More important than the dismissal of an abusive bigot who got in to a public spat with his boss is the fact that the University is on its fourth President since winning the NIT. Not only has the college sports panorama changed, but the policy dynamic at GW has gone through massive swings. No school goes through that much leadership upheaval and comes out unscathed, GW is no exception.
The women's team has lost a step (or two, or ten) since Joe McKeown left for family reasons, but did rebuild after Joe's successor proved unable to do the job (before again regressing). Volleyball, baseball and both football/soccer teams have proven that a few down seasons do not permanently tank the program. So men's basketball can return to some semblance of glory. HOWEVER, the post-pndemic NIL/megaconference world we are in now will be more of a hindrance than any H.R. moves made last decade.
Adapt or die. It is a "new world order" that sports are operating in now. The football-induced reallignment that appeases the gods (ABC/ESPN and NewsCorp/Fox, in this case) leaves small schools like GW in a more difficult position than ever before, even if an NIT banner hangs in the gym. GW cannot compete with Ohio St, U$C, Alabama, LSU or even Nike-backed Oregon on an even financial playing field. This, more than any perceived "self harm" eight years ago, is what should be worrying Colonials-cum-Revolutionaries fans.
So to win, GW needs to have consistent administrative support and then to parlay its advantages to attain its niche. (Applies to sports as well as other fields-- would be dumb to try to turn the school in to yet another run-of-the-mill STEM school, for example). Let other schools provide recruits hookers and drugs and mortgage payments (Coach Cal, anyone?), and let GW focus on what makes it such a good place to earn a degree from. That might not land too many obvious NBA first rounders, but consistent roster churn is not winning many games for GW right now.

A reality check is that these professional basketball players don’t care about academics. Most of these transfers are majoring in “general studies” like they’re going to community college. Kids are even transferring out of the Ivy League, who you’d think care about academics, to make more money. 

Here’s how one visit was described:

I am surprised at times that people close to the game haven’t realized what we sold in recruiting 5yrs ago isn’t what we are selling now. Just finished a visit the kid had:
- No academic meetings
- No campus tour
- Met with collective
- Met with head coach
Visit was 18 hours.

It has been a long 8 years but it’s also been the most disruptive 8 (really 4) years in college sports. It’s almost not worth comparing our current state to the Lonergan teams, let alone Hobbs or Jarvis, because it would simply not be possible to keep those teams together without Big East level NIL money. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but even in our glory days we wouldn’t be fundraising $3-4 million annually for player salaries.

Took St Bonaventure about 9 years to recover from the welding incident, we are due.

I'm kinda surprised at the "doom and gloom" posted here. Let's see how we do this coming year with June, Garrett, Jacoi and Autry in their 2nd season with some new big guys. I am optimistic after 58 years of GW hoops. Go, Revs!

There are sort of two things at play here. First is GW's standing currently. In the short-term, we can have success although sustained success will be very difficult due to NIL and the transfer portal. We are in the era of mercenary basketball which makes it very difficult at MM or LM schools to maintain long-term success as rosters will be in flux and talent will be raided by HMs. So can CC hit it for a year here and there by making the right decisions ... absolutely.

Long-term is an entirely a different story. There is going to be a great break-up of the NCAA and simply put when that happens, GW (along with many other schools) will be left to the side. Hartford was the canary in coal mine. 10 years from now I doubt GW athletics will resemble anything like we've seen over the past 30 years. Schools will determine the juice isn't worth the squeeze of trying to compete with P5/6 multi-million dollar NIL budgets. I could see GW becoming not a Patriot League program but rather a D3 program. If you look at the profile of a school such as Case Western in terms of endowment, breadth of academic programs and location there isn't much difference. The big difference is the cost of athletics and at some point it will become prohibitive for GW just like most of these D3 schools (who regularly competed against D1 schools) determined years ago. The answer will not be Patriot League it will be a D3 model. You can choose to deny this all you want but it's going to happen absent NIL disappearing (and you can't put that genie back in the bottle). I would not be a long-term holder of GW athletics stock.

Dropping conferences is a really bad idea. I’m actually surprised people are bringing it up. Less exposure, less money, less attention. It’s not going to solve the admin and money issues people have posted about. We really shouldn’t do it

I think everyone who thinks that we’re going to drop to a lower conference is missing the point.

If the NIL environment continues as it is currently, we won’t need to move down conferences. Our conference will simply continue to move down, so it is more similar to the lower mid major conferences. The gap between conferences will be an ever expanded haves versus have nots situation.

We won’t need to move down. The conference will do it for us.

jf wrote:

For some reason, we like to talk about everything but how we got here.
It's relevant today because we are in the dumpster--and have been for nearly 8 years, except for a leftover year with a team that was seized from the former coach just before the season started. 
   The zenith of our efforts since then, has been getting waxed in the CBI 7 years ago, a year after we won the NIT championship.
     We destroyed the career of a man with a family and huge loyalty to us (to the point of ironically turning down triple his salary to stay at GW). Deadspin neatly refuted the allegations, with a bonus video. And the cool roughly $3 million GW payout to the former coach so the real story didn't come out in public, backed that.
     The stench still remains though, leaving us unable to compete in a new environment. Who would have ever thought we would be the doormat of the A-10?
  And this is happening even with a coach who seems pretty knowledgeable and has experience with a high level program. And with having literally some of the best players in the league. The coach and those remaining players, plus a new cast, can lead us out of this morass.
   Still, the question in the initial post was can anyone win here? Had high hopes, but not sure of the answer, anymore. The way we blew up our own program increases the already huge challenges a program at our level faces in today's college basketball environment.
    Beginning to wonder if maybe we just cursed ourselves with what we did to ML--and our program?

  

Although I generally agree with most of what is stated in this post, I think the statute of limitations has run on blaming our current woes on the Lonergan debacle.   I think we are being done in by both NIL and the free transfer rule, which has caused us to be unable to retain many good basketball players over the past few seasons.
 

Long Suffering Fan wrote:

jf wrote:

For some reason, we like to talk about everything but how we got here.
It's relevant today because we are in the dumpster--and have been for nearly 8 years, except for a leftover year with a team that was seized from the former coach just before the season started. 
   The zenith of our efforts since then, has been getting waxed in the CBI 7 years ago, a year after we won the NIT championship.
     We destroyed the career of a man with a family and huge loyalty to us (to the point of ironically turning down triple his salary to stay at GW). Deadspin neatly refuted the allegations, with a bonus video. And the cool roughly $3 million GW payout to the former coach so the real story didn't come out in public, backed that.
     The stench still remains though, leaving us unable to compete in a new environment. Who would have ever thought we would be the doormat of the A-10?
  And this is happening even with a coach who seems pretty knowledgeable and has experience with a high level program. And with having literally some of the best players in the league. The coach and those remaining players, plus a new cast, can lead us out of this morass.
   Still, the question in the initial post was can anyone win here? Had high hopes, but not sure of the answer, anymore. The way we blew up our own program increases the already huge challenges a program at our level faces in today's college basketball environment.
    Beginning to wonder if maybe we just cursed ourselves with what we did to ML--and our program?

  

Although I generally agree with most of what is stated in this post, I think the statute of limitations has run on blaming our current woes on the Lonergan debacle.   I think we are being done in by both NIL and the free transfer rule, which has caused us to be unable to retain many good basketball players over the past few seasons.
 

The landscape of college basketball changed when we were down, which is kind of a killer.  Compare to, say, Butler, who parlayed two great seasons right as conference realignment was getting started into a move from the Horizon to the A10 to the Big East.