New Coach. Recruiter or Coach

[Monroevillefan]

What do we want in the new coach. A recruiter or a coach. I know the answer seems both but which is most important.

Recruiter. The Pitt boards have been lamenting about our recruiting for what seems forever. How do you recruit in a league with 4 Hall of Fame Coaches and just as impressive programs. I think it is delusional to
think you are going to get higher recruits than Duke,NC Louisville or Syracuse. At least consistently.
That being said there are a lot of good players in college basketball, witness this year's tournament, and Pitt needs to get their share. All the coaching in the world won't help if you don't have at least the minimum talent to compete.

Coach. Again you are coaching against legends that have talent. You probably need a coach that has
a particular style and is confident enough to implement it and stick by it. Pitt recently seemed to have gone away from the bruising style that they were known for. I really don't care what style but just trying to out talent teams in the ACC just won't work.

My personal opinion is you need a coach that can close the deal on recruits. Realizing that Pitt will continue to play fair that is probably a constraint. I never got the feeling that Dixon was comfortable with recruiting.

My superficial choice for a coach would be Archie Miller. He seems to have the personality to recruit.
His player seem to relate to him. I don't buy the NC State argument unless his wife really wants to go to NC.
Not scientific, just a hunch.

 

[steel_curtain]

What do we want in the new coach. A recruiter or a coach. I know the answer seems both but which is most important.

Recruiter. The Pitt boards have been lamenting about our recruiting for what seems forever. How do you recruit in a league with 4 Hall of Fame Coaches and just as impressive programs. I think it is delusional to
think you are going to get higher recruits than Duke,NC Louisville or Syracuse. At least consistently.
That being said there are a lot of good players in college basketball, witness this year's tournament, and Pitt needs to get their share. All the coaching in the world won't help if you don't have at least the minimum talent to compete.

Coach. Again you are coaching against legends that have talent. You probably need a coach that has
a particular style and is confident enough to implement it and stick by it. Pitt recently seemed to have gone away from the bruising style that they were known for. I really don't care what style but just trying to out talent teams in the ACC just won't work.

My personal opinion is you need a coach that can close the deal on recruits. Realizing that Pitt will continue to play fair that is probably a constraint. I never got the feeling that Dixon was comfortable with recruiting.

My superficial choice for a coach would be Archie Miller. He seems to have the personality to recruit.
His player seem to relate to him. I don't buy the NC State argument unless his wife really wants to go to NC.
Not scientific, just a hunch.

The answer is both.

And as far as your 4 Hall of Fame Coaches, Pitino, Boeheim, and Williams all have 1 foot out the door for retirement. And K isnt far behind. 3 of those Coaches will be done within 5 years or so.

 

[Pittbaseball11]

Coach first. Recruiting can improve with some success (we saw this with the 2009-2012 classes), coaching typically doesn't.

 

[ClarkLotTgate]

#1 Recruiting
Then get a past HC to be an assistant; which will fill in any short commings of the #2 coaching

 

[Piranha]

BOTH !!

 

[Chescat]

The answer is both.

And as far as your 4 Hall of Fame Coaches, Pitino, Boeheim, and Williams all have 1 foot out the door for retirement. And K isnt far behind. 3 of those Coaches will be done within 5 years or so.

Bingo! Yes, it's both. This is pretty simple: Getting the "horses" is one thing, knowing what to do with em
is something else. A good example of not having "both" is Gottfried at NC State. He has the horses but
even though he wins some (not this year LOL) he doesn't win enough. Watch his games against Pitt the last
two years. Underneath it was like men against boys (Pitt recruited at least two of their bigs). Out front they
had Cat Barber, enough said. IMO that was a major talent difference. Well, he knew enough to beat us LOL...
but he got his ass handed to him by the rest of the ACC. He's IMO, a great example of NOT being both.
Bottom line...it's "both." And I agree about Archie Miller, he does "both" and he does it at a high md major program in a decent league. I think Barnes contacts him, but even though I like Archie, I
wouldn't be surprised to see Barnes come up with the $$$$ and go for a higher level, successful
coach

 

[Pitt79]

Recruiter, I'd like to see some talented players for a change, I mean off the hook athletes and knock down shooters. You know, sort of like Stephen F. Austin has.

 

[DT_PITT]

What do we want in the new coach. A recruiter or a coach. I know the answer seems both but which is most important.

Recruiter. The Pitt boards have been lamenting about our recruiting for what seems forever. How do you recruit in a league with 4 Hall of Fame Coaches and just as impressive programs. I think it is delusional to
think you are going to get higher recruits than Duke,NC Louisville or Syracuse. At least consistently.
That being said there are a lot of good players in college basketball, witness this year's tournament, and Pitt needs to get their share. All the coaching in the world won't help if you don't have at least the minimum talent to compete.

Coach. Again you are coaching against legends that have talent. You probably need a coach that has
a particular style and is confident enough to implement it and stick by it. Pitt recently seemed to have gone away from the bruising style that they were known for. I really don't care what style but just trying to out talent teams in the ACC just won't work.

My personal opinion is you need a coach that can close the deal on recruits. Realizing that Pitt will continue to play fair that is probably a constraint. I never got the feeling that Dixon was comfortable with recruiting.

My superficial choice for a coach would be Archie Miller. He seems to have the personality to recruit.
His player seem to relate to him. I don't buy the NC State argument unless his wife really wants to go to NC.
Not scientific, just a hunch.

Buy the NC State argument.

 

[Monroevillefan]

I favor a strong recruiter. Most coaches can coach save NC State. Also you can get solid assistants to assist in coaching. I don't think that assistants can close the deal as effectively as the head coach.

Al McQuire was the chief recruiter at Marquette and Hank Raymond's did much of the preparation coaching.
Al did the game decisions.

You have to have some horses. Our three best teams in my lifetime was Billy Knight ( a real star)
Blair, Young and Fields ( 2 NBA caliber players). Charles Smith, Jerome Lane Demetrious Gore.
Smith was the star but other two were very good players.

Dixon was a very good coach and a mediocre recruiter. Maybe we should go the other way.

 

[Piranha]

People rag on Gottfried, but he made the Sweet 16 two out of the last 5 years and has owned JD in recruiting as well as on the court. They annihilated us this year.

 

[Burgh15]

It doesn't have to be one or the other, you can find plenty of quality coaches who can also recruit.

 

[Sean Miller Fan]

I think coaching is much more important in basketball than in football. And recruiting is much more important in football than in basketball.

First and foremost, we need a coach who is a good coach (imagine that). However, all these mid-major coaches have won at similar rates in similar situations so coaching is hard to judge. But you can tell who the better recruiters are by reputation, what they did as an assistant, and players they landed at their mid-majors so that is why I would go for the mid-major with the strongest recruiting ties.