College basketball coaching carousel thread

When Alford left, didn't New Mexico people essentially say oh well, Neal was the brains of that operation anyway?

 

Apparently four players transferred after the announcement that Neal was returning in early March.

 

Hell his son transferred out to Ole Miss this year.

 

Ouch. That'll leave a mark.

 

Promoting the career assistant without any meaningful search isn't going over well.

Some of Cal’s biggest donors are furious at basketball hire

That athletic department is so fucked. In football and basketball, this could be the beginning of a slide into permanent Pac-12 oblivion.

 

Patrick Ewing gets Georgetown job.

 

Source: Ewing returns to Georgetown as coach

Sure there's an example or two, but can't think of one right now, has there been as big a superstar going back to coach his alma mater?

edit: guess maybe Calvin Murphy, although not as big a star and Niagara never was the power G Town was.

 

Mullin. He was a B-level NBA star in his prime, but SJ has never been a consistent top-10 college team after he graduated.

The Ewing hire makes sense -- there was no home run solution out there for the Hoyas.

A couple of the other guys in the speculation stories, i.e. Amaker, might have had more college coaching cred, but going outside the JT family tree to hire a Dookie would probably have resulted in a revolt from that whole fan base.

I've heard and read some people say "Georgetown has to completely purge the Thompson fan club from its power base," but the problem is that if they scrub clean the history of the JT regime, GT has no basketball history -- none.

If Georgetown is starting its basketball tradition completely over from scratch, it doesn't have much to sell.

Hiring Ewing allows them to keep the JT contingent at least partially on board and still bank on that tradition.

Thompson himself is getting to the age I doubt he's going to be dropping in on Ewing every other day to tell him what to do.

And Ewing is of the age, taking over his own program for the first time, and knowing of Thompson's own age, that he won't be around forever, or for very long, that I doubt Ewing would take the job if the arrangement he was going to be taking dancing orders from Big John. Occasional advice, sure, but everyday phone calls, I doubt it.

 

Clyde Drexler. Georgetown better hope they are bucking the trend on these kinds of hires.

 

Well, Drexler was hired straight from retiring as a player -- he had never coached a game in his life.

Ewing has been an NBA assistant for 15 consecutive years. That indicates:

• General managers and owners do not particularly see him as pro head coaching material, or else he would have gotten a HC job by now; and
• On the other hand they do think he has some legitimate knowledge of the game, or else he wouldn't keep getting rehired. NBA teams don't hire assistant coaches for publicity-stunt purposes; nobody buys tickets to Charlotte Bobcats or Orlando Magic games to watch Patrick Ewing assistant coach.

 

Yes, forgot Mullin. They should've hired Mark Jackson instead.
Great point about wiping the Thompson fan club. Before Thompson, Georgetown b ball was not much better than G Town football.

 

For the most part, hiring somebody who played and/or coached in the NBA, but never coached in college, just because he's an alum has worked out terribly. Fred Hoiberg is about the only exception I can think of.

It's not just about knowing basketball. Guys who succeed spend years as assistants learning the ins and outs of recruiting and running a program. Dealing with a 19 year old star on scholarship is different than dealing with a 27-year-old millionaire. AD'S and boosters are different than owners and general managers.