FredD wrote:

GWRising wrote:

Gwmayhem wrote:

Let me also add that I am making an assumption, admittedly perhaps an erroneous one, that this is Diaz's call and not Tanya's.  A few things about that.  First, if this is true, it's a horribly sexist act which begs the question of whether Diaz would be "pulling rank" over a male athletic director.  Second, and most importantly no matter what the circumstances are, TV and MD must learn to work together and not take on the role of adversaries towards one another.  What we don't need is TV winning this decision and MD making life miserable for athletics thereafter.  Or, MD winning this decision and TV feeling undermined and disrespected.  The two are grown adults who must come together and somehow get on the same page.

Two things could be true at once. It could be TV's "decision" within the financial parameters given to her by Diaz which may have eliminated many options. So if you take your kids to Baskin Robins and tell them their choices are limited to vanilla or chocolate, do they really have a "decision" if they don't like or prefer vanilla or chocolate?

Rising I think this is EXACTLY want is happening. What I can't figure out is if a factor beyond won-loss record led to JC's firing and if the April due date referenced in TV's email is a honest answer based on experience, a cushion or a reflection of school leadership in transition/turmoil?

However, my #1 concern is that GW is ignoring what is actually happening in the changing NCAA coaching/transfer environment in favor of plodding along thinking they have leverage they don't have or that an Ok hire is good enough.
 

I personally think the JC termination was in the works for the past 9-12 months. I don't say this lightly. I have shared with some of you the evidence. The evidence (in summation but I have more) amounts to it was well known within GW and outside that someone within GW wanted JC out after last season. Coaches from other school and others connected to GW have reported this to me from time to time well before JC was terminated and as far back as last Summer. JC was aware of this. I thought it was a joke then. It obviously was not. So you have to ask yourself if this was true (and I believe it was), how did GW not have a plan to move quickly (putting aside the inherent unfairness to JC)?

And I just want to be clear about something. JC was not terminated for cause. I know there was an ugly rumor (I won't dignify it by discussing it in detail) posted on this board at some point this past year and that rumor was reported far and wide outside of GW. That rumor was investigated within GW and found to have zero merit and all parties were satisfied that it did not occur. So anyone that thinks that JC was terminated for cause would be very mistaken and we should end any implications about that here. But you ought to ask yourself why this rumor came to be and where did this rumor emanate from?

Gwmayhem wrote:

Wow, Karl Hobbs is really a beloved figure here.  It has been a while but I do remember pretty clearly how I was one of the very few people who did not want to see Hobbs fired.  Similar to JC, there were signs that he was turning his program back in the right direction.  When coupling this with his enormous accomplishments at GW, I disagreed vehemently with the decision to fire him.  I railed against firehobbs.com, and complained about people who were naming his possible replacement before he had actually been fired.  I do not recall a lot of people in my corner 11 years ago.  But today, he is "basketball royalty?"  Just amazing. (SMH)
 

I can only speak for myself but my first memories of GW were following the team in the 05 tourney since I knew I got in, the whole 05-06 season as a freshman, and then following it up in the 06-07 A10 tourney. To me those players and Hobbs are what I think of when I think of GW basketball.  Kind of like how people always think SNL was funniest when they first started watching it.


So yeah, basketball royalty in my book.

Last edited by GW0509 (3/31/2022 10:30 am)

Here’s an unbiased assessment of how GW looks to potential HC hires:

@BillKoch25
Limited budget, bottom half facilities, administrative question marks and each of the last two coaches were only given three years.

If I'm an agent and my client is a rising star, I'm not letting him take that job unless there's a considerable tenure/financial offer.

GW0509 wrote:

Here’s an unbiased assessment of how GW looks to potential HC hires:

@BillKoch25
Limited budget, bottom half facilities, administrative question marks and each of the last two coaches were only given three years.

If I'm an agent and my client is a rising star, I'm not letting him take that job unless there's a considerable tenure/financial offer.

Yup. As I said before, these things are all self-inflicted and didn't need to be that way.

GW0509 wrote:

Here’s an unbiased assessment of how GW looks to potential HC hires:

@BillKoch25
Limited budget, bottom half facilities, administrative question marks and each of the last two coaches were only given three years.

If I'm an agent and my client is a rising star, I'm not letting him take that job unless there's a considerable tenure/financial offer.

With due respect, this tweet is why you can’t rehire Karl Hobbs.   When Hobbs was here, all he did was complain about the negatives of GW (including attacking the small number of loyal fans). I would not want to go through that again.

We need to find a coach who can succeed and has Lonergan’s attitude of seeing GW as a great job at a great school with considerable strengths to build on.

A few other responses to things in this thread:

1) GW rising says we should be skeptical of anonymous rumors and who starts them and why.  I think that applies to everything on this board and on Twitter. Including the allegations about Diaz (could be true, I have no idea, but they are unsubstantiated, not specific, and do support an agenda).  Same for this $100k short comment on Twitter. Could be gossip, could hr true, could be an agent feeding it to someone to tweet about or spread in hopes of getting more money for their client.  We don’t know the source, and we don’t know who started it or why.

2) another reason I’m not for Hobbs, besides the constant negativity toward GW, is that when he was here he only succeeded when his team was more athletic than our opponent. Even the great 06 team lost to the only two teams (NC St and Duke) we played that could match our athleticism.  That said, Rutgers played a more structured offense and defense, so it’s possible that what he’s learned in the years since GW have fixed his weakness. If he’s figured out how to coach teams to win without simply exploiting athletic mismatches, he could be amazing. But it would be very risky to find out.

3) with all the transfer portal activity, I will be bummed if our new coach isn’t announced today or tomorrow.

I always like Hobbsie.

As this is dragging along, I am getting nervous and feeling that TV screwed up again.  It is cementing the belief she was not qualified in the first place. 

On the other hand, if there was a quick hire, I would complain about no national search and rushing into a bad hire.

Bottom line, based on her track history, I have no confidence she would do the right thing.  

I really hope it isn't one of the "localish" lower level HCs.

moneybox wrote:

There is no argument to be made for retaining Christian. None!  29-50 says it all! There is nothing else to consider. I'm just shocked that GW fired him with two years left on his contract. In my opinion, he was paid very, very well considering what he produced. 

SMDH. New to college basketball and GW?

Mentzinger wrote:

Add Xavier reject Travis Steele to the rumor mill
https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/college-basketball-coaching-changes-2022-tracker-carousel-shaheen-holloway-named-next-coach-at-seton-hall/

Plenty of experience, but no mention of ties to DMV Hoops.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_Steele

Three years?   Everyone is really OK with firing a coach on a 5 year contract after 3 years?

Let's get the obvious out of the way.  MoJo was hired as an interim head coach who was inexplicably extended by a corrupt AD who clearly sabotaged this program.  He had never been a head coach, was not ready to be one at the A10 level, and his teams progressed steadily in the wrong direction during his tenure.  Not at all the same thing as Jamion.

Back to the original question.  Are we really OK cutting ties with a coaching staff who did not have even a full recruiting cycle to turn things around? (Remember, he inherited a 9-24 team.)  Even if you are fully convinced that Jamion was the wrong guy to lead this program, how can you not give him a 4th year anyway to make sure he's not the right guy?  There was improvement in conference play, and that was without Ira Lee, a player we desperately needed and who JC successfully recruited.  What if James, Joe, Brayon and Brendan all return with JC as coach and JC gets some quality additions in the frontcourt?  This is all hypothetical I realize but might that result in a 5th-6th place A10 finish next season?  If that team makes the NIT, is Jamion still the wrong guy?

I get it.  He didn't get it done.  The Lee injury was a bad break but we can't not evaluate coaching performance due to bad breaks.  But seriously, we were not a laughing stock this season, certainly not in conference play.  

But putting records and performance aside, unless you're being fired with cause or are a pawn being used to help sink a program, doesn't every head coach deserve a minimum of four years on the job?  

Gwmayhem wrote:

Three years?   Everyone is really OK with firing a coach on a 5 year contract after 3 years?

Let's get the obvious out of the way.  MoJo was hired as an interim head coach who was inexplicably extended by a corrupt AD who clearly sabotaged this program.  He had never been a head coach, was not ready to be one at the A10 level, and his teams progressed steadily in the wrong direction during his tenure.  Not at all the same thing as Jamion.

Back to the original question.  Are we really OK cutting ties with a coaching staff who did not have even a full recruiting cycle to turn things around? (Remember, he inherited a 9-24 team.)  Even if you are fully convinced that Jamion was the wrong guy to lead this program, how can you not give him a 4th year anyway to make sure he's not the right guy?  There was improvement in conference play, and that was without Ira Lee, a player we desperately needed and who JC successfully recruited.  What if James, Joe, Brayon and Brendan all return with JC as coach and JC gets some quality additions in the frontcourt?  This is all hypothetical I realize but might that result in a 5th-6th place A10 finish next season?  If that team makes the NIT, is Jamion still the wrong guy?

I get it.  He didn't get it done.  The Lee injury was a bad break but we can't not evaluate coaching performance due to bad breaks.  But seriously, we were not a laughing stock this season, certainly not in conference play.  

But putting records and performance aside, unless you're being fired with cause or are a pawn being used to help sink a program, doesn't every head coach deserve a minimum of four years on the job?  

It’s almost impossible to go from sub-200 to the NiT, especially with a coach who never coached a top 200 team in 7 years as a head coach.

But we could extend your hypothetical, what if he came back next year and we made the final 4?  In that case, firing him would have been a mistake. But in reality, year three saw us finish 226th in the nation per KenPom, and go just 9-9 against teams outside the top 150.  That’s bad by any measure.