It's also a weird thing to ask because like... what does it matter? We can't go out trying to hire someone that won't leave, that's basically just admitting you want to be mediocre.

We're no different than Auburn or Alabama. If you have a coach that's fired up the fan base and gets you to never-before-seen heights then you be aggressive at extending the contract and the buyout and make it hard for them to want to to leave.

If it doesn't work then you do the whole thing again.

We can talk about the degrees to which people liked or didn't like Turgeon but he definitely didn't have the kind of buy-in that would get our major donors hyper aggressive about not wanting to lose him. The only coach we've had that for was BCG and it was enough to keep him from going to Arkansas and ALMOST enough to keep him from going to Kentucky, but not quite.

dcg4403 said:

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Here is the absolute KEY:

RECRUITING AND NIL

There is ZERO doubt this guy can coach his arse off. Done it at every stop in historical fashion.

Now he needs SEC elite players. Players that Buzz could not recruit as his offense sucks and no NBA talents wants to play that way.

Bucky Ball is different. We get the players, he becomes our most successful coach.

My biggest fear is honestly the contract and our ability to retain him longterm.

BINGO

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I don't think he'll be successful, but you have to define what "success is" to you.

Success to me in BB is:

• Making the tournament 4/5 years. We should be doing it every year with our resources. an 8-10 record in conference does it.
• No more than 2 "WTF" losses/year. We seemed to have waaay more than that with Buzz.
• Making the Sweet 16 1-2/5 years.

Yeah, I have lofty goals. But, given the resources of Texas A&M, we should have lofty goals.

Yes, I know, we've only been to the Sweet 16 four times in modern history, but we have far more resources than we had before. Tennessee was able to break through with Pearl and then Barnes. 1 was a coach who had tourney success at a mid-major; the next was a coach who had tourney success at a P-4. I'm not sure we could have gotten a "Rick Barnes" level coach given our track record of hiring coaches. Buzz was about the closest we've ever gotten. But, it is what it is.

TN is an example of a school who wasn't able to hire competent coaches for a while. It took a changing the Chancellor and Athletic Director (I live here, so I hear all about it). Danny White has been wildly successful with their hires. Everything he touches is gold.

They now have a NC winning baseball coach, a successful FB coach who just went to the CFP, and a BB coach who has been to the elite 8 two straight years and the sweet 16 three straight years. They don't have any more resources than we do. They finally figured out what needed to be changed, and made institutional changes that affected everything else.

We definitely need to get a new AD - he's a major fail. Getting Sharp out was nice... we'll see if that changes anything. We need changes at the very top, because the "culture" all filters down from there.

I don't know exactly what to think. His resume is skinny. I also don't like that he's never won a tournament game

zooguy96 said:

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I don't think he'll be successful, but you have to define what "success is" to you.

Success to me in BB is:

• Making the tournament 4/5 years. We should be doing it every year with our resources. an 8-10 record in conference does it.
• No more than 2 "WTF" losses/year. We seemed to have waaay more than that with Buzz.
• Making the Sweet 16 1-2/5 years.

Yeah, I have lofty goals. But, given the resources of Texas A&M, we should have lofty goals.

Yes, I know, we've only been to the Sweet 16 four times in modern history, but we have far more resources than we had before. Tennessee was able to break through with Pearl and then Barnes. 1 was a coach who had tourney success at a mid-major; the next was a coach who had tourney success at a P-4. I'm not sure we could have gotten a "Rick Barnes" level coach given our track record of hiring coaches. Buzz was about the closest we've ever gotten. But, it is what it is.

TN is an example of a school who wasn't able to hire competent coaches for a while. It took a changing the Chancellor and Athletic Director (I live here, so I hear all about it). Danny White has been wildly successful with their hires. Everything he touches is gold.

They now have a NC winning baseball coach, a successful FB coach who just went to the CFP, and a BB coach who has been to the elite 8 two straight years and the sweet 16 three straight years. They don't have any more resources than we do. They finally figured out what needed to be changed, and made institutional changes that affected everything else.

We definitely need to get a new AD - he's a major fail. Getting Sharp out was nice... we'll see if that changes anything. We need changes at the very top, because the "culture" all filters down from there.

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What has Trev done to convince you he's not the right AD. He's shown a willingness to shoot the moon on candidates that should be considered sure thing hires. This hire showed he'll take a gamble on a future star potential hire rather than bring a low ceiling high floor expensive established coach.

The more I think of it the more I don't fault him too much for the baseball hire as I think he likely got a ton of pressure from those that write the checks to ensure this championship caliber roster didn't relocate to Austin.

bobinator said:

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What "resources" do you think we have in basketball that every other SEC team doesn't?

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$$. We just don't allocate it to Basketball.

Aggie Dad 26 said:

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I don't know exactly what to think. His resume is skinny. I also don't like that he's never won a tournament game

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dude, let the adults speak. He's been in collegiate coaching for 5 years and one of those was covid year. He took Samford from being a laughing stock of a basketball program to one that (should have) knocked off KU last year. They've been to the tourney 3 times in the school's history and he took them back after a 25 year gap. His resume isn't skinny at all on the HS side of things...which is where a lot of the household name CBB coaches made their hay. Now quit your gripin.

Yeah, of course he did.

So you're holding the program to a theoretical standard that's only attainable if we completely change the way our athletic department allocates funding?

Coach K didn't win a tourney game until his 9th yr as a hc and 4th yr at Duke. Bobby Knight didn't win his first tourney game until his 8th yr as a hc and 2nd yr at Indiana.

Granted the tourney expansion provides incremental opportunities to get into and win tourney games and also NIL/portal provides opportunities to get players that were less available in those guy's up and coming yrs but imo not winning a tourney game in 4 yrs at Samford should not be seen as a problem. Also, his 1 tourney game was against Kansas and they nearly beat them. Some say a bad foul call on a shot they blocked near the end of the game cost them the win. The call was bad , there is no doubt about that . Whether they would have gone on to win… impossible to say . As I think on that more, he might have been snapped up by someone that offseason had Samford won that game.

zgolfz85 said:

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Aggie Dad 26 said:

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I don't know exactly what to think. His resume is skinny. I also don't like that he's never won a tournament game

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dude, let the adults speak. He's been in collegiate coaching for 5 years and one of those was covid year. He took Samford from being a laughing stock of a basketball program to one that (should have) knocked off KU last year. They've been to the tourney 3 times in the school's history and he took them back after a 25 year gap. His resume isn't skinny at all on the HS side of things...which is where a lot of the household name CBB coaches made their hay. Now quit your gripin.

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Exactly

Aggie Dad 26 said:

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zgolfz85 said:

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Aggie Dad 26 said:

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I don't know exactly what to think. His resume is skinny. I also don't like that he's never won a tournament game

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dude, let the adults speak. He's been in collegiate coaching for 5 years and one of those was covid year. He took Samford from being a laughing stock of a basketball program to one that (should have) knocked off KU last year. They've been to the tourney 3 times in the school's history and he took them back after a 25 year gap. His resume isn't skinny at all on the HS side of things...which is where a lot of the household name CBB coaches made their hay. Now quit your gripin.

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Exactly

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Then you'd have griped about a lot of coaches that you now consider top tier with similar resumes when they jumped up.

bobinator said:

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So you're holding the program to a theoretical standard that's only attainable if we completely change the way our athletic department allocates funding?

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I'm saying the method the university currently uses to hire coaches and allocate funds doesn't result in winning anything that matters in the major 3 sports very often relative to the amount of $$ we have. The proof is in the pudding. It hasn't seemed that we have had the correct Chancellor/AD hires (Sharp definitely wasn't it; Trev Alberts doesn't seem to be it IMHO with the hires he's made).

I gave the example of the University of Tennessee. They hired Donde Plowman as Chancellor in 2019. They hired Danny White as AD in 2021. Both of those were the correct hires to elevate UT sports. NC in Baseball. 3 straight Sw16, 2 straight elite 8's in Basketball. CFP in football.

It is just my opinion. That and $.50 will get you a coffee at the nearest gas station.

bobinator said:

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Tennessee hired Barnes way before any of that though. And right now I don't care about football or baseball. We're just talking basketball, so I think holding the program to that level of standard is crazy. It would take an unprecedented level, by several orders of magnitude, of commitment to the basketball program.

But I think Tennessee is an interesting one to pick because just imagine this board if we hired a coach that Texas just fired for not winning enough. People would absolutely lose their minds, and yet it worked for Tennessee.

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Tennessee is also the flagship of a large state and has no major in-state school to battle for recruits. Similar to LSU and tOSU. Coaches know that these advantages are real for recruiting and dollars, not to mention media coverage. In Texas, you are battling tu and their media, which will always be tough, as well as their attractiveness to coaches. It hasn't helped that the coaches here in these major sports have either failed against expectations over time or have run out of here as soon as they could after some success.

JWinTX said:

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bobinator said:

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Tennessee hired Barnes way before any of that though. And right now I don't care about football or baseball. We're just talking basketball, so I think holding the program to that level of standard is crazy. It would take an unprecedented level, by several orders of magnitude, of commitment to the basketball program.

But I think Tennessee is an interesting one to pick because just imagine this board if we hired a coach that Texas just fired for not winning enough. People would absolutely lose their minds, and yet it worked for Tennessee.

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Tennessee is also the flagship of a large state and has no major in-state school to battle for recruits. Similar to LSU and tOSU. Coaches know that these advantages are real for recruiting and dollars, not to mention media coverage. In Texas, you are battling tu and their media, which will always be tough, as well as their attractiveness to coaches. It hasn't helped that the coaches here in these major sports have either failed against expectations over time or have run out of here as soon as they could after some success.

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Texas is at best the 3rd or 4th most attractive basketball option in the state right now. Currently we are both battling Texas Tech, Houston and Baylor. Those are the schools we want to become peers with, not Texas.

I think you lose credibility when you bring up a different sport when talking about expectations of our basketball program.

Only us and Ole Miss has never been past the Sweet 16 so making an Elite 8 appearance within 3 or 4 years would make this a success for me. And the reason why I say this is because we've built such great momentum so I feel that Bucky has a bit more pressure on him than Buzz.

I don't know if our fanbase will be patient if we aren't making the NCAA tournament by year 2.

t - cam said:

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JWinTX said:

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bobinator said:

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Tennessee hired Barnes way before any of that though. And right now I don't care about football or baseball. We're just talking basketball, so I think holding the program to that level of standard is crazy. It would take an unprecedented level, by several orders of magnitude, of commitment to the basketball program.

But I think Tennessee is an interesting one to pick because just imagine this board if we hired a coach that Texas just fired for not winning enough. People would absolutely lose their minds, and yet it worked for Tennessee.

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Tennessee is also the flagship of a large state and has no major in-state school to battle for recruits. Similar to LSU and tOSU. Coaches know that these advantages are real for recruiting and dollars, not to mention media coverage. In Texas, you are battling tu and their media, which will always be tough, as well as their attractiveness to coaches. It hasn't helped that the coaches here in these major sports have either failed against expectations over time or have run out of here as soon as they could after some success.

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Texas is at best the 3rd or 4th most attractive basketball option in the state right now. Currently we are both battling Texas Tech, Houston and Baylor. Those are the schools we want to become peers with, not Texas.

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Something tells me that a bunch of people outside of College Station would disagree with you

This is why I always say there's no point ranking "programs" because the strength of almost every program is tied directly to its current head coach.

If every head basketball coach in Texas suddenly disappeared and every school was hiring, which school would we expect to hire the most proven coach? Almost certainly Texas right?

But what does that matter? Right now Texas, and us, are clearly behind Tech, Houston and Baylor in any sort of way that really matters.

It feels like a reach to me like the Earley and Rhule hires.

bobinator said:

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It's also a weird thing to ask because like... what does it matter? We can't go out trying to hire someone that won't leave, that's basically just admitting you want to be mediocre.

We're no different than Auburn or Alabama. If you have a coach that's fired up the fan base and gets you to never-before-seen heights then you be aggressive at extending the contract and the buyout and make it hard for them to want to to leave.

If it doesn't work then you do the whole thing again.

We can talk about the degrees to which people liked or didn't like Turgeon but he definitely didn't have the kind of buy-in that would get our major donors hyper aggressive about not wanting to lose him. The only coach we've had that for was BCG and it was enough to keep him from going to Arkansas and ALMOST enough to keep him from going to Kentucky, but not quite.

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This

And back then I don't think we were as driven in hoops as we would be this time if buddy succeeds to that level.

The fact that we went after beard tells me this. We never would have even attempted a hire like that back then

The fact that we went after Beard is and will always be shameful. Tech didn't know, tu fired him, old Miss has no morals. Evidently neither do we.

GrayMatter said:

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I think you lose credibility when you bring up a different sport when talking about expectations of our basketball program.

Only us and Ole Miss has never been past the Sweet 16 so making an Elite 8 appearance within 3 or 4 years would make this a success for me. And the reason why I say this is because we've built such great momentum so I feel that Bucky has a bit more pressure on him than Buzz.

I don't know if our fanbase will be patient if we aren't making the NCAA tournament by year 2.

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Disagree. McMillan will have zero pressure, and he just hit the lottery.

Where does his salary rank among active coaches? I need to know what polling spot we need to be at or above before my outrage kicks in.

Rec said:

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The fact that we went after Beard is and will always be shameful. Tech didn't know, tu fired him, old Miss has no morals. Evidently neither do we.

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We went after Beard because it was an opportunity to stick tu in the eye. They just took Schloss and it's working out really well for them. If we could have success with Beard, you know it would irk the Longhorns.

Where can you get a $.50 cup of coffee?

Rec said:

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The fact that we went after Beard is and will always be shameful. Tech didn't know, tu fired him, old Miss has no morals. Evidently neither do we.

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We hired Schloss. We are deserving of God forcing him to move to our rival…

bobinator said:

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Somehow the most annoying thing in this post is Samford being in quotes several times

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Maybe the poster was just trying to hammer home the fact that it's not "Stanford" as others have gotten confused about on here. Other than that I couldn't agree more with the post.

Hope it works out, but they laid it out pretty nicely and just sounds like another hire failing upwards to me.

I mean if you don't think it's going to work here that's fine, it might not, who knows. But acting like his time at Samford wasn't impressive is ridiculous.

bobinator said:

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I mean if you don't think it's going to work here that's fine, it might not, who knows. But acting like his time at Samford wasn't impressive is ridiculous.

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How so based on this from the poster that annoyed you with the quotation marks?

Quote:

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Still trying to figure out why this person was hired?
His career win loss record at a small school - "Samford" was 99 and 52.
Does that make him a genius hire?
That is 50 losses for every 100 wins at "Samford" (not Duke) and that's if you give him a win and take away two losses .
Just think what he can do in a much more competitive conference!

Last year at "Samford", the team he was the head coach of didn't make the NCAA Tournament and was a first game loser in the NIT tournament.
Now this year, he wakes up after a year like that and instead of a hotseat at "Samford" the guy is given a much more lucrative upward job undoubtedly for more money at an SEC school.

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And I really have no clue if it will work or not which is why I'm not even making a claim one way or another although I appreciate the OP posed. But there is no denying what that post says above unless it is fake news.

He can be a good coach and it doesn't work. The reason is you have to be a great coach to win in the SEC.

Just like football. Elko could be a good coach but to win the SEC in football you gotta be great .

Because Samford was terrible when he got there. Sure, his record is 99-52. The coach before him was 84-115. Samford has five regular season conference titles ever, he won two of them. He took them to the tournament for the first time in 24 years. They go to the tournament in 2024, come within a couple buckets of knocking of Kansas, bigger schools poach two of his best returning players, they still post a 22 win season, a 12-6 conference record, and finish 3rd.

If you don't think that's an impressive stretch then I don't know what to tell you.

I mean Gene Chizik won the SEC in football so that's not entirely true