how does Gonzaga keep Mark Few and Tulsa can’t keep a good coach?
Once again I have to ask...
- Thread starter noble cane
- Start date
Maybe we can. How long has it been since we had the chance?
Danny. And whatever.
Spokane is a pretty place. There are some unique things about that university, like being Jesuit, that gives it some advantages. I’d rather live in Tulsa, but I don’t fault him.
Watching Gonzaga just makes me sad. They are so good and love the way the team is put together. Great recruiting and excellent coaching.
On a further note, Watching Clarkson adds to a depression. What would have been if Danny could have kept him in the fold.
On a further note, Watching Clarkson adds to a depression. What would have been if Danny could have kept him in the fold.
I think he would have been a cancer if Danny kept him in the fold. His ego was way to large. He wasn't a team player even during his freshman year.
I thought that was a name on the short list that we agreed would not be mentioned on this board again.
The Jesuit thing works great for international recruiting. Nothing like priests steering players your way.
Spokane is nice. Lots of good fishing up there.
But my question is more philosophical and methodological in nature. Few has been at Gonzaga since 1989. First as a grad asst under Fitzgerald. Then as asst under Monson. Then as head coach in waiting under Monson. He is essentially home grown.
When you look at our head coaches and their staffs, we have had a lot of talented guys that came through but, we never cultivated that talented, loyal assistant to continue the success. Instead we scrapped all our previous success and started over. Every time. The one time we promoted from within was the Phillips debacle and he was never the top bench assistant.
We keep reinventing the wheel. Our recruiting suffers as a result. The product quality sucks and attendance suffers as a result. We lose local kids, like the Boone twins, Milton, etc, because they never know who will be at the helm.
I keep hoping Haith will be that guy that stays, but more importantly I hope we are building quality assistants under him to keep any momentum we have built.
There’s a lot of hope, internally, Shea will become that guy. He’s got his work cut out for him but if he can do it, when it is his time, we’d have a very long term coach. Only time will tell though.
I think that’s why Shea is on staff. Pooh was supposed to be that guy before that. And there was Kwanza. I don’t disagree with you on the development, but ever since JP, we’ve rotated between extremes. We replaced JP with Woj and Woj with Manning. Very very different ways of doing things.
Everyone wanted Woj to keep Pooh, but from what I can tell, Pooh was part of a culture problem. We just weren’t getting to playersthe right way. Rightly or wrongly we didn’t keep him and now he is a career assistant elsewhere.
Here’s one that is relevant for today: as best I can tell, Manning was a “two for” with Hinson. But at the last second Hinson got the So. Illinois job. Hinson probably would have ended up as coach if he had come here. Instead we got a staff where we passed on everyone.
Hell, we had Ryan Humphrey in some sort of menial role under Manning and now he’s a big time assistant at Norte Dame. I think he would have preferred to stay here. But we went with Haith’s guys, who were mostly pretty good.
Hindsight is 20/20 or better in these things. We’ve had some chances and whiffed sometimes and been right others.
The guy doesn’t have to be an alum. Few is an Oregon alum that never played basketball in college. But, he has learned the game, the process and he understands what it takes to win at Gonzaga.
I hope Shea is that guy. Or that there is another ahead of him that he can continue to learn from as he develops.
But I really hope that the administration is making the necessary plans to have a successor in place, preferably one that handles more than the compliance paperwork.
Tim Peete is a name we could see again in years to come. After helping us break our NCAA tournament spell he graduated and became a grad assistant at UNCG where he helped them win two conference titles and trips to the NIT and NCAA's. He's now working as an assistant at Chipola Junior College in Florida which is one of the state's top JUCO's.
I’m not debating hindsight. After all, captain hindsight is the greatest superhero of them all.
I’m just hoping for some thought to be applied to the process. Like you say, we go from one extreme to another. In football at least, we appear to have settled on a desired style. That helps in recruiting, and coaching staff selection. If we could settle on one in basketball, that would go a long way.
Manning and Wake Forest just lost to Houston Baptist.
Karma. He got what he wanted and is learning a valuable lesson.
+1
I think Shea is on a similar path as Few was at Gonzaga. IMO it takes a person with special ties to the community and school to stay that long at a program that is not already among the blue-bloods. Coaches like John Thompson, Guy V. Lewis, and Ray Meyers, were in many ways in the same mold, stayed long enough to build programs with little prior success into powerhouse programs. Then you have other coaches who stayed long enough to take programs with prior success to the next level such as Jim Boeheim, Denny Crum, Jim Calhoun, and currently Gregg Marshall at Wichita State.
I think Few is a rare breed, a coach who loves his situation and wants to build the program and leave a major legacy.
Gonzaga is a major program by evidence of the respect given. They are on a roll with pre-season top 10 rankings and he will eventually win a national championship. I think Few stayed Gonzaga long enough, to build it into a program that most coaches like Self and Tubby jump to.
Finding a coach who's ego does not care about taking on a bigger challenge is a hard find.
TX
If we brought back baseball, we'd kick that Dallas Baptist ass !!!1
We barely have enough money to pay a coach, there was no way Danny could have paid Clarkson more than the Mizzou boosters.
I think Peete could be a Kim English type assistant.
I think this has more to do with luck than planning. Who would have thought the Few would be this good at coaching college basketball? Maybe we go out on a limb like when Nolan was hired and break another barrier?
We have enough trouble finding a good coach without asking if they’ll stay. Let’s start with that first and then try to get them to stay.
So u want to hire a woman or a muslim? Let's hire a muslim woman, I'm sure there a lot of good coaches in that category.
Who cares if it’s someone who can win basketball games. Let’s be honest, the Christian men aren’t setting the world on fire for us, hard to be worse. Not sure what barriers are left to break but if it got us wins.....
Was just poking fun at the idea of breaking barriers again. Mainly because, as you said, there aren't many to be broken.
If we went the non-alum route, English has the type of personality that
can recruit, and seems to be a bright basketball mind....
He could probably bring Haith as an assistant... since I sincerely doubt Haith will get a 4th chance after us.
