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Bring in the guy that was an assistant under the pathetic coach, landed the only 2 out of 19 4+ star recruits from MN (good work guys), and hasn't landed a big MN player since.

The 2 good guys he recruited get him this job? Coyle just t bomb them and say who should I hire, our dear NBA stars?
 



When you go out on a limb like this, you can lose your fanbase pretty quickly. Most reasonable people will give him a couple years before truly jumping ship. The problem with hiring a guy with no track record is that your average fan will only give him so much benefit of the doubt. If you hire a guy like Craig Smith, who SHOULD be successful here, and has won everywhere else, you may give him more time to turn it around before giving up. Ben better start signing good local kids, and fast, if that's what he was brought here to do. If his first two recruiting classes are underwhelming, watch out.
 


The local 2022 class is loaded, there's 4* Joe Hurlburt from North Dakota (2022 class) who grew up a Gopher fan and should be gettable for a good recruiter, Taison Chatman in the 2023 class is a great recruit...I've said in a couple other threads but Trejuan Holloman is the key here, you land him and others will follow. People will excuse a couple rough years if you hit the ground running in recruiting and that will be the first task for Ben and his staff. I'm trying to reserve judgement on the hire until we see the assistants because they should have a good chunk of change to play with. Didn't have to pay all of Pitino's buyout, no buyout to get Johnson from Xavier and Ben likely will be one of, if not the lowest paid coach in the conference so it should be and needs to be a strong group of assistants.
 

GopherNuts said:
The local 2022 class is loaded, there's 4* Joe Hurlburt from North Dakota (2022 class) who grew up a Gopher fan and should be gettable for a good recruiter, Taison Chatman in the 2023 class is a great recruit...I've said in a couple other threads but Trejuan Holloman is the key here, you land him and others will follow. People will excuse a couple rough years if you hit the ground running in recruiting and that will be the first task for Ben and his staff. I'm trying to reserve judgement on the hire until we see the assistants because they should have a good chunk of change to play with. Didn't have to pay all of Pitino's buyout, no buyout to get Johnson from Xavier and Ben likely will be one of, if not the lowest paid coach in the conference so it should be and needs to be a strong group of assistants.
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If he isn't the lowest paid coach in the Big 10, Coyle went from merely stupid to monumentally moronic. The only reason you do this is because you're cheap. I sure hope he's using the savings from hiring an actual coach with experience and putting it into a savings account for when he has to hire the next coach.
 

GopherNuts said:
The local 2022 class is loaded, there's 4* Joe Hurlburt from North Dakota (2022 class) who grew up a Gopher fan and should be gettable for a good recruiter, Taison Chatman in the 2023 class is a great recruit...I've said in a couple other threads but Trejuan Holloman is the key here, you land him and others will follow. People will excuse a couple rough years if you hit the ground running in recruiting and that will be the first task for Ben and his staff. I'm trying to reserve judgement on the hire until we see the assistants because they should have a good chunk of change to play with. Didn't have to pay all of Pitino's buyout, no buyout to get Johnson from Xavier and Ben likely will be one of, if not the lowest paid coach in the conference so it should be and needs to be a strong group of assistants.
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How strong are Johnson’s assistants realistically going to be? Johnson more than likely will be the lowest paid coach in the conference which probably means his assistant coaches will also be the lowest paid in the conference.
 

scools12 said:
How strong are Johnson’s assistants realistically going to be? Johnson more than likely will be the lowest paid coach in the conference which probably means his assistant coaches will also be the lowest paid in the conference.
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I think there’s a trade off as we’ve seen with Fleck, PJ’s been paid a good amount of money but as a result, the pool for assistants hasn’t been as big which is part of the reason why they’ve lost a few good ones while making underwhelming assistant hires from the outside.

Michigan underpaid Juwan Howard and as a result, he was able to bring in a great staff. Phil Martelli couldn’t have come cheap and they’ve got a couple other good up and comers (like Howard Eisley) that made transition for Howard a lot easier.

If you can bring Thorson over who he played for at DeLaSalle then that’s a pretty good start, otherwise it will depend on relationships he’s made bouncing around as an assistant. I was thinking he might bring Farokhmanesh from CSU too but they missed each other by a year at Nebraska.
 



bonin21 said:
Bring in the guy that was an assistant under the pathetic coach, landed the only 2 out of 19 4+ star recruits from MN (good work guys), and hasn't landed a big MN player since.

The 2 good guys he recruited get him this job? Coyle just t bomb them and say who should I hire, our dear NBA stars?
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Or maybe- hear me out- the two most successful examples of Minnesota players staying home might just have a good idea of what guy other recruits want to play for? I'm going to lean towards the opinion of them over a bunch of angry posters on a message board. There's a decent chance that other recruits liked Johnson, but had no desire to play for Pitino. Let's wait and see.
 









GopherNuts said:
The local 2022 class is loaded, there's 4* Joe Hurlburt from North Dakota (2022 class) who grew up a Gopher fan and should be gettable for a good recruiter, Taison Chatman in the 2023 class is a great recruit...I've said in a couple other threads but Trejuan Holloman is the key here, you land him and others will follow. People will excuse a couple rough years if you hit the ground running in recruiting and that will be the first task for Ben and his staff. I'm trying to reserve judgement on the hire until we see the assistants because they should have a good chunk of change to play with. Didn't have to pay all of Pitino's buyout, no buyout to get Johnson from Xavier and Ben likely will be one of, if not the lowest paid coach in the conference so it should be and needs to be a strong group of assistants.
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I'll be honest. Assistants don't mean much at all.

Unless they are ACE recruiters. When is the last time you even knew who the assistants were at the top programs?
 



forever a gopher said:
If he isn't the lowest paid coach in the Big 10, Coyle went from merely stupid to monumentally moronic. The only reason you do this is because you're cheap. I sure hope he's using the savings from hiring an actual coach with experience and putting it into a savings account for when he has to hire the next coach.
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This hire hit 4 check boxes:

Diversity hire- first and foremost
Local hire
Cheap
High quality person

Missing the following boxes:

Proven track record
D1 head coaching experience
Excitement for the fans

Sometimes an underwhelming pick can get it done- let's hope this is that guy.
 

BleedGopher said:


Go Gophers!!
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You know, this actually does make me feel slightly better. I get it, I'm a Gopher fan and after years of abuse i've talked myself into believing that I don't deserve better. :)

These are the two local guys we can point to as examples of guys who could have went anywhere and chose the U and they both like Ben Johnson. From everything I've heard, Pitino's relationship with the local recruits/AAU programs was horrendous. It never made a ton of sense to me because Pitino (from my bird's eye view) seemed like a good dude. But he wasn't connecting - at all - with local recruits.

Add Dave Thorson, Damian Johnson. Lets go all in on provicialism and either it works or maybe we get it out of our system.
 

Bob_Loblaw said:
You know, this actually does make me feel slightly better. I get it, I'm a Gopher fan and after years of abuse i've talked myself into believing that I don't deserve better. :)

These are the two local guys we can point to as examples of guys who could have went anywhere and chose the U and they both like Ben Johnson. From everything I've heard, Pitino's relationship with the local recruits/AAU programs was horrendous. It never made a ton of sense to me because Pitino (from my bird's eye view) seemed like a good dude. But he wasn't connecting - at all - with local recruits.

Add Dave Thorson, Damian Johnson. Lets go all in on provicialism and either it works or maybe we get it out of our system.
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I was just thinking of Damian myself!
 


Go Gophs said:
I'll be honest. Assistants don't mean much at all.

Unless they are ACE recruiters. When is the last time you even knew who the assistants were at the top programs?
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I think that’s true for established coaches, I don’t think Coach K is asking much of his assistants. For inexperienced coaches though, I think assistants play a much bigger role and often times make or break young coaches. Recruiting is definitely a big part of it but I also think they help mold a philosophy especially early on, they’re the connector between the HC and player carrying that relationship over from recruiting, scouting opponents, making in game suggestions, coaching a kid up on the bench, they coach specific position groups in practice and so on.

One thing I didn’t like about Pitino’s original staff of McHale, Kimani and Ben was there was no head coaching experience in that group. Theoretically a group of recruiters but no one that knew how to run a program and as a result, the culture was really poor. Things didn’t improve dramatically but I think Pitino had a better grasp on the program and how he wanted to approach a game with Conroy and Jeter (he’s since left obviously) on staff. Game plans improved which I think is reflective of good scouting but we still struggled to adjust in game which falls on the HC. I also feel a lot better about the group of kids we had in the program this past season, kids that are just about the work...unfortunately they had bad injury luck and we didn’t have the depth.
 


fair said:
Or maybe- hear me out- the two most successful examples of Minnesota players staying home might just have a good idea of what guy other recruits want to play for? I'm going to lean towards the opinion of them over a bunch of angry posters on a message board. There's a decent chance that other recruits liked Johnson, but had no desire to play for Pitino. Let's wait and see.
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They liked Johnson so much they didn’t go to Xavier?
 

WriterGoph said:
I was just thinking of Damian myself!
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Has Damian ever coached? May as well just drop to D3 if we’re hiring former players as assistants when they have no coaching experience. MIAC doesn’t have any openings but the UMAC does
 

UpAndUnder43 said:
Has Damian ever coached? May as well just drop to D3 if we’re hiring former players as assistants when they have no coaching experience. MIAC doesn’t have any openings but the UMAC does
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I think he's coaching high school locally.
 

UpAndUnder43 said:
Has Damian ever coached? May as well just drop to D3 if we’re hiring former players as assistants when they have no coaching experience. MIAC doesn’t have any openings but the UMAC does
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Dude, he has been a successful high school coach in the Cities for a few years now. Would not be a bad guy to have on the staff.
 

I'm glad all these guys like Ben, but honestly what did people expect them to say? Ohh man we hate Ben, he's awful, they suck! Of course they aren't going to say that. If you ask me my opinion of one of my friends I'm not going to tell you the are morons who you shouldn't talk to. Again I appreciate these guys are saying the right thing but to me results mean more. Even Coyle made it known local recruiting is a priority. That means we better start landing the Garcia's, Macura's, Nnaji's of the world. I'm hoping he can do that but because a few of his local friends endorse him does nothing for me personally.
 

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