GOPHERS HIRING BEN JOHNSON

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fmlizard said:
Tom Izzo, Juwan Howard, Greg Gard, and Chris Collins all had their first ever HC job at their current Big Ten school.

Matt Painter had 2 yrs at SIU. Penn State’s guy also had 2 years from 2005-7 at IU South Bend.

It’s pretty common to have coaches with no HC exp in Big Ten and a good number of them have been big successes.
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Izzo was a longtime assistant to Hall of Famer Judd Heathcote.

Gard was a longtime assistant to Hall of Famer Bo Ryan.

Collins was a longtime assistant to Hall of Famer Coach K.

Howard was a longtime assistant to Erik Spoelstra, winner of 2 NBA titles.

Painter was a longtime assistant to Hall of Famer Gene Keady.

Johnson was an assistant to Richard Pitino and Travis Steele. Not exactly the same type of coaching incubator as the others. Let’s just say he comes to his first head coaching gig with a tool box significantly lighter than those others.
 


Otis said:
Except Juwan Howard was a great basketball player and a Michigan Legend!

Johnson is more like a footnote who used to carry Maverick Ahenmisi's bags to the bus.
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IMO the even remote comparison gopher hire would have been Bobby Jackson. And even he isn’t quite Juwan Howard. Howard also coached under one of the best NBA coaches. Spo is an amazing X/O guy.
 




WindyCityGopher said:
Coyle didn't come here to finish .500. Well, we'll be looking up at that number for even more years because of his decision.
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How it Started: "We'll conduct a national search!" "We have a B1G level budget for this hire."

How it's going: "We hired an assistant from a school that didn't make the tournament. We didn't bother to interview anyone who did make the tournament. We'll pay him half of what we paid the last coach."
 

As we have seen over the last 8 years the B1G is a tough place for OJT for an inexperienced HC. It will be even tougher to start with for a never been HC.

How or why Johnson landed this job we may never know but he will have every opportunity to prove the hire wasn’t a mistake. Best of luck to him but there is no way he and Coyle don’t understand how big a roll of the dice this is.
 
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gopherdudepart2 said:
All these diversity cheap shots are annoying as F. What does it matter about a person's race? That is total crap and y'all know it even if you are using it as a crutch or excuse for disliking something. Ben's a great dude and people are sh!tting all over him. A lot should be ashamed here, be pissed at Coyle maybe, but give Ben a chance for cripes sakes.
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It matters, because the areas largest newspaper made race the number one issue of the hire. No one is mad at Ben, of course he should take the job, people are mad at Coyle. I actually feel bad for Ben, because he is in a very tough spot, one that has next to zero room for error and that's tough for someone with as little experience as Ben.
 

WindyCityGopher said:
Izzo was a longtime assistant to Hall of Famer Judd Heathcote.

Gard was a longtime assistant to Hall of Famer Bo Ryan.

Collins was a longtime assistant to Hall of Famer Coach K.

Howard was a longtime assistant to Erik Spoelstra, winner of 2 NBA titles.

Painter was a longtime assistant to Hall of Famer Gene Keady.

Johnson was an assistant to Richard Pitino and Travis Steele. Not exactly the same type of coaching incubator as the others. Let’s just say he comes to his first head coaching gig with a tool box significantly lighter than those others.
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Painter assisted one year under Keady. He was the HC in waiting after being hired from Southern Illinois.
 

fair said:
I'm shocked at the amount of people who are already convinced that Ben will be a failure. You have every right to criticize Coyle and wonder what happened with the other big names- I'm scratching my head right along with you. But can we at least give the man a chance to prove himself?
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We hired a lottery ticket. It hasn't been scratched off yet, but the chances are we didn't hit the jackpot.
 

WindyCityGopher said:
Izzo was a longtime assistant to Hall of Famer Judd Heathcote.

Gard was a longtime assistant to Hall of Famer Bo Ryan.

Collins was a longtime assistant to Hall of Famer Coach K.

Howard was a longtime assistant to Erik Spoelstra, winner of 2 NBA titles.

Painter was a longtime assistant to Hall of Famer Gene Keady.

Johnson was an assistant to Richard Pitino and Travis Steele. Not exactly the same type of coaching incubator as the others. Let’s just say he comes to his first head coaching gig with a tool box significantly lighter than those others.
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Great post.

It becomes more and more evident every year why we continually find ourselves playing on Weakling Wednesday. We are Penn State.
 



Whatever I guess there's really no choice but to support him. He's a Minnesota guy and I like that.

Who he hires as assistants is going to be HUGE. Needs Xs and Os guys to the max. Make 'em all Xs and Os guys. Also needs major experience.

Thorson NEEDS to be one of the guys. I don't know well enough of a name that would be equivalent to somebody like Thorson around here.

If this guy can recruit like they say he can and he's able to get other guys to do all the work Xs and Os wise (And is also able to not have the ego that thinks he knows more than those guys) this might actually work out.

I mean he should do none of the Xs and Os. Ben should just be recruiting and givings speeches.
 
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Obi-Wan Okogie said:
I'm scratching my head too but I think it's a huge disservice to chalk this up as a "diversity hire" and essentially blame this on that. That's lazy criticism and a disrespectful take. I

highly doubt Coyle would casually roll the dice for the sake of looking good and filling some quota. If he wanted to just blatantly do a diversity hire there are unlimited better-looking candidates he could have rolled with too.

Now I don't get the here right now, it is certainly not sexy but I'm guessing there are legitimate reasons why Coyle felt like this was his guy. Disappointing but we shall see how this plays out.
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Very wise Obi.
 

howeda7 said:
How it Started: "We'll conduct a national search!" "We have a B1G level budget for this hire."

How it's going: "We hired an assistant from a school that didn't make the tournament. We didn't bother to interview anyone who did make the tournament. We'll pay him half of what we paid the last coach."
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The narrative did take a dramatic turn in the handful of days since his press conference, didn’t it?
 




Gopher Teeth said:
It matters, because the areas largest newspaper made race the number one issue of the hire. No one is mad at Ben, of course he should take the job, people are mad at Coyle. I actually feel bad for Ben, because he is in a very tough spot, one that has next to zero room for error and that's tough for someone with as little experience as Ben.
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You want a guy that thinks he can do it! Yes it's a major risk, but also an opportunity to knock it out of the park. Coyle has to know that he will either look like a genius, or have egg in his face.

My guess is Coyle learned a thing or two from Boeheim.
 



I'm already on record saying this is underwhelming but time to focus on the future. This is a big task for Ben, coming off of 8 pretty meh years there is not a lot of hype. He needs to show quickly his recruiting chops. If he's that connected he absolutely needs to call Garcia, jamison battle etc and build something immediately for next year. If he fails in the first few years it could be a very short stint.

That said, we've been a consistent entry on weakling Wednesday so I guess not too much place to go but up.

Last thing, stop with the Chet talk, hes not coming here. Well unless the money we saved on the coach is in a McDonald's bag in front of his house 🤣
 




Bob_Loblaw said:
I think this is exactly what is happening.

The diversity cheap shots are that most folks don't believe that Ben Johnson get hired if he was white. So DIVERSITY-BASED-HIRING played a part in Coyle's terrible decision.

That isn't a shot at Ben. My only shot at him is that he doesn't have a resume. I can't blame him for getting the job and I'll support him. I've seen almost ZERO people take a shot at Ben.
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You don't see how saying johnson only got the job due to being black isn't offensive and a shot at Johnson?
 

scools12 said:
As we have seen over the last 8 years the B1G is a tough place for OJT for an inexperienced HC. It will probably be even harder to start with for a never been HC.

How or why Johnson landed this job we may never know but he will have every opportunity to prove the hire wasn’t a mistake. Best of luck to him but there is no way he and Coyle don’t understand how big a roll of the dice this is.
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Perhaps. I think Coyle is banking on some leeway from the success of Fleck. What I find refreshing is that Coyle appears to have a plan and can pull the trigger quickly.
 

WilliamsArenaGuy said:
No, Hiring Pitino was the equivalent to that. This is equivalent to drafting Todd Bouman in the first round.
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He went to St. Cloud State. He was one of us!

Hopefully we just drafted Adam Theilen in the 1st round. Still a terrible waste of a pick, but it turns out OK.
 

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