Posted by The Dude  8/26/2024 2:28 pm | #1 |
Chris is 31-33, considering where things were when he took the job, pretty good start, despite the downturn after all those injuries in the 2nd half of the season this Spring
Other Coaches:
Penders 35-24
Hobbs 24-33
Jarvis 35-24
Lonergan 23-39
Mojo 35-33
JC 17-31
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Posted by The Dude 10/16/2024 9:41 am | #2 |
Shows the folly of making big grand statements after just 2 years....
No Coach should get less than 4 years, CC will and years 4-5 will be the winning, if we make a massive leap this year, well hell that would be an amazing surprise.
Mojo was 35-33, ML was 23-39, Hobbs was just 24-33, and Penders was 35-24
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Posted by Gwmayhem 10/16/2024 11:32 am | #3 |
Most people understand that each coach inherits an entirely different situation upon arriving at GW. Penders took an NCAA caliber team that Jarvis had left him (with literally zero Penders recruits on the roster), took that group to another dance, and then steered the program into an iceberg under his watch. MoJo took over an NIT Championship team, managed a 20 win season again with nothing but ML recruits during his first season as head coach, and then could not come close to sustaining this once everyone was allowed to transfer.
By contrast, Hobbs and JC had complete rebuilds in front of them while ML took on a program that was showing some improvement under Hobbs though nowhere near the level of talent that KH had formerly produced due to recruiting restrictions.
This really puts Jarvis in a unique category unto himself. While John Kuester's final GW team was substantially more successful than his second-to-last 1-27 campaign, Jarvis managed to produce instant results, leading the program to an NIT bid in his first season. What he inherited was significantly worse than the teams that Penders and MoJo inherited. Plus, Jarvis was able to integrate his own players to his first team.
These looks at "first two year records", as if to suggest that a coach who was mailing it in and another who was simply too inexperienced were actually better coaches at GW than some of the best coaches in the program's history, are equal parts transparent and ridiculous.
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Posted by creeksandzeeks 10/16/2024 11:37 am | #4 |
I don't remember the Penders years well, frankly, but by this point in time, Lonergan, Hobbs and Jarvis had recruited the nucleus of their respective signature classes (and Jarvis kept it going longest). There was earnest enthusiasm and anticipation that the program was on the cusp of breakthrough. Maurice hadn't really secured any transformational players beyond Battle before Jamion came on board.
For the Christian and Caputo eras, I think we're comparing apples to oranges. This is a new era, and the idea that we're building toward something is much more fluid. DBJ is obviously a huge get, and there is other solid talent on this roster, but it's hard to know whether to be excited about this team or not, and there's no real sense that the roster this year will in any way resemble the roster next year.
To that end, I have no idea if that means we should be quicker to fire or slower, to be honest. One bad offseason in the portal doesn't mean there won't be a good one the next year. Mapping trajectories is impossible.
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Posted by GW0509 10/16/2024 12:12 pm | #5 |
Gwmayhem wrote:
Most people understand that each coach inherits an entirely different situation upon arriving at GW. Penders took an NCAA caliber team that Jarvis had left him (with literally zero Penders recruits on the roster), took that group to another dance, and then steered the program into an iceberg under his watch.
I know this is a tangent to the question being asked but for those who were around during the Jarvis/Penders years, is there a case to be made that the decision to hire Penders was equally or even more consequential to our program's trajectory than the decision to fire Lonergan? I just wonder if we had gotten that hire right (either Mike Brey or another) and gone to the tournament say 8 out of 11 straight years, where would we be in the college basketball landscape?
The one thing this take is contingent on is the strength of the school admin and given how they totally botched the 05-06 season I am skeptical they'd be able to take advantage of a run like I laid out above.
FWIW, my take on the actual topic is that the college basketball is so fundamentally altered I don't think we can fairly compare CC to any of the previous coaches and how quickly they got us to a tournament. It remains to be seen if it will lead to shorter or longer leashes for MBB HCs.
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Posted by GW Alum Abroad 10/16/2024 2:02 pm | #6 |
Most people understand that each coach inherits an entirely different situation upon arriving at GW. Penders took an NCAA caliber team that Jarvis had left him (with literally zero Penders recruits on the roster), took that group to another dance, and then steered the program into an iceberg under his watch.
I know this is a tangent to the question being asked but for those who were around during the Jarvis/Penders years, is there a case to be made that the decision to hire Penders was equally or even more consequential to our program's trajectory than the decision to fire Lonergan? I just wonder if we had gotten that hire right (either Mike Brey or another) and gone to the tournament say 8 out of 11 straight years, where would we be in the college basketball landscape?
At the time we all (myself included) thought Penders was a great hire and a better choice than Brey. I will admit to being wrong Wrong WRONG on that one, but hindsight is 20/20 vision. Penders did far more damage to the program, school and sports at GW in general than firing a homophobe who disrepected his boss did. It is one of the reasons that the job Hobbs did is, in my opinion, so underappreciated.
Would a better hire instead of Penders have lifted GW to greater prominence than the Jarvis years? Would winning the NIT with a respectable human being running the show have been a platform to powerhouse status? Both are hypotheticals without an answer.
As for the current regime, given how reshaped the landscape is now, I am reluctant to hold Caputo to a standard that compares him to his predecessors (so long as he does not fall near or below the "Penders Line") any more than I think you can compare the CGI-era special effects Oscar winners to the special effects winners in early "talkie" movies. So, let´s judge Caputo based on his ability to have a team that sets screens, plays defense and has more options on offense than someone dribbling at the top of the key for 20 seconds before driving to the hoop against five defenders (a litmus test that, so far, I cannot say he is passing regularly).
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Posted by Gwmayhem 10/16/2024 2:07 pm | #7 |
Most people understand that each coach inherits an entirely different situation upon arriving at GW. Penders took an NCAA caliber team that Jarvis had left him (with literally zero Penders recruits on the roster), took that group to another dance, and then steered the program into an iceberg under his watch.
I know this is a tangent to the question being asked but for those who were around during the Jarvis/Penders years, is there a case to be made that the decision to hire Penders was equally or even more consequential to our program's trajectory than the decision to fire Lonergan? I just wonder if we had gotten that hire right (either Mike Brey or another) and gone to the tournament say 8 out of 11 straight years, where would we be in the college basketball landscape?
The one thing this take is contingent on is the strength of the school admin and given how they totally botched the 05-06 season I am skeptical they'd be able to take advantage of a run like I laid out above.
FWIW, my take on the actual topic is that the college basketball is so fundamentally altered I don't think we can fairly compare CC to any of the previous coaches and how quickly they got us to a tournament. It remains to be seen if it will lead to shorter or longer leashes for MBB HCs.
Of course it does GW)509. The common denominator in your two examples of course is Jack Kvancz who I know many of you think the world of. Mike Brey was ready to become GW's head coach. Taking Coach K's advice into account, Mike did not want to be subjected to a public coaching search at his own alma mater. Mike had more than proven himself at DeMatha, Duke and Delaware. Losing out on the GW job would be a form of career suicide. So, Mike said he'd be interested if the interest was mutual, in which case they could work out the financial details. Meanwhile, Penders had just left Texas in disgrace and clearly had some health issues. He was an accomplished coach in his day but that day had passed. It should have been known by all that the combination of declining health and being "demoted" (both in pay and in conference affiliation) would mean that TP would not be willing and/or able to put enough into this job. Kvancz and Penders went all the way back together to their respective childhoods and Kvancz subsequently refused to commit to Brey knowing that Penders had some interest. So without a doubt, one could say that the program's trajectory changed as a result of hiring TP and not hiring MB. (And this is all without even mentioning what took place once Penders did arrive...illegal phone cards, player fights with Tennessee, bringing Atilla in to begin with followed by Atilla's use of a broomstick, etc.)
Now, which had the bigger impact? Considering that the program did rise again under Hobbs starting in his 3rd year, while we are about to begin year 9 post-Lonergan without any true success since, I'd have to conclude that the Lonergan/Nero mess has certainly had a longer lasting impact.
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Posted by GWRising 10/16/2024 2:35 pm | #8 |
Actually, I would argue that while GW missed the boat on Brey and clearly shot itself in the foot with ML, perhaps the most consequential mistake (after firing ML) was following that up with Mojo. Mojo was and is a great guy but GW put him in a no-win situation as a young inexperienced coach with a staff that was dysfunctional (between themselves). I believe that decision alone compounded the ML decision 10-fold. When JC took over the program, he was in worse shape than any of his predecessors by a large margin in terms of existing talent and recruiting. Then COVID hit and GW's COVID policies (which were way more conservative than any of the A-10 peers) severely handicapped this program further. Couple that with the guy in the Administration trying to actively undermine JC during his entire tenure and you see how we got to this point. They often say that most plane crashes are the result of cascading failures. From the moment they made the ill-fated decision to terminate ML, one misstep after another ensued.
That said, CC still is trying to overcome 8 years of chaos. I hope he can do so. I think he can do so. But damn, we have made things so hard at GW and most of it was self-inflicted. Hopefully, we now have an institution that is aligned and will make CC's job as easy as possible.
