Yes. This. Excellent assessment of Smart’s teams.
agree, the x and os/player development is the make or break question mark
juwan’s softer tone will never be mistaken by me as to doubt his edge or competitiveness. his resume and personality should be just fine for recruiting as well
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4 days and we just NOW talked to someone? I’ve been trying to be pro-Warde through this whole thing and give him the benefit of the doubt that that is ridiculous.
You can be sure they’ve talked to lots of people. Direct contact with candidates might come after settling on an initial list, getting feedback about it, no? If you’re intent on pouncing on every shred with tentacles bared you just MIGHT find this a long process!
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Four days seems pretty in line with the norm to me…
Identify candidates, gauge general interest, vet them, then officially reach out.
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The timing to poach an active NFL coach to college is always bad, unless it is Patrino. As competitive as Harbaugh is, he would’ve not enter negotiation when his team was still competing.
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It’s a Michigan coaching search. You can hardly blame people for being jumpy.
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I don’t think this situation is the norm. Top programs rarely lose their coach at this point with this kind of instability. Ohio State is an example and they moved as quickly as possible and got results. It isn’t even Michigan that has reached out yet, it’s the firm doing it. I can’t believe that candidates weren’t identified and had preliminary contact made within 48 hours to gauge interest. It took them 4 days to do what the internet had figured out in 10 minutes. In 4 days we’ve lost our top recruit and a potential candidate is making his own moves by interviewing one of our assistants.
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Interesting about Juwan – he seems to really want it. I would have guessed that we’d have to wait out the NBA cycle. It may be he is not the hottest of commodities. It would be very nice to think that Michigan appeals to him so much that he’d rather do that than be the filler interview this year and come back next May as an even better candidate. But I dunno.
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And Michigan had time to get its ducks in a row just as OSU did.
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The biggest issue to me is them hiring a search firm. It’s supposed to help filter everything but if Manuel says he has a list and hires a search firm, that’s a red flag to me. Another red flag is Manuel hiring Turnkey, which helped hire him. If you are competent AD you should never use a search firm. It’s a complete waste of money if you are doing your job correctly.
The only thing the search firm does is “protect” the school from getting turned down by candidates.
OSU got to decide what day they fired Matta. It’s never going to be good comparison.
Four days seems fine to me. Rushing this part of the process to save 1-2 days isn’t worth it. Where they need to speed up is the next phase. If the interviews or salary negotiations drag on, then Warde is doing a bad job. Giving the timing, an important part of the vetting process should be assessing the level of interest. Michigan needs to interview coaches who are prepared to accept an offer. Not ones who ask for time to talk it over and let the news leak out.
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Everyone hires the search firm. Their basically used so Warde doesn’t have to call other schools directly to gauge interest
Not everyone. They hire a search firm to make their job easier and to not make themselves look bad. Search firms are expensive and not necessary about 95% of the time. AD’s need to have a list of potential contacts in case their head coach leaves. It’s not hard. It’s a big boy business and all of these AD’s should be able to do part of their job.
I think that Juwan wants it because he bleeds maize and blue. I doubt that he will be interested in any other college coaching job.
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Reasonable. I just meant that I’d be surprised if he wants it badly enough to leave the NBA. Great if he does.
As it seems to be a common reference point, Ohio State used a search firm to get Holtmann. When he needed more time, OSU moved on to McDermott, and then went back to Holtmann when he showed renewed interest. Some luck involved with these things too.
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Similar but more extreme is Chris Mullin, 10+ year NBA front office and 0 coaching experience, jumped into coaching at St John, doubt that he will ever coach again anywhere.
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That take won’t look good in10 months.