It’s insane the games they’ve been pretty much running back to back to back.
Good lord that’s a foul - Moore on Holmgren
Great game. Duke is impressive. Hate seeing them win. Refs were by far the worst part of this game. Some terrible calls both ways. They couldn’t ruin this one, though.
1 Like
Watching the DMV stars for Duke (Roach and Keels) makes me excited for Dug
1 Like
Dickinson should think twice of going pro when Williams looks better and won’t be a high 1st rounder.
2 Likes
Although I usually root against them, I really enjoy watching Gonzaga play. They have such great player and ball movement.
1 Like
I hope one of Juwan’s recruits has this jump 
1 Like
I’m a fan of Strawther. He can ball
Watched BYU in person tonight, they had a nice road win at Utah, who is looking better this year under a new coach.
A lot will be made of BYU since they’ve had a good start and they’ll be the only decent Gonzaga opponent in the second half. And while BYU is a solid high major team, they don’t have a lot of talent or quality size. They run good offense, play hard, and defend well without fouling, but don’t have the playmakers they’ve had in the past couple seasons.
3 Likes
Did this get posted here already?
Some pretty bizarre results IMO. The poll, allegedly conducted with about 60 head coaches and assistants plus a few agents/search firm people, couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be “best place to step in and coach if the coach quit tomorrow” or “best historical program base.”
For those unsubscribed, I think it’s fine if I just post the list. If you want to see the actual writeup I guess subscribe to the Athletic. I apologize for the terrible formatting. This forum platform hates numbered lists with deviations like ties.
- Kentucky
- unc-ch
- Duke
- Kansas
- UCLA
- Villanova
7 (tie) Indiana
7 (tie) Gonzaga
9 (tie) Arizona
9 (tie) Ohio State
11: Texas
12: Louisville
13 (tie): Michigan
13 (tie): Oregon
15 (tie): Maryland
15 (tie): Florida State
17: Baylor
Seems pretty reasonable, what stands out as completely out of wack?
I guess Michigan State is missing which is a bit of a surprise?
1 Like
Gonzaga stands out to me the most. I get why it’s towards the top, and the foundation is going to be solid whenever Few hangs it up, but if we’re talking all jobs in the country, a school in a conference like that feels high.
I feel like the best chance at any job to have immediate success is to inherit a program that was already successful.
2 Likes
I’ve tried to type up a comment a couple of times and am having difficulty articulating what I think so take this into account when this doesn’t make sense. Maybe I just think this style of poll is somewhat useless as people rank “Best coaching job” so differently based on their own criteria to the point where the results are just too mushy. Gonzaga being tied with Indiana sticks out. Gonzaga IS Mark Few. If he retired tomorrow and one of these voters took the job, is Gonzaga still Gonzaga? They’re woefully lacking stuff like big money donors, conference TV deals, they’re in a truck stop conference, their facilities are worse than most, their campus life is that of a tiny Catholic school, etc. Would someone be able to step in and immediately do well? Probably at least for a couple years, Mark Few laid a good foundation. But how sustainable is it? Then you look at Indiana, who has massive advantages in pretty much every area I just listed over Gonzaga, but they don’t happen to be currently good. So are we measuring what program has the best resources, or which would be easier to win at right away? We’ve seen that Indiana isn’t exactly an auto-success school. I just think the result is going to be a bit too hodgepodge to take anything from.
I think schools like Maryland and Oregon are being overvalued for having ties to apparel companies. Then Florida State is a super weird one to me. They’ve had an incredibly modest success streak recently culminating in a single Elite 8 appearance and some fringe top 15 kenpom teams, then they get ahead of Michigan State? That’s absolutely bonkers to me. FSU has been such a mediocre program under Hamilton until very recently, hasn’t had super high highs since that recent good streak, has poor fan support, meh facilities, an athletic department that doesn’t really care about hoops, and really shouldn’t be even touching this list IMO.
And then I know we hate Michigan State, but them being left off entirely in favor of teams like Maryland, FSU, Oregon, and hell even Michigan seems crazy to me.
5 Likes
On the other hand…
This exists to get clicks and talked about and it did its job. The cynical view is that the rankings don’t matter and I’m feeding into the system.
1 Like
I missed MSU not being ranked the first time but I think they should probably be on there. I just have a hard time complaining because I’m not seeing many other obvious schools that should be higher.
I’d say IU and Louisville seem a bit low. Those kind of jobs also come with a sort of pressure that something like OSU or Michigan doesn’t.
I think I used “bizarre” because MSU being omitted seems just totally crazy to me. Upon pondering, I was a tad hyperbolic. My main gripe really come from Gonzaga being so high setting a precedent for ‘recent success and bad everything else’ being enough for placement on here, then the omission of places like MSU and Virginia for programs like FSU and Maryland which just define long term college basketball mediocrity to me and in the case of FSU have pretty dreadful program foundations (laid out in the long comment above).
1 Like
Agree totally. To up the hyperbole, I actually sort wonder: is, eg, Illinois a better job than Gonzaga? Better resources, better campus, better natural recruiting, better exposure …
I can’t see Florida state. Florida seems more obvious, given the heights their program has reached.
I’m surprised it’s Villanova of the old Big East schools – that seems heavily dependant on a one-off coach. Maybe Syracuse killed itself moving to ACC, but if they ever got rolling, seems like the sky is the limit – phenomenal support, great league, great recruiting (not as great but still), unbelievable built in media support from the journalism school. And it’s pretty clear job security is infinite there.
Oh, Oregon seems cheap on the original list. Definately above Gonzaga, probably OSU, maybe Texas & Michigan too?
3 Likes
Thought the game started at 7:30 tonight, but my first time in Rupp! CMU is getting spanked, but hopefully a fun 2nd half.
m
4 Likes
4 Likes