Since BM posted his insightful comment, looked up Becker very quickly. Knew he was a good and respected coach, but his overall record is exceptional and his league (not our level as we have learned from our current situation, but better than the NEC) record is phenomenal.
"He has taken Vermont to seven out of the last 10 America East Championship games. He owns a career record of [b]229-96 and holds a 131-27[/b] mark in America East play at Vermont. His five national postseason tournament wins are a program and America East coaching record. In the last four seasons, his Catamounts have posted the three highest single-season win totals in school history – 29 victories in 2016-17, 27 wins in 2017-18 and 2018-19, and 26 in 2019-20. He is one of three coaches to register 20 wins in each of his first nine seasons at a single school...."
      One reason we were attracted to JC was his league record, in terms of making the tournament, anyway. But we have painfully learned three years in a row this was with the luxury of ignoring OOC record, not an option for us if we want postseason play sometime before the Tricentennial.
  Becker, though, has been around for a long time, working under ML in addition to looks like 9 years of head coaching. Lonergan saluted his Xs and Os ability (perhaps would hire him just for that in our case we are so bereft in that area).
Becker's leap of faith pays off at Vermont - Men's College Basketball Blog- ESPN
        As to whether he would feel he is not being loyal to ML, have no inside info, but wasn't there something about JC getting ML's blessing to take the job? Not sure that was an important factor in his decision, but JC's spending time with Lonergan and taking a picture, is my soft spot for JC.
    If Becker comes and ML is taken out from the cold and rightfully back into our (currently revisionist) basketball history, that would help heal this broken-spirited program. Not a reason for his hiring, but an added perhaps not so small bonus to Becker's solid qualifications.
    
 

You can't have a better thread to show the general ignorance of the GW fan. We may not be very good in basketball right now but we are far worse when it comes to knowledge about GW, its limitations, and its finances. 

FWIW Becker declined the opportunity to interview with GW following Mojo's departure. 

BC wrote:

If we all only had Rising's inside knowledge.

If only people would stop talking out of their ass here. Generally, if I don't know something I tend to keep my mouth shut before pontificating. Just a thought.

Last edited by GWRising (1/12/2022 1:30 pm)

I'm not surprised that GW reached out to Becker; he's a great coach that would be on or near the top of a lot of school's wishlists.  

RealtimeRPI - 318
Kenpom - 278

We are now officially in the company of NC Central and Savannah State.

I stopped watching GW games long ago. The way I find out the results is I come to this site and the game thread, quickly scroll through the posts and if dude has not posted during the game, I know we won. If dude is up to his usual non-stop posts about Bishop being a Wooden Award winner, I know we won. Needless to say, dude has been as quiet as a church mouse the last couple years.

JC is not going anywhere until his contract runs out. Do you seriously think GW will buy him out? We are talking about the school who chose to back Nero over Lonergan despite Lonergan's attorney's giving them the Nero dirt on a silver platter. Even after Nero was exposed by DeadSpin, our brilliant administration let Nero out the back door with a $1.3 million check so he wouldn't share the dirty laundry. Not happening boys so strap in for the next 2 years of the same old shit.

Becker wouldn't touch this dumpster fire with a 10 foot pole. Becker will have his share of P-5 teams. He knows all the juicy details (most of which we all have no idea) of what really took place because his mentor is ML. We are now and have been in a position where we have to take a flyer on some young and unproven coach - it's kind of like playing the lottery. We may get lucky, but probably not. Send your thank you notes to Forrest Maltzman, who is still at GW because it's the only place where he can get a job after his grand performance as provost.
Raise High my friends!

How dare anyone ever speculate! If Barry can please ban all theorizing, speculation, or conjecture - and while he's at it, editorializing, we can all have more fun! We can read each other stat lines and respond uniformly with, "Indeed. This is fact." 

GWRising, as much as I honestly, truly appreciate your insights, it's hard to blame fans for speculating, especially when the inner-workings can be such a black box (as they probably are with most programs). The speculation is sort of inseparable from the fandom itself! If its too painful to bear, just remember if you know otherwise, you probably know better! Protect your gentle heart!

We may have to lose TV and change the hearts of the admin before we get better coaches.  Though I like the direction the new woman's coach seems to be heading.   Are there any studies that show better sports programs bring a better student and bigger donations.  It seems like a no-brainer to me but I have no proof.  I'm too lazy to do my own research.

First of all let's all calm down. I wasn't referring at all to the basketball discussion here as to whether the team has played well, whether JC has shown the requisite progress, etc. I might have some thoughts on that but that was not at all the discussion I was referring to. And no LSF, I am not a GW employee nor have I ever been.

Putting aside the unseemly willingness of folks to hide behind screen names to discuss successors to JC just 14 games into his third season, I am actually referring to the discussion of replacements, the money GW does or does not have, the amount of donations necessary, the GW place in college athletics and who might be interested in coaching here if and when the job were to open. This isn't fantasy basketball and some of you need to bring yourself up to speed on these issues before you start throwing courses of action around. There aren't unlimited resources to dispose of coaches or hire their replacements nor do some (perhaps many) on the current Board care about athletics in any significant way. This is 100% the wrong school right now if you have delusions of a big-time program or even one that is consistently in the top 100 nationally. The investment while never great has not kept up with the times and has fallen farther behind. The fan support and donor support for athletics is pitiful. Just because it happened under Jarvis, Hobbs or Lonergan, does not mean it will or can happen now. It's easy to sit here and pontificate that GW should do this or that. But unless you are personally willing to underwrite the costs for a replacement you should probably take a seat at this juncture. 

Last edited by GWRising (1/12/2022 5:30 pm)

GWRising, to be fair, this isn't what you reacted to.  You reacted to the discussion about John Becker.  You even went so far as to say that Becker turned down an interview request once MoJo had been released.  Maybe your reaction was a pent-up one covering all of the discussions here that bother you.  But it came across as "stop speculating about Becker because he's not coming" and worse, your attitude seemed to suggest that we all ought to know what you know if we're going to participate on a message board.  It came across, at least to me, as condescending and uncalled for.

Regarding your last post, give me a break.  Nobody is suggesting that we ought to be an NCAA team right now.  At this point, we are trying to crawl our way back to respectability.  So if that's the goal, and we suffer consecutive blowouts in conference games after going 4-8 in an OOC schedule where we should have performed far better, yeah, I get it.  You're going to hear many valid criticisms, and rightfully so.

Mayhem, I agree with 995 of what you say but on the Becker topic, I'm with Rising.
ML took a chance on Becker who didn't exactly light it up at Galludet - not sure of the spelling. Becker probably knows every small detail of that train wreck from almost 6 years ago (not surprising we are still talking about it almost 6 years later). I would bet dude's paycheck (when he had one) that Becker would not even consider GW.