But some people aren't dumb enough to think that Musselman is just some random guy. Some people know what he's done in the past. Other people apparently can't even be bother to do the google search.
Retread or lottery ticket?
- Thread starter Sean Miller Fan
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But some people aren't dumb enough to think that Musselman is just some random guy. Some people know what he's done in the past. Other people apparently can't even be bother to do the google search.
This isn’t the 1970’s when you only get to see a few teams play. You can watch a team like Nevada all the time.
Pitt never should have let Dixon walk, but it is what it is.
Yes it's not like I'm the one who brought up how I don't think his roster construction would work at Pitt or how he's less accomplished as a professional coach than Avery Johnson or anything like that.
Sure, but you would have hoped that the fans would have learned from the Dixon fiasco.
Did the average Pitt fan know who Ben Howland was when he was hired?
You seem to be holding out for Pitt to hire some proven P6 coach who is going to have no adjustment at all and who is going to be a 100% sure thing. I'm going to let you in on a little secret. That isn't going to happen. Everyone that Pitt might hire is going to have some flaw or unknown factor that is going to make them a risk at some level. If you keep waiting for the perfect hire then Kevin Stallings will still be our coach ten years after he's dead.
He has been able to overcome a bunch of injuries. The Martin Twins from NC St. are two players you’d recognize. One of them has been out and was averaging close to 20 points a game.
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Except that winning at sports and game theory don't mix. Sports teams aren't built off rational thinking, they are built off the will to win. Any doubt that Bob Nutting would take the $15 in your example?
Pitt doesn't have the money to buy a coach who guarantees the $40 outcome, so they are left with the random outcome.
I picked a good time to talk about Nevada. Wolfpack up 54-25 with 1:20 in the first half on UNLV.
I predict, no matter who the new coach is, the majority on this board will be unhappy with the decision.
Had thought about going, now glad I didn’t.
Menzies in almost the same boat as Stallings, 2 years and maybe gone. For good reason as well, this UNLV team never learned to execute a half court offense all season and effectively quit on the coaching staff a couple weeks ago.
They seem to be pretty inconsistent. Some games they look good, some games they look like trash. Was expecting a little more from them this year especially with the lottery pick in the middle.
My buddy moved out there a year and a half ago. I try to get him to go to games, but he won't.
Sounds about right. There's no doubt that no matter who they hire, there will be some negativity from a decent portion of the forum. Seems there are already a few that have their mind made up already. There will be negativity from me if they hire Tom Crean or Brandin Knight. Other than that... I'll keep quiet.
I go to maybe 4-5 UNLV games a year, hated the Menzies hire seemed like a panic move after Beard left so abruptly. Just seems like they wasted the 1 year they had with McCoy.
It’s a great place to live if you’re a college basketball fan. Multiple holiday tournaments and the 4 conference tournaments to choose from.
Then why throw away buyout money for more of the same? Just wait it out, there’s no reason to rush into picking from the same pool of candidates you’ll be picking from literally every single other year.
None of these coaches are exciting the fanbase or fixing attendance issues.
Save that money, invest it back into the facilities and amenities and work to make this a job where you aren’t picking from a pool of flawed candidates who are all equally uninspiring, just packaged in different ways.
Like Gary Parrish said, a non-elite school is getting an assistant, a low-major guy, a 2nd tier mid-major guy, or a retread. There’s no difference in the expected outcome with that crop of candidates. It’s why non-elite programs stay irrelevant and non-elite. Why throw away money for more of the same? If you’re going to make stupid business decisions, you better have something up your sleeves and I’m giving Lyke the benefit of the doubt at this point.
Maybe she screws up royally and we are picking from that crop of candidates, but if we do wind up there it won’t be because she played her cards right and wound up where she wanted to wind up. She will have heard “no” quite a bit.
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What do you (based on what you know) consider a retread?
I do agree that Crean is a retread, I’m not questioning your categorization there.
But is it age? Job status? Number of years not being elite at a P5 school? Where is Lyke drawing the line on these things?
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They weren't sure things but they were closer to being sure things than what is out there now. And no, yinzers wouldn't have been excited with Underwood but Pitt fans would have known the name and been somewhat excited. I remember there was genuine excitement about Ralph Willard and it wasn't like all of Western PA was educated on Western Kentucky basketball. That didn't end well but at least it generated a little buzz in the beginning.
The current crop of mid-majors is very uninspiring. With Keatts, you had a former Pitino assistant, known as a great recruiter who took UNCW to back to back NCAATs.
Drew came from a famous basketball family.
Underwood won NCAAT games at SFA.
Beard was the most unproven but he rebuilt UALR quickly and won an NCAAT game.
This year's crops is nowhere close from a resume standpoint. Musselman probably has the best resume but his top 4 and 6 of his top 9 are transfers. That doesn't translate. He may be a great coach but his roster composition is scary.
Impressive performance. Nevada won 9 games before he took over and now they are heading towards 30 wins.
I agree. I am not saying don't hire him because of that. The discussion was around the need to provide a spark to the fan base, give hope to the fans, help attendance, etc... and my only point was this guy would not do that at all and would be looked as by most Pitt fans as a blah hire.
If there was ever a time/need for a program to make a splash hire, this is it.
Boiling your argument down to it's essence, since Pitt cannot guarantee that the next coach will be a success they should just stick with a known failure. That's crazy.
Does it work that way in the rest of your life? If the CEO of the company you work for is floundering and making all sorts of bad decisions does the Board say, well, we can't guarantee that the next guy will be successful so we might as well stick with the known failure? Or would they make a change? I have a feeling it's the second one, because that's the way the world works.
The number one rule when you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging. Your answer is to keep digging and hope for a miracle.
The reaction to the hire is meaningless.
What matters is can the coach quickly elevate the team into being a ncaa team in a couple seasons.
Nothing else matters
Agree, see my response above. This response was in response to a discussion about moving the needle for the fan base to help attendance. That was my only point.
But they need to hire a guy whose smart enough to stop digging ! Why pay two guys if you can’t get someone you want . Pitt can’t afford to make a bad hire and if they can’t get someone they want I’d live with KS and his scholars for another season .
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The reaction matters a great deal because people who are upset by it don't buy season tickets. You dont hire an unpopular coach unless you are absolutely sure they are the one.
This!
Steve Pikiell, once a hot mid-major is sucking at Rutgers. You want to buy out Stallings and potentially wind up with a Pikiell-type? Hedge fund managers take leas risk than that.
Suck it up and pay somebody who yoi know is going to win games. Go get Mick Cronin or someone at that level.
The idea that you keep a coach with Stallings performance for "one more year" in order to save money is mind boggling to me. I can't think of a worse mindset than keeping a proven loser because you might not hire a good replacement.
Pitt desperately needs a change , but compounding one mistake with another for changes sake is stupid and co$tly . Think hiring someone who wins 4 games next season and 5 the following will bring the fans back ? I don’t . They won’t hire a guy who hits a home run , but they need a guy who can at least hit a double a single hitter won’t help .
Well of course they need to make the right hire. But as I said, if they wait for the perfect hire Kevin Stallings will be dead for 10 years before we bring someone in. Coach K ain't walking through the door. Bill Self isn't walking through the door. Tony Bennett isn't bailing on Virginia to come here. You can't be afraid to act simply because you can't guarantee the outcome. Because Pitt isn't going to be in the position to guarantee a great hire anytime soon, if ever.
The last go around Pitt should have spoken to more candidates and they failed to do so this go around the pool is going to be smaller. Pitt will need to be very aggressive in identifying three or four solid candidates getting them on campus and selling them on Pitt. its not going to be a coach selling themselves on Pitt.
Pitt isn’t in the game for a no brainer of a hire , but if they identify five guys to seriously consider and none of them are interested they can’t settle for anyone other than KS . You can always get lucky , but they need to identify their guy and make him an offer he can’t refuse . Even if they need to overpay .
It’s not that I don’t think they’ll be successful or not successful. It’s that I doubt they’ll have careers that come anywhere close to Stallings’.
We aren’t talking about hiring the cream of the crop here.
I feel like people think I’m taking up for Stallings when really I’m more trying to remind people about how we overrated every hot name that came along under Dixon and we are now doing it again.
These names aren’t exciting names, other than potentially a healthy Matta.
If Pitt is hiring from this crop of names, they will have wasted a ton of money to make a lateral move when they could have reinvested it back into the program in order to try to find an actual appealing candidate later.
I mean mid-major coaches are usually the young up and comers in the sport.
There is a very different expected outcome between hiring a young assistant or mid-major and hiring a "retread" coach.
We knew what Stallings did in the SEC, a conference inferior to the ACC, while having a few NBA players at Vandy. He had a long track record. My expectation wasn't all that high.
With the mid-major coach, your ceiling as far as expectations is usually higher. You're thinking if this guy can win his conference maybe he can build on that and win a bigger conference. There also may be a lower floor as the job could always be too big. That being said, we saw how Stallings has his floor drop out.
I don't think hiring a successful mid-major coach would be a bad business decision for Pitt if they think he's the best coach. A bad business decision would simply be going cheap on this hire like they did two years ago.
In a perfect world and for the long term health of the program, I think you’re correct. Only thing to debate is the timeframe given to the new coach to elevate the team, a couple years as you state or a little longer.
But I think Pitt has decided to make the move now almost as much for the initial fan reaction as these more valid reasons. They can’t help but know how much a good portion of the ticket-buying fan base hates Stallings, attendance figures brutally reminded them every home game. So I think they are looking to quickly stop the bleeding, at least get the diehard fans back to the arena next year.
Just about any new coach hire may get a good bit of the diehard fans back at least initially. Who they actually hire will tell us how serious they are about getting back to an NCAA-level team and in what timeframe they hope to get there. Because a lot of the names thrown out on this board aren’t going to get it done in the couple years you suggest.
The problem is that the failure rate is ao high for these mid-major coaches (look at Rutgers and Penn State) that there is no way to really tell if you are hiring a good one or not. The failure rate has to be something like 75%. I dont think Pitt can afford that risk.
I mean we just saw the failure rate with a "retread" in Stallings. And sometimes those older guys are considered "safer" with a higher floor, but lower ceiling.
I don't see Pitt poaching a "major" basketball coach. That then leaves: assistant, mid-major or retread.
I'm sure the failure rate is high on all of those.
As I’ve said, I don’t think a guy being unknown means he has higher upside.
And besides, none of these names except for Oats are young and up and comers. They’re guys who are the same age as the retreads, so we’re basically just hiring them because they have less experience and that mystery makes them intriguing. That makes no sense.
Also, you very rarely see assistants and low-major coaches hired straight to reputable P5 positions unless they have a great pedigree or tons of hype. None of this year’s candidates have that.
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