Iffff we were to look for a coach who would be realistic targets?

@DOTMAN is there still a mystery candidate?

Indeed. Doesn’t mean I want him for my team. Big Ten is a different beast than Big East. I Can like coaches that wouldn’t succeed at Michigan lol.

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while cooley’s offenses haven’t been great, i do agree his W/L record has been impressive at all his stops

Just wondered what you liked about Cooley, other than an uptick in recent recruiting?

Basically what the pros are of him. Class act. Holds kids accountable. Great in press conferences and kids will go to war for him. Good recruiter.

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Who were you expecting? These are pretty typical names that move to a Michigan-level job each year. Chris Holtman, Archie Miller, Kevin Keatts, Mike White direct from La Tech…would Shaka, Nate Oates or Bobby Hurley have made anyone feel any better? I guess Buzz Williams would have been nice, but timing kicked us there.

It generally ends up being a crapshoot anyways

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Do you feel his x’s and o’s are universally weak, or could he potentially evolve going forward?

I have no idea. I’ll let Warde decide that. If he’s the guy I’ll be behind him no matter what but personal preference is Smart or Howard.

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Yes, slightly.

Random thought and it’s just that but I think another issue in terms of why Michigan’s coaching search has been underwhelming is because so many of the coaches in today’s game don’t want to come to Michigan because they’d have to likely be extremely clean. For many coaches, that’s like doing their job with a arm tied behind their backs. I think it’s telling at the same time that only a few coaches have actually stepped forward showing serious interest in the job. That is just a theory I thought of earlier today but I thought it wasn’t too outlandish. Combine with that the fact that the timing of the job opening is about as bad as can be, Michigan’s athletic department clearly making basketball take a backseat to football and what appears to be Michigan’s AD having weird “boxes to check” and it leaves Michigan where they are in terms of the options.

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I think there’s a lot of truth to this. In that context, one could actually say that we’re lucky to have Juwan Howard in a “ready” state to make the next step. That’s a fairly rare situational state.

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Was going to say–the race thing is sticky, but in a sport where 18% or so of coaches are people of color, it’s not insanely out of place to note that it would be great if a great Black coach could be found for Michigan. If it’s a person of serious appeal it would also be dumb not to acknowledge that it could be a bonus as you sit in many kids’ living rooms.

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We have no idea what the search firm did or what “biases” they did/didn’t bring to the process. Just because people worked together at a past stop doesn’t mean they got along. Just because Cooley is on the list doesn’t mean the search firm put him on the list — Michigan could have handed the search firm a list and asked them to vet the candidates.

Usually a search firm allows a school a certain plausible deniability over contacts with coaches. Perhaps that what Michigan used the firm for here? A third party to gauge interest from candidates working another job, while also running background checks to make sure the Athletic Department wouldn’t be blindsided by something in a candidate’s past.

We can speculate on how this group of 3 came together, but we don’t really know what happened behind the scenes.

For example, I liked Dononvan as a candidate — but some people in this thread mentioned he had a checkered past with NCAA Rules…what if (hypothetically) the search firm vetted him and found some merit to accusations lobbed at Donovan in the past?

It’s most likely all the search firm did was present data to Michigan and let Warde cut the list down from there.

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I don’t know, I think it’s just hard to land an established coach in general. When Urban Meyer resigned, OSU replaced him with a rookie. Day may be promising, but that’s objectively a step down for them. The established guys are mostly happy where they are already.

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I think Michigan fans are under estimating Cooley. He would be a strong hire IMO. That said, I would probably still favor Howard over Cooley.

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I think he is the surest thing not to tank this thing. I will say that

Well…

Says the deal is worth $6 million.

A year? Can’t believe that’s true unless he gets a signing bonus and the base salary is closer to $3-4 million. Because that is a massive overpay.

So we’re going to call off the Juwan interview tomorrow? Seems a bit fishy. Maybe a leverage play?

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God I hope this is a troll job

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