five games all season against teams in the top 25. They gave up 56 runs in those five losses, and two of those games ended early due to the run rule.
Even this past year, in that glorious season that makes it so hard to fathom how anyone could think that Pitt could possibly do any better Pitt only played five games all season against ranked teams, and four of those games were when Pitt played against Florida State. There was not one other ACC team ranked. Hell, there wasn't any other ACC team even close to being ranked. The only other ACC team that even got votes in the final poll was Notre Dame, and we didn't play them. We played one ranked team in the non-conference, and lost. We played two other teams that received votes in the final poll, and we lost both of those too. Even if we go back and include that 2015 season where we did make the NCAA tournament our record against ranked teams in the last four years is 5-22. In those four years we scheduled a grand total of five non-conference games against top 25 teams, and four of those were in the same season. Much like with the baseball team, if you schedule enough non-conference cupcakes you can make your overall record look pretty good, even when your team isn't.
People who haven't followed sports over the years, or simply don't understand what it is that they are seeing when they do watch, easily expose themselves. And then run away and hide when anyone dares to point out their lack of understanding.
True.....Any knowledge of candidates for HC job surfaced yet and a focused date of a hiring?? TKS!!
