Jeff Goodman gushes over VCU's MIke Ellis' Villa 7, will help MN replace Tubby

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BleedGopher

BleedGopher

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Interesting read:

VCU's Mike Ellis expected to take Villa 7 with him to Minnesota

http://www.cbssports.com/collegebas...xpected-to-take-villa-7-with-him-to-minnesota

It looks like the Villa 7 is heading to Minnesota.

VCU associate athletic director Mike Ellis, the brainchild behind the event, has decided to follow AD Norwood Teague to the Gophers. Villa 7 has been a project that has networked elite assistant coaches with athletic directors.

"Mike Ellis has been instrumental in connecting potential head coaches with their future employers," VCU head coach Shaka Smart told CBSSports.com. "More so than any search firm. Aided by the tremendous support of Nike, Mike has made Villa 7 one of the premiere professional development opportunities in our business."

"Where do you get an intimate setting for an AD to really know who you are?" Syracuse coach-in-waiting Mike Hopkins said. "That is what this provides."

The project is now heading into its 10th year -- and more than 90 coaches who have been involved have gotten head jobs. We're talking guys like Shaka Smart (VCU), Buzz Williams (Marquette), Josh Pastner (Memphis), Chris Mack (Xavier), John Groce (Illinois), Archie Miller (Dayton), Paul Lusk (Missouri State), Ed Cooley (Providence), Anthony Grant (Alabama), Dave Rice (UNLV), Dan Muller (Illinois State), Pat Skerry (Towson) and numerous women's coaches as well.

Not only is this a huge get for the Minnesota program due to Ellis' involvement with Villa 7, but it'll also be critical when the time comes to replace Tubby Smith. I'm not saying Smith will be retiring in the next year or two, but he is 61 -- and no one has more connections at the administrative level than Ellis.

Ellis was the one who put a then-unknown assistant named Shaka Smart in front of Teague, who pulled the shocker and hired the Rams head coach.

That's worked out pretty well.

Go Gophers!!
 

BleedGopher said:
more than 90 coaches who have been involved have gotten head jobs
Click to expand...

Where do I sign up?

archer-phrasing2-300x225.jpg


And I'm certain that GW will rush here to chime in and wet-blanket any Teague enthusiasm anyway, but I'm almost positive that he did not hire Shaka Smart.
 

BleedGopher said:
Interesting read:

VCU's Mike Ellis expected to take Villa 7 with him to Minnesota

http://www.cbssports.com/collegebas...xpected-to-take-villa-7-with-him-to-minnesota

It looks like the Villa 7 is heading to Minnesota.

VCU associate athletic director Mike Ellis, the brainchild behind the event, has decided to follow AD Norwood Teague to the Gophers. Villa 7 has been a project that has networked elite assistant coaches with athletic directors.

"Mike Ellis has been instrumental in connecting potential head coaches with their future employers," VCU head coach Shaka Smart told CBSSports.com. "More so than any search firm. Aided by the tremendous support of Nike, Mike has made Villa 7 one of the premiere professional development opportunities in our business."

"Where do you get an intimate setting for an AD to really know who you are?" Syracuse coach-in-waiting Mike Hopkins said. "That is what this provides."

The project is now heading into its 10th year -- and more than 90 coaches who have been involved have gotten head jobs. We're talking guys like Shaka Smart (VCU), Buzz Williams (Marquette), Josh Pastner (Memphis), Chris Mack (Xavier), John Groce (Illinois), Archie Miller (Dayton), Paul Lusk (Missouri State), Ed Cooley (Providence), Anthony Grant (Alabama), Dave Rice (UNLV), Dan Muller (Illinois State), Pat Skerry (Towson) and numerous women's coaches as well.

Not only is this a huge get for the Minnesota program due to Ellis' involvement with Villa 7, but it'll also be critical when the time comes to replace Tubby Smith. I'm not saying Smith will be retiring in the next year or two, but he is 61 -- and no one has more connections at the administrative level than Ellis.

Ellis was the one who put a then-unknown assistant named Shaka Smart in front of Teague, who pulled the shocker and hired the Rams head coach.

That's worked out pretty well.

Go Gophers!!
Click to expand...

Call me crazy but this list is loaded with average coaches. I would like to see Smart repeat his magic consistanly for 5 years before we start having some sort of Obsession with him.

Go Gophers
 

dpodoll68 said:
Where do I sign up?

And I'm certain that GW will rush here to chime in and wet-blanket any Teague enthusiasm anyway, but I'm almost positive that he did not hire Shaka Smart.
Click to expand...

Teague was there to hire Smart (could only hold onto Anthony Grant for 3 years :)). Have always heard incredible things about Villa 7... maybe this is good news for the current staff that has shown a lot of interest in other jobs over the past couple of years.

Of course, I think the largest gatherings are out in Oregon, but Ellis being in the Twin Cities physically can't hurt.
 

The-Real-Truth said:
Call me crazy but this list is loaded with average coaches. I would like to see Smart repeat his magic consistanly for 5 years before we start having some sort of Obsession with him.

Go Gophers
Click to expand...

You're crazy
 


The-Real-Truth said:
Call me crazy but this list is loaded with average coaches. I would like to see Smart repeat his magic consistanly for 5 years before we start having some sort of Obsession with him.

Go Gophers
Click to expand...

you want to see shaka go to the final four and second round a few more times at something called vcu in the next five years before you have an obsession with him? i'd like to see tubby just get to the tourney and win a game once in five years (already failed that at a big ten school) before i become obssesed with him. your post a day or two ago was quite telling that you don't know much about basketball. this post above validated it.
 

The-Real-Truth said:
Call me crazy but this list is loaded with average coaches. I would like to see Smart repeat his magic consistanly for 5 years before we start having some sort of Obsession with him.

Go Gophers
Click to expand...

You're talking about a man who has been a head coach all of three season: CBI Champs first year (eh), lost Larry Sanders to the NBA in the first round (in a conference like the CAA, that's usually a big deal) and led that team to a Final Four appearance. Then, took the 9th youngest team in the nation back to the tournament beat Whichita St as a 12 seed then lost to Indiana by 2.

Losing Mike Ellis hurts more than Teague. VCU has had to replace coaches regularly since it has been a stepping stone school (Capel- Oklahoma, Grant-Alabama) so Villa 7 has given the Rams direct contact with replacement coaches. It also allowed prospective coaches to connect with the staff and school beforehand. This is probably not as valuable to Minnesota, but it is still a great asset when the time comes.
 

Gopher+RamFan said:
You're talking about a man who has been a head coach all of three season: CBI Champs first year (eh), lost Larry Sanders to the NBA in the first round (in a conference like the CAA, that's usually a big deal) and led that team to a Final Four appearance. Then, took the 9th youngest team in the nation back to the tournament beat Whichita St as a 12 seed then lost to Indiana by 2.

Losing Mike Ellis hurts more than Teague. VCU has had to replace coaches regularly since it has been a stepping stone school (Capel- Oklahoma, Grant-Alabama) so Villa 7 has given the Rams direct contact with replacement coaches. It also allowed prospective coaches to connect with the staff and school beforehand. This is probably not as valuable to Minnesota, but it is still a great asset when the time comes.
Click to expand...

Ok, I get it, you guys are already obssesed with Samrt. I am not.

Go Gophers
 

Go4 said:
you want to see shaka go to the final four and second round a few more times at something called vcu in the next five years before you have an obsession with him? i'd like to see tubby just get to the tourney and win a game once in five years (already failed that at a big ten school) before i become obssesed with him. your post a day or two ago was quite telling that you don't know much about basketball. this post above validated it.
Click to expand...

Thanks.

Go Gophers
 




Go4 said:
you want to see shaka go to the final four and second round a few more times at something called vcu in the next five years before you have an obsession with him? i'd like to see tubby just get to the tourney and win a game once in five years (already failed that at a big ten school) before i become obssesed with him. your post a day or two ago was quite telling that you don't know much about basketball. this post above validated it.
Click to expand...

agreed
 





Amelia Rayno blog: Coach-AD consortium that got Shaka Smart his job is now coming to Minneapolis

It hasn’t been an accident, or luck, new Gophers senior associate athletic director Mike Ellis (formerly with AD Norwood Teague as Virginia Commonwealth) points out, that VCU has been so successful with hiring basketball coaches in recent years.
But a lot of it has had to do with a program Ellis created himself, and is now bringing to Minneapolis in the spring.

Villa 7, a two-day conference designed to put college basketball assistants with athletic directors, was started in 2004 by Ellis, in partnership with Nike – which hosts the event every other season. The idea is that Ellis, a former assistant coach at VCU, and Nike’s Eric Lautenbach research to find the best 60 assistants in men’s college basketball – those they deem on the verge of becoming head coaches – and 40 assistants in women’s basketball and provide them and around 80 ADs with both professional development and networking opportunities.

It’s worked across the board. In nine years, 90 of the assistant coaches that have participated in the yearly sessions have become Division I head coaches, many of them lauding Villa 7 as the trigger for their hires. In house, VCU has done quite nicely. The program was started in response to then-coach Jeff Capel flirting with Auburn and the VCU staff having an unsure picture of how to replace him when he did leave.

Capel ended up staying through 2005-06, but when he did leave for Oklahoma, VCU was ready with a hire that had frequented their program for a couple years: Anthony Grant. Grant got the program some quick attention, after the former Florida assistant orchestrated a Duke upset in the second round of the NCAA tournament. Two years later, when Grant trotted off to Alabama, VCU knocked on the door of another relatively unknown Villa 7 participant, Shaka Smart, then “the third assistant at Florida, as a lot of people like to say,” Ellis said. At the time, the hire was looked at as risky, but in reality Teague had been around Smart for years and had a good idea of what he was getting. Of course, Smart did all kinds of things for the basketball program when he took the team to the Final Four in 2011.

“I think it validated what we were doing to be able to have that success at home,” Ellis said. “It’s a really neat story in the way it’s grown.”

Obviously here at Minnesota, basketball coach Tubby Smith just got a three year extension that sets him up through the 2016-17 season. Regardless, the ‘U’ will need to replace him sometime – and who knows what will happen between now and then– and there’s a good chance Villa 7 could eventually play a major role in finding that candidate.

A side note: at Minnesota’s fundraiser auction at the Calhoun Beach Club on Monday night, the sudden popularity of new AD Norwood Teague was very apparent. A dinner for 10 with Teague went for $28,000 and when Teague said he would do two if they both went for that much, the ‘U’ sold two at that price. The dinner will be held at the house of local hockey celebrity Lou Nanne and the chef of the evening will be Tino Lettieri (who is also married to the daughter of Nanne, Michelle). All of the money raised on Monday – more than $200,000 – will go to the general scholarship fund.


http://www.startribune.com/blogs/170232126.html

Go Gophers!!
 

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