For better or worse, Caputo has defied expectations during his tenure...over achieving his first season; underachieving his second season (yeah, I know about the injuries, but we were still a last place team that lost too many games we had no business losing) and then last season, overachieving expectations once again.   Under the Caputo regime, we are demonstrating an ability to compete in this NIL/open transfer era notwithstanding a lack of resources. . At the very least, he ha pulled us past the post Lonergan debacle that made us a perennial  bottom feeder.  He appears to be well respected in the industry and I have not heard anything off the court negatives about him.   Unless he is poached by a bigger program, we may have achieved some stability with the program and fully expect he will be further extended.

Mike K's idea is always a good one, especially given the experience level of assistants.
An experienced major level hand, unless forgetting someone, might have helped the two previous head
coaches. 
   CC is a good person with the right experience for the job and has us seemingly on the cusp of
really turning things around. Really like him.
Prob a good goal to evaluate him is a good OOC this season, which it should be outside of Florida, plus a good winning conference record.
Or beating Georget*wn, which should earn an immediate lifetime contract extension.
    The bigger question is how well the vast majority of non P-5 NCAA and A-10 coaches can do with the new professional player environment overlaid on college basketball?

creeksandzeeks wrote:

I'm not in love with CC, but I think he's the absolute best we could hope for in this moment. He understands the business, knows how to operate in DC and keeps us finding ways to stay in the news for moments, and has earned the confidence of the admin to the extent that it seems they're paying up to let him build a competitive squad. He doesn't have the chops to manage a game like ML, hasn't been an ambassador for GW like Jarvis, or recruited (at his peak) like Hobbs, but he's met the moment well enough for me.

After a succession of false starts in wake of Lonergan's departure, I'm not convinced that we could hire any better. I think he's our guy until someone else poaches him.

By the way, wouldn't it be nice to have someone leave GW on their own terms through retirement or another gig? Hasn't happened since Jarvis....

I couldn’t disagree with you more.  I think he’s a great game manager. He makes excellent adjustments and has an eye for detail that our previous two coaches didn’t have. Just listen to his press conferences where he talks in a level of detail about adjustments or things the opponent was doing that we haven’t really heard from a coach before (maybe from Lonergan, but it was different). 

also don’t think the recruiting comparison to Hobbs is fair.  First, the game has changed massively. It’s much harder to recruit at GW now than it was in the early to mid-2000s (though revenue sharing is definitely helping now).   Second, Hobbs was great initially, but a series of failed recruits - the Miles Beattys and Cheyenne Moores and Xavier Alexanders just weren’t good enough.   Third, I personally think CC’s recruiting has been impressive (Castro was a great get, as was Jun initially, and we have quite a heralded transfer class coming in based on current recruiting standards for non-big money leagues.)

I think he’s the exact right guy for us at this challenging moment in college basketball time.

Very funny that any time ML is mentioned or there’s a comparison, Joel Joseph is always there to trash everything that isn’t ML. 

Like it or not, college basketball has changed in the last 10 years. It’s just not the same. Hopefully we take another step forward this year.

Gwmayhem wrote:

Year 4 is often looked upon as a "make or break" type year for coaches who sign five-year contracts.

This is definitely an interesting thing to look at. Back in the sit out transfer era where continuity was more possible year 4 was definitely the make or break year with the first recruiting class became seniors. In the early NIL/unlimited transfers period I think this definitely shifted to a three year timeline where coaches had less of an excuse to not show progress a bit quicker. I think with rev share we may see it shift back to year 4 again with schools opting to use the money on fielding a competitive roster instead of wasting the funds buying out a coach.

I agree that CC has recruited well (minus international, but having overseas guys only for a year anyways feels like a crapshoot). He and AD Lipitz seem to be outstanding fundraisers which is something GW really needed. Heck, in the portal we've gone from EJ Clark (Alabama State) redshirt/guys who barely played in Stretch Akingbola (Auburn), Max Edwards (Kansas State), Jun (Virginia Tech), and Garrett (Princeton) to multiple double figure scorers last year + a guy who was in Providence's rotation in Slim to this year landing a guy who led another A10 team in scoring. He's done an impressive job, and that's not to mention the continuity year over year. I probably keep up with the HS offers more than others on here but it seems like come July at least 2-3 players that he recruited earlier on end up breaking out in a major way and going high major. If I'm nitpicking, I think we could stand to recruit a bit more athleticism/rim attacking at the guard position and expand the recruiting radius a bit more outside the northeast given GW's location. I agree with Mike K on the veteran coach point, whether it's from a recruiting angle or X's an O's one.

The next step definitely feels like a top 4 finish and perhaps a top 75-ish KenPom finish I guess?

Gwmayhem wrote:

Promising future big men will evaluate how GW helps develop Rafael Castro now that he's no longer a relative secret.

There has definitely been a trend of second year player regressions under CC, although I'm not sure it's all on him. Still, is he able to make adjustments in that second year when teams now account for the bigger pieces on the roster? JB, Max, Jacoi, and Jun all come to mind in the regression category. Hopefully Slim, CJ, and Garrett can reverse this trend.

Gwmayhem wrote:

I thought he was overly loyal to veteran transfers, playing some to many minutes at the expense of perhaps further developing the freshmen on the team.  And yet, he made a conscious and difficult decision to take two players who were supposed to be the cornerstones of last year's team, Jun and Jacoi, and diminished their roles, fully realizing that both would likely leave the program as a result.  I felt this took way more courage than has been acknowledged here.

I do think CC did the right thing cutting Drumgoole's minutes eventually, but it probably came a bit later than it should have. Moss saw his minutes cut too. In terms of developing freshmen, I don't know. I guess Ty could have had more chances, but Dayan was simply not healthy for a lot of the season. What happens with Ty's minutes going into next season will be interesting to watch. I liked what I saw from him and think he deserves more chances but I'm not sure whether that's going to happen given the depth on the roster this year.

I guess you could make the argument sending Jun to the bench took courage as one of the faces of the team (Sean didn't really earn the job, but had more of a complementary skillset to Slim than Buchanan), but Jacoi was struggling for months to put the ball in the hoop and at some point something needed to change. If he had stuck with Coi, CJ might not return. Ultimately, it seems like he made the right decision in terms of which pieces to keep, although Jacoi and Jun were two of my favorite players over the past couple years.

One other critique I have of CC is his analytic system. Yes, layups and threes are the more efficient shots but as I mentioned above he doesn't really recruit guards who get to the rim and finish consistently and teams clearly adjusted to Jun's play style. With the threes not falling last year, the offense struggled for stretches. I don't think taking a midrange is bad if it gets a player in a bit of a better rhythm. Maybe Drumgoole or Moss could have benefitted. It may have opened things up for Jun to do something outside of barreling to the rim since his three point shot is not there yet. Given last year's team was not really good at either threes or layups (outside of Slim's finishing inside) I'm not sure it was the right approach (GW ranked 10th nationally in percentage of shots coming either from threes/layups). The same thing could be said about JB's second year with CC although to Bishop's credit he did have a career year from 3. Still, that patented midrange that made him dangerous was dropped and made him less effective inside the arc (having less experienced teammates to play with didn't help either).

Overall, I think CC was what GW needed in a time where the school needed to navigate NIL and raise the overall floor of the squad. He's done that effectively, and I don't hold year 2 against him as he was clearly trying to do what was best given the one time transfer rule that was in place that year. I don't know about his ceiling being overly high, but I think he is a good coach and overall I like what I saw on both sides of the ball last year. There was certainly more mayhem out there defensively than anything in the JC era. It's good to finally see a competitive team out there again.

Joel Joseph wrote:

Free Quebec, I couldn't disagree with you more.
After 3 seasons, nothing to show for it. Excuses are many - NIL, transfers, lack of school support, etc, etc, etc.
Funny how we are no different from 300+ other D-1 schools.
We will be saying the same things about the next hire.

I didn't think anybody on here actually thought CC's on the hot seat going into next year but then I saw Joel's post which you can guarantee will be something negative no matter what. "Nothing to show for it" is such an empty phrase. To say CC has not improved GW's trajectory would be dishonest.
 

I think we should cool the generational debates here. We are in a different time now and it's apples to oranges with the past. I think we can honor the past without running the present down. I think CC is doing the best that can reasonably be expected so far given the challenges of Mid-major basketball in the era of NIL and the transfer portal and given our recent history (post 2016).

I don't see anything wrong with generational comparisons (or debates) as long as we can all acknowledge that there are differences between today's day and age and those of yesteryear.  What's more important in my mind is to use fair, realistic measuring sticks to help determine whether we are seeing any progress.  Joel's view that the program has had nothing to show for it under CC can be refuted by the team's first postseason tournament of any kind since MoJo's first season (and first 20+ win season since this time), regardless of the schedule played to get GW to Vegas.

Worth pointing out that Lonergan went 23-38 in his first two seasons while Hobbs went 24-33.  The interesting comparison in my opinion is the way in which they went about building their programs.  In Year 3, Lonergan had 1 key transfer in Mo Creek, on the heels of 1 key transfer the year prior in Zeke, plus the core 4 of Pato, KevLar, Joe and Kethan playing their sophomore seasons.  That was an NCAA year for GW.  In Year 3 of the Hobbs era, the impetus remained on harvesting players from high schools and prep schools.  JR and Carl joined Pops, Mike and Omar who a year prior had joined TJ Thompson.  That was an 18 win team that set the stage for an A10 Championship the following season, without any notable transfers.

CC has been bucking this trend, and it's hard to blame him given the explosion of transfer movement around the country.  If a freshman or sophomore were to "blow up" at GW, CC is willing to bet that he'll leave for a bigger program and theoretically, more money (though interestingly, the best example of a GW player haven't the chance to leave for a bigger payday did not leave, and that was James Bishop before his final season).  Thus, the reliance on transfers looking to either prove themselves on a bigger stage, or who transfer "down" for presumably more playing time.  While it all makes sense, we should not lose sight of the fact that this is a choice that CC is making...to build his teams in this manner.  The alternative, to keep a core group of guys together for 3+ years is still out there even if it seemingly becomes less and less plausible with each passing season.     

Joel Joseph wrote:

Free Quebec, I couldn't disagree with you more.
After 3 seasons, nothing to show for it. Excuses are many - NIL, transfers, lack of school support, etc, etc, etc.
Funny how we are no different from 300+ other D-1 schools.
We will be saying the same things about the next hire.

 
Way too tough on CC. He’s brought respectability back to the program, even though I think his scheduling philosophy was wrong - Lipsitz put an end to that mercifully. CC also beat the odds keeping a core group together in an era where that doesn’t happen often. Big props for that.

That said, anybody who calls him a great game manager is just an idiot. Improving, maybe, but long way to go to get to competent, much less great. Or maybe they missed the 75% of losses where CC ran the same strategy over and over and failed to adjust or have any consequences for repeated mistakes. How many times did we see him adjust too late after relying on a fire up the threes game plan and fail to change it when it was clear it was tanking? Or seeing him tolerate the repeated sprint down the court and haul up an ill-advised three with no consequences? 

I felt like he improved in this regard by the end of the year, but to call him a great game manager is comical and smacks of hoops ignorance.

Free Quebec wrote:

Alum1 wrote:

Joel Joseph wrote:

Free Quebec, I couldn't disagree with you more.
After 3 seasons, nothing to show for it. Excuses are many - NIL, transfers, lack of school support, etc, etc, etc.
Funny how we are no different from 300+ other D-1 schools.
We will be saying the same things about the next hire.

 
Way too tough on CC. He’s brought respectability back to the program, even though I think his scheduling philosophy was wrong - Lipsitz put an end to that mercifully. CC also beat the odds keeping a core group together in an era where that doesn’t happen often. Big props for that.

That said, anybody who calls him a great game manager is just an idiot. Improving, maybe, but long way to go to get to competent, much less great. Or maybe they missed the 75% of losses where CC ran the same strategy over and over and failed to adjust or have any consequences for repeated mistakes. How many times did we see him adjust too late after relying on a fire up the threes game plan and fail to change it when it was clear it was tanking? Or seeing him tolerate the repeated sprint down the court and haul up an ill-advised three with no consequences? 

I felt like he improved in this regard by the end of the year, but to call him a great game manager is comical and smacks of hoops ignorance.

Just because you can’t see the adjustments doesn’t make me an idiot.  It might be a you problem.

Nah….I’m gonna go with you’re an idiot.  Was going to be charitable and downsize to dummy, but changed my mind.

This isn't a VCU board, let's lay off the ad hominems