JF, first, I have absolutely no issue with intelligent discussion.  The line is crossed for me when you (well, anyone) insult(s) another poster, a player, or anyone for that matter as people.  Personal attacks are where my line lives, but saying one player should start and another should sit, it's a message board.  Discuss away.

I will offer my take, because I tend to be perceived as an apologist whenever decisions are questioned.  I look at coaching decisions as I do business and nonprofit leaders.  Leading is tough and every decision could be the right or wrong one, but that's why we hire highly qualified people to do these jobs.  When we parse out a single decision, especially one for which we don't have all of the information (even if someone indicates they do), and say that JC or any leader is doing a bad job, I just can't agree. 

That's not to say that leader is in fact doing a good job, but only that I look at a leader's role holistically.  One decision affects another, and so on.   Evaluate based upon the criteria set, which in JC's case I imagine includes success on the court and off the court, and also cannot be evaluated effectively on a game-to-game basis.

So, I certainly wonder about Toro's playing time, but I just won't voice if the decision is a good or bad one, because I'm not fully informed nor should I be.  I'll just look at the team as a whole, look at the results, and continue to cheer them on.  

So, call me wishy washy, but I'll just say #RaiseHigh. 

Barry

Arnaldo and Justin were our 2 best players. That is obvious. If they were both starting we wouldn't be able to hear how great we are despite playing 4 frosh. AT should have left when he had the chance. I feel awful for him. He would have had a great career playing for the coach who signed him and believed in him. Pushing Justin out will be a mistake he regrets. The basketball world is small. The A10 is awful this year but next year will be slightly better and we will be even worse. The press releases after games are hilarious. The first paragraph after the blowout loss to URI had me in tears. 3 blowout losses in a row and Arnaldo can't start for this team?
 

Gwmayhem must be a Toro relative or fanboy. How else to explain this repetitive post? 

Perhaps Toro stuck around this program because he genuinely liked going to school at GW and perhaps he had few better options. We are all a product of our options. But because he chose to stay here does not mean he should be given opportunities to play that might go to others for the long term growth of the program. JC is trying to build a program as he sees best. He did not recruit Toro and therefore was not responsible for him being at GW. This is a dog eat dog world and he inherited a GW program coming off a 9-win season.  Next year or the year after is what matters to JC not this year. People will the first to complain about us not winning but at the same time want to be sentimental.The two can be at odds with each other.

Unless of course, Gwmayhem you are suggesting that you know more about GW's program than JC and that JC really doesn't understand that Toro should be playing more.

And the Potter analogy is completely off the mark. Different players at different positions. Because JC realized Potter was his best option at PG has nothing to do with whether Toro is the best option in the post. JC may have simply come to the conclusion that Paar is ready now for heavy minutes but Walker is not as ready.

Also, I've heard nothing about Toro being sick nor has GW officially commented. So let's be clear this is not GW putting that out there unlike the Terry Nolan story.

I'd hardly say the situation "sucks" for GW. What will really "suck" is if JC can't get this program turned around by year 3.Better to take L's now and find out what you have than be nice guys and still take L's but lose your future. 

And before you go there, this has zero to do with whether JC or staff "likes" Toro. By all accounts he is a solid kid and a credit to GW. That doesn't mean that you automatically gets PT though.
 

GWRising wrote:

BM wrote:

Don't know if this belongs in this thread, but we just offered a 2020 SG (Brandon Murray) so possible that staff has learned of a future transfer.

If I were a betting man, there will likely be more than one. Stay tuned.

It's not too bold of a bet considering we're already 1 over the limit with the addition of the kid from Southern Miss.

Dr Mike, I enjoyed your post.  The crazy thing about this situation is that this is not solely about playing AT out of sentimentality.  It is near-impossible to justify that both Chase Paar and Ace Stallings gives this team a better chance of winning games right now than AT.  Even if you wanted to make the case that Chase should receive the majority of minutes and that the two should not play together, it's ridiculous to believe that Ace is a more capable backup than AT would be.  And it's not as if Ace isn't doing some nice things because he is.

GWRising, my "repetitive" post would never have been written had AT played on Saturday.  Not only did he not play but he wasn't even on the bench.  Sorry but that's newsworthy.  I am not suggesting that GW is putting a bogus story out there.  All I'm suggesting is that for now, this has the same look and feel to what happened last year.  Could be entirely different in reality, I acknowledge.

I am not a Toro relative or fanboy.  I simply see a player who has been relegated to the bench (when he's in the building) who can help this team win right now.  Do you remember his early season accomplishments?  Do you remember what he did less than two weeks ago against Davidson?

Don't really appreciate the straw-man argument relative to my thoughts vs. JC's.  Am giving my opinions which are obviously different than JC's on this issue.  Several posters seem to be in agreement with what I'm saying so it's not like this vantage point is so far out in left field.  You strike me as a devoted little sheep who must always side with a head coach because he has to know far more than any peon like myself could possibly know.  I will never claim to know a fraction of what JC knows about his own program but guess what?  That in and of itself does not make JC or any coach right about all matters, all of the time.  He'd probably be the first person to suggest that he too is capable of being wrong about certain judgments.  

And like I said to Dr Mike, this opinion is not based entirely on being sentimental.  It is also about helping the team win games right now.  You know, in that dog eat dog world you so aptly described.

I wasn't clamoring for AT when we won a stretch of games because I had assumed he wasn't fully recovered from his injury.  His play had been tentative and I had pointed this out at the time (though he did make 4 of 5 shots in 23 minutes against Duquesne.)  That was followed by the stretch you're referring to where we clearly played a much easier schedule.  No, what got my attention was the Davidson game where he not only sat for the first 45 + minutes but then helped win the game.  At that point, I started wondering how JC would use AT and Chase and the answer since this point has been AT hardly at all.  

It is a bit baffling.

 

JC was hired by an AD who was given the job under undesirable circumsatnces. I don't want to debate or rehash TV's hiring but she would not have gotten the job based on her qualifications at any other A-10 school.
She hired a coach who was .500 after 7 years at lower level conferences. Show me a program in a top 10 conference, or any conference, who hires an experienced coach that has a .500 winning record. A-10 schools have their pick of up and coming young coach's who have won at a lower level.
I'm not holding this season against JC. However, if he wants to stick around he needs to show improvement each year until he gets us back into the top half of the A-10 or find someone else who can.

Closing the thread before things get out of hand.

Joel, Mark Schmidt was 82-90 overall (58-52 in conference) after six seasons at Robert Morris. Seems like he turned around St. Bonaventure pretty well in time (a tough place to win at for obvious reasons). Coaching in the NEC is tough, and overall record has to be thrown out the window when you are just playing buy games to bring in money to the program. JC lost several of his players year after year to bigger conference programs. Such is life in the NEC where every year is basically a reset. Despite that, JC went 67-39 (.632) in conference. He won't be losing guys to transfer in the A-10 as he did in the NEC (if he does, questions about program culture are sure to arise). This conversation has been brought up several times now, and the truth is there are very few coaches who probably had comparable resumes to JC from a lower level when we were hiring. He would have been top 5 on my list at least if not higher.

As for scholarships, Hunter's commitment took the final scholarship available so we are currently not over the limit for next year. We will only be over the limit if AT stays another year, or another recruit like Brandon Murray commits.