Disagree... He was good at putting together a schedule that he could suck 20 wins out of, pissing off the fan base, and being a general arse. Almost forgot.... he was great at kissing Coach K's ring or ???
Tulsa AD and coaches salaries voluntarily reduced
- Thread starter Tulsa Guy
- Start date
So what happens if we make the dance this year? You still want him out regardless?
I'm not going to say I wouldn't still consider waiting out his contract to see if we can grab someone better, but I would not be mad at Gragg or any of the board for extending him back if he made the tournament convincingly and was competitive in March with some top teams.
So if he pulls a 12 seed and loses to Michigan or some such, by 15 in the first round, you won't want an extension?
Wouldn't want to be the Coach at a school where you were the AD. Too many standards to have to meet. Or is that only if the coach was Haith or some other coach you didn't care for, for whatever reason.
We’ve had a lot more misses than hits. If we’re going into the coaching market, I’d rather be doing it with the ability to get a quality prospect. Not having to buy a second tier, bottom dollar prayer candidate and hoping we can pull a rabbit out of the hat.
It doesnt matter who is AD. When you take the job as head basketball coach at the University of Tulsa, you agree to the following expectations of your players:
1. They won't add to the population.
2. They won't subtract from the population
3. They will make the tournament at least once every three years and win 20 games a season.
4. They will not wind up in the morgue, hospital or jail.
5. If they do wind up in the jail, they are expected to establish dominance quickly over the OU and OSU football players who are already there.
If somebody from the school reading this wants to burn this into the top of the head coach's desk, I know a quality woodworker in the Barnsdall area and will write a check for the cost.
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I don’t agree. Our misses: JP, Wokcik... maybe Barnett too, though he did make 2 tournaments and 2 NIT’s. That’s pretty much it. Everyone else made the postseason least half the time they were here.
I suspect we go to the NIT at least this season, but that’s not quite enough given the amount of money we’re paying and how much support we’re putting behind basketball these days.
Definite hits - Tubby and the guy who went to Kansas.
Same as Frank - they guy who went to Wake Forest or Vanderbilt or whatever, Robinson, Barnett
Worse - Appalachian Andy, Phillips, Wojick
So that looks like about a 25% chance of an improvement?
You forgot Nolan.
So it looks like we would have a 6/9 chance to remain the same OR get better. I'd take those odds. And falling to a guy like Wojcik wouldn't be the worst thing in the world by comparison to Phillips, who seems like he would be a 1/9 possibility.
You lost credibility (not that you hadn’t already) when you said another Wojcik wouldn’t be that bad...
Definite hits - Tubby and the guy who went to Kansas.
Same as Frank - they guy who went to Wake Forest or Vanderbilt or whatever, Robinson, Barnett
Worse - Appalachian Andy, Phillips, Wojick
i didn’t forget Nolan but you have to draw the line somewhere. I’d drop JD too to get to the “modern era”. I view making a coaching change and staying the same to be failure. We can hit it out of the park every now and then but I think it’s a mistake to go into a search already limited in who we can go after. It’s really hard to find a great coach and having to look in the junk bin for the 1 in a million who’s actually good is a sure path to failure.
I view staying the same and not at least trying to get better as a bigger failure. Stagnancy by acceptance is worse than stagnancy with some effort. At least you tried, and your fanbase will know that you tried. Both JD and Wojcik were let go due to dwindling fan attendance. Haith hasn't made any significant bump in attendance since he's been here, and last year was actually our lowest average since the JP era.
Extending Haith is a really bad look to the conference and the rest of the NCAA. It just looks like we're not trying to get better. We're happy with complacency. (Unless he does better this season)
A new coach locks you in for at least 4 years so you can’t react if something good happens. We shouldn’t make a change unless we have every reason to think we’ve given it our best shot. You pick someone just because you want a change and you’re stuck with that guy. It reduces our future optionality which everyone knows is bad and not something we want unless it has a good hope of upside.
And hiring the #3 guy at Mississippi State or the HC from southwest Nowhere St makes us look way worse than keeping Haith who’s at least a known commodity. And that’s what we’d get if we made a move soon.
How is giving him 4 years of his own players not our "best shot"? I don't see how much more of a shot you can give someone.
It’s not our best shot if we’re financially limited and can’t afford the best candidate. We have to settle for a second tier candidate who will take $750k and then in the high likelihood that he’s no better than what we have now, we can’t make a change for at least 4 years.
If we extend Haith early we'll be locked into a costlier contract and REALLY won't be able to make a change for 4 years. I'm not saying to fire him... just see how he does and let his current contract keep playing out.
There are a ton of good basketball coaches out there. Getting a guy for 1 million a year rather than 1.6 or 1.4 or whatever Haith is getting isn't the end of the world. Plus you have the entire assistant pool to choose from. That's four guys per school or 1400 names in D1. If you can't find one guy to do better than Haith (and won't wreck our pocketbook) in 1400 I would be really surprised.
Also saving 400K+ on a contract every year would mean more money we could invest in assistants for football or basketball or both and it could ease the school's financial troubles regarding athletics.
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Well we’ve had 9 shots at it and ended up better than Haith twice so I don’t think it’d as easy as you seem to think. Anyway the issue isn’t can we get someone better than Haith but can we get someone who will be one of the 50 best coaches in America. That’s what we need to achieve at the level we want. If Haith is 94 and we move up to 70, it doesn’t matter.
It does it if gives us a shot to move up to 45 and possibly save 400K. (at least for a couple years)
