Free Quebec wrote:

Strong disagre with Dude’s assertion that this thread shows why JC should have been given a 4th year or Mayhem’s absurd comment that “undoubtedly” JC “earned. 4th year.

He literally did nothing in 3 years to “earn” a 4th year (he couldn’t even finish top 200 in any year, not even with a very good backcourt last year.

Whether or not Caputo is struggling to recruit this year, or focusing on next year, or putting his energy into coaching up the guys he inherited, or even just the wrong replacement - none of that has any bearing at all on whether a coach who couldn’t get an A10 team into the top 200 in 3 years deserved another year.

FQ, when you sign a new coach to a 5 year contract, barring some pretty unforeseen or unusual circumstances, it should be a professional courtesy to allow that coach four years or a full recruiting cycle to prove his value.  I understand that one game under 500 in conference and a #7 seed in the conference had mirage-like elements to it that don't add up KenPom.  At the same time, facts are facts and the fact was that the team did finish 8-9 in conference and did finish in 7th place in the 14 team A10.

But even if the team finished in 13th place like some forecasters had predicted, it's my opinion that you don't give someone a 5 year deal without committing to 4 years.  We are and have been paying an enormous amount of "dead money" as the NFL calls it.  So this discussion also pertains to that.  I don't recall you or anyone objecting to his five year deal.  Giving him four years would have been the right thing to do for more than one reason.

Finally, let's not allow The Dude's completely false narrative to go unnoticed.  Not only should we prepare for years of clamoring for CC to be fired, but, in The Dude's words, THIS HAS STARTED ALREADY.  Do tell Dude.  Who has been lobbying for CC's dismissal, before he has even coached his first formal practice?  Please name names and show us the quote or quotes.  Can't wait to see you back that lie up.

GW0509 wrote:

GWRising wrote:

GW73 wrote:

Let's be clear that Bamissile would not have returned if JC were still coach. He had an opportunity for a bigger stage. He was never going to ignore it. And it's doubtful Freeman would have returned.

 
Factually, neither statement above is true. Both indicated in conversations with coaches that they were staying. That changed when JC was let go.

Are you saying Bamisile was lying when he said living in DC was destructive to his mental health and that's why he felt he needed to transfer to a smaller city like Norman, Oklahoma?

 No, I'm saying those reasons developed once JC was let go. Ask him!

Gwmayhem wrote:

Free Quebec wrote:

Strong disagre with Dude’s assertion that this thread shows why JC should have been given a 4th year or Mayhem’s absurd comment that “undoubtedly” JC “earned. 4th year.

He literally did nothing in 3 years to “earn” a 4th year (he couldn’t even finish top 200 in any year, not even with a very good backcourt last year.

Whether or not Caputo is struggling to recruit this year, or focusing on next year, or putting his energy into coaching up the guys he inherited, or even just the wrong replacement - none of that has any bearing at all on whether a coach who couldn’t get an A10 team into the top 200 in 3 years deserved another year.

FQ, when you sign a new coach to a 5 year contract, barring some pretty unforeseen or unusual circumstances, it should be a professional courtesy to allow that coach four years or a full recruiting cycle to prove his value.  I understand that one game under 500 in conference and a #7 seed in the conference had mirage-like elements to it that don't add up KenPom.  At the same time, facts are facts and the fact was that the team did finish 8-9 in conference and did finish in 7th place in the 14 team A10.

But even if the team finished in 13th place like some forecasters had predicted, it's my opinion that you don't give someone a 5 year deal without committing to 4 years.  We are and have been paying an enormous amount of "dead money" as the NFL calls it.  So this discussion also pertains to that.  I don't recall you or anyone objecting to his five year deal.  Giving him four years would have been the right thing to do for more than one reason.

Finally, let's not allow The Dude's completely false narrative to go unnoticed.  Not only should we prepare for years of clamoring for CC to be fired, but, in The Dude's words, THIS HAS STARTED ALREADY.  Do tell Dude.  Who has been lobbying for CC's dismissal, before he has even coached his first formal practice?  Please name names and show us the quote or quotes.  Can't wait to see you back that lie up.

Again, you can't take anything the Dude says seriously. It's a full time employment act correcting his mis-statements and fabrications here. Best to just keep it moving.

Free Quebec wrote:

GWRising wrote:

What I am saying is that JC was improving

Whoopee! We improved from 227th to 226th in one year! At that rate, we should have extended his contract through 2048 so we could crack the top 200 college teams!

Look, you already know I disagree with the idea that we should give a failing coach the 4th year just because, even if it’s obvious that coach is not going to succeed. To me, that’s a waste of time to start the inevitable rebuild (and especially since coaches are free to leave any time, it stands to reason that schools aren’t obligated to give 4 years to a failing coach, so long as they buy out the rest of the contract or come to agreement).

We don’t have to use derisive terms like ‘if you don’t see it my way, I don’t know what to tell you’ or ‘undboubtedly, my view is right.’ That’s what caused me to engage today (and sink to that level).

We all know where each other stands, and I’m disappointed that I played a part in turning this into another rehashing of the past when all I was trying to do is comment on how I feel about CC’s recruiting in his limited time here.

Agree about the derisive comments, we have a Admin and 2 Mods, can we enforce some of the rules? Thx.  I thought this was "a Community of GW fans" maybe we can adhere to that.

Disagree about "clearly going to fail" and also that last year was merely the KenPom, did the A10 slate not happen?

When you are constantly a roster in flux little surprise the OOC was so poor, if that continued during the A10 schedule, then perhaps I'd agree...but it did not right?  8-9 is 8-9, and you were among the biggest fans of JoeBam and Brayon's talent you let those guys gel together a 2nd year, add more pieces... this team wasn't going to fail year 4.  

Well doesn't really matter now we'll never actually know.  Now we are going into the season with Bishop and a super light on talent roster. 

Again, when did any GW Coach ever come and instantly bring in big transfers right away???

 


 

DC Native wrote:

I for one am excited to see what Caputo can do. Yes, we lost two of our top three or four players from a team that was awful in the OOC but middle of the pack in the A10, and we haven’t done much to replace them. But this team still has a lot of players that were recruited by Power 5 conference teams. Maybe a good, experienced coaching staff will get more out of them than JC ever could, and can put together a system to maximize their talents. I’m not expecting GW to be a top A10 team next year. What I would like to see, however, is an end to all the embarrassing, blowout losses to D1 bottom feeders, which we have had way too many of the last few years. That will let me know we finally have a quality coach, and we’ll have the chance to see this very soon. Caputo will then have to follow that up with getting, and keeping, quality recruits to prove he is the long term answer.

 Well said. And share that hope.

1.  Obviously money was factored in and they chose to move on anyway.
2.  Improvement?  Did you see the last game?
3.  Clearly it was decided enough is enough and to start the new regime asap.

GWRising wrote:

Free Quebec wrote:

GWRising wrote:

What I am saying is that JC was improving

Whoopee! We improved from 227th to 226th in one year! At that rate, we should have extended his contract through 2048 so we could crack the top 200 college teams!

Look, you already know I disagree with the idea that we should give a failing coach the 4th year just because, even if it’s obvious that coach is not going to succeed. To me, that’s a waste of time to start the inevitable rebuild (and especially since coaches are free to leave any time, it stands to reason that schools aren’t obligated to give 4 years to a failing coach, so long as they buy out the rest of the contract or come to agreement).

We don’t have to use derisive terms like ‘if you don’t see it my way, I don’t know what to tell you’ or ‘undboubtedly, my view is right.’ That’s what caused me to engage today (and sink to that level).

We all know where each other stands, and I’m disappointed that I played a part in turning this into another rehashing of the past when all I was trying to do is comment on how I feel about CC’s recruiting in his limited time here.

Three questions for you then I'm done with this because you are right it serves no purpose moving forward with CC (we already made a decision). I am just curious as to your responses.

1. Do you think it's part of the equation that GW spent $1.8 million on a buyout and then agreed to pay off the balance of the JC contract while simultaneously having to pay another coach for the same position? In other words, if it was a close question should that have factored in especially in light of the investment GW has to make moving forward to compete?
2. You keep saying we improved from 227 to 226. Hopefully, you agree that is at least slightly misleading as we were worse earlier and better later. Does improvement within a season count for anything? 
3. Assume that you are right that JC would have fared no better in year 4, would GW have been in any worse position by waiting a year? (Corollary: If you've been a GW fan for any length of time (and I assume you have), is risking one more year of no postseason (when it is likely we are not going to be in the postseason this year regardless of coach) to make sure really that big of an ask given the amount money involved in making a decision a year earlier - call it at least an extra 1.85 million if you count two salaries for one year plus one of year of the unamortized amount of the buyout?)

 

1) I am not privy to GW’s finances so I have no idea. GW has a billion dollar endowment so spending $1.8 million to fix a high profile mistake - and potentially make money a year sooner - seems fine to me.

2) I could give credit for improvement if we didn’t revert back to horrible late in the season. The fact that we needed 3 OTs to beat a Duquesne team that was one of the worst in A10 history, lost to Fordham, and then we’re totally embarrassed by a 10 seed UMASS that was the worst defensive team in the league shows that the “improvement” was kind of a mirage.  We gutted out some wins over some equally bad teams, but I think the 226 ranking is more representative of who we were over the course of the season than a couple of gutty wins over a collapsing URI and wins over Fordham and LaSalle.

I’ll also add that the point of improvement is to see a team that is headed toward being good enough for post season. Even when we supposedly improved we showed literally nothing to suggest JC could coach us to that level. We lost to Dayton, SLU, VCU, Richmond, and Davison by an average of 20 points a game, with none of them being competitive (and we also lost to two sub-150 teams by double digits during the period some are all excited about).

3) First, it’s not about whether GW could have been better in year 4.  It’s that we were NEVER going to be a top 75 team under JC, which is where we need to be.  We probably could have jumped up to, I don’t know; 175 if everything broke right, but so what?

In my view, waiting a year for the rebuild is a waste of time and disrespectful to the fans. I thought it was a joke that MoJo was given the full time job when it was obvious to anyone watching that he didn’t have it, and to me giving an extra year to a coach we know would fail just because would also be a waste. 

In my opinion, it should have been obvious to anyone who watches us that we weren’t a well coached team.  The efficiency numbers certainly reflect that, but you could see it on the court. We were a guard heavy team that stunk at perimeter defense despite an athletic backcourt.  We didn’t consistently generate good shots. We showed no real identity. (I guess the closest thing we had to a team identity was that we tried to compete and hope JoeBam could get hot from 3 to carry us, but no opposing fan could even tell you what kind of a team we weren’t trying to be.).  And the coach conveyed absolutely no sense of knowing how to fix it, seemingly only able to spout platitudes about needing to play with more love and togetherness.

So in my view, making the change now instead of waiting one more year for the inevitable, actually showed a tremendous amount of respect for the fans and showed us some of the ambition we’ve all been begging for the administration to show. 


I’ll ask you three questions respectfully:

1) If you know that a coach has zero chance to take us to even the NIT no matter how many years he is given, wouldn’t it be disrespectful to the paying and loyal fans to ask them to sit through another bad year, rather than try to bring in someone who might be able to get us to postseason eventually?

2) Understanding the limitations of our program and the changing landscape, how low or a ceiling are you willing to accept?  Would you be satisfied with a program that is consistent around the 150th best team in college basketball??

3) Let’s say we had a HUGE improvement and shot up 50 spots in KenPom, something few schools are able to do in any given year. That would mean we finish around 175, objectively a big improvement, then what would you say?  Would you say, well, we improved a lot this year, we should keep JC and see if we can keep improving?  Or would you say, that was great but peaking at 175 after 4 years isn’t nearly enough?  What if it was 150?

dmvpiranha wrote:

GWRising wrote:

What I am saying is that JC was improving and with most if not all of the team back plus some additions, we would have likely finished higher than 7th in 2022-23 and probably been an NIT team if not better.

GWRising wrote:

​3. Assume that you are right that JC would have fared no better in year 4, would GW have been in any worse position by waiting a year? (Corollary: If you've been a GW fan for any length of time (and I assume you have), is risking one more year of no postseason (when it is likely we are not going to be in the postseason this year regardless of coach) to make sure really that big of an ask given the amount money involved in making a decision a year earlier - call it at least an extra 1.85 million if you count two salaries for one year plus one of year of the unamortized amount of the buyout?)

Did you think we were going to be an NIT team or better with JC next year or not? I feel like I'm reading conflicting viewpoints but perhaps I'm misreading.

Even as someone who was okay with JC coming back next year (assuming changes were made to staff), I'm not sure I can say conference play showed enough signs that we were on our way back to a postseason tournament anytime soon.

Per Bart Torvik, we ranked 204th nationally only taking into consideration performance during conference play. If we scrap the first two games against Dayton/VCU due to COVID, that ranking goes up slightly to 182nd but we still wouldn't have been an above average team. I guess it depends on how you define improved.

Beyond the analytics though, the team just didn't show signs of cohesion. The final four games of the year summed up the season as a whole. We were not disciplined and at times played with such little energy or care. The games against George Mason and Fordham fell into the former category, while the Duquesne and UMass games fell under the latter. Our play in the final two minutes against Mason/Fordham was unacceptable. Bamisile and Bishop launched shots from all over the court with seemingly little understanding of time and score. It's bad that it happened once, but this happened twice in the same week. I'm all for giving players freedom, but we were clearly too much in that direction. The team came out flat against Duquesne and UMass when the former game was on senior day and the latter was literally within miles of campus in a win or go home situation. Duquesne was so bad that we came out on top but it felt like JC had lost the team at that point.

Anyways, enough about JC. I hope he lands another coaching job soon and I think he'll be fine long-term. Like others despite being a bit down on the recruiting thus far, I'm looking forward to seeing how CC can build on what we have. Looking forward to seeing things like:
- Better rebounding
- Rotating better defensively without fouling
- Moving the ball more on offense
- Drawing more charges on defense
etc. in the coming years

Hopefully CC also has the support/resources he needs to succeed as well. I keep hearing about these "strict academic standards" but am unsure what to make of it when it's not quantified. I assumed most HS players at this point have GPAs over 3 (unless our standards are higher than that?). Whatever the case may be, hopefully things change if our standards aren't the same as at least some of our peers in conference like Davidson, Fordham, Richmond, etc.
 

I actually missed the line that predicted NIT next year.  I think that is wildly off base.  It would require a roughly 150 spot improvement in KenPom, something that basically doesn’t happen.  A 100 spot improvement would make us one of, if not the, most improved team in America - and that would only get us to 126, which is nowhere close to the NIT.

NIT next year???  They obviously didn't see the A10 Tourney game at the Phone Booth.  We were not going to improve much...

The lack of coaching and lack of enthusiasm/paying attention were pitiful.  During the Tourney game, I can still vividly see that during a very late stoppage of play, JC leaning on the table drinking a cup of water, players walking around by themselves, all while the UMASS coach who had already been fired was emotionally bringing his players to a huddle, and his players sprinting to the huddle. 

Will there ever be a team in college basketball again that plays together for two years?