Poll: Should Mark Coyle give Ben Johnson a 5th year?

Poll: Should Mark Coyle give Ben Johnson a 5th year?

  • Yes, Ben Johnson deserves a 5th year.

    Votes: 34 15.5%

  • No, it is time to move on from Ben Johnson.

    Votes: 185 84.5%
  • Total voters
    219
Donate To GopherHole

The poll should have been who we want / need as the coach next year
 

It's pretty obviously no. But my guess is he will. How can you not be impressed by finishing 17th in the NET in an 18 team league?!
 

Gophers7633 said:
It's pretty obviously no. But my guess is he will. How can you not be impressed by finishing 17th in the NET in an 18 team league?!
Click to expand...
It was so impressive, I was overcome with emotion. Annoyed is an emotion, right?
 



Gopher Ally said:
I voted no but I’m torn. He had no NIL money to work with but managed to somehow squeeze a few wins out of this rag tag squad. I mentioned on another post if Coyle is serious about winning we need a lot of money for players and a new arena. We haven't been relevant since the Clem years.
Click to expand...
He had enough to keep Garcia around. If he truly had none, Garcia is overseas and we are far below Washington.
 

IceBoxGopher said:
Big shocker, but I voted no. I did so based on the resume. Overall record, 56-70 (.444), B1G record, 22-57 (.278). Biggest accomplishment? One NIT tournament win? A single win against Iowa?

Johnson has the worst win percentage of any Gophers coach in history who was here longer than two years. He's never made the NCAA Tournament. He's never beat Wisconsin. He doesn't even have a prior coaching job where he's shown he can build a program, meaning that a person could at least "trust the process."

I guess hypothetically if he had more NIL money he may be better, but it's not like that's a given, and he doesn't even have a promising track record to build on. It's time to move on.
Click to expand...
It's truly mind boggling that we are even entertaining the prospect of giving him another year.
 


Here we are again another firing and another hiring when are we going to get the right coach for our program
 




Go4 said:
will be curious to see a straight yes/no vote results. i am firmly in the no vote camp. time to move on.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately this isn’t a straight “yes/no” because they added the “he deserves another year” portion.
 

He has definitely not done anything to warrant another year. Worse than Pitino and Tubby and the program moved on from them. Pitino's team was ranked the year he got fired and he actually made postseason tournaments. Ben hasn't sniffed a .500 conference record or an ncaa tournament appearance and the program is even less relevant than when he started.
 




JellyBean2144 said:
I voted "Yes". Coach Johnson is doing a decent job with what is available. The players are developing well and he has a decent coaching staff. The key to any program is recruiting and he is out there landing some decent recruits. He has earned that 5th year.
Click to expand...
Jellybean, do you goodbye with both hands?
 

bga1 said:
Yep- this is exactly why I won't vote in this poll. The devil is in the details. If we are going to go small ball and go after what is perceived as an affordable new coach, an incremental upgrade- don't bother. Stick with Ben. If we are going to go big, and invest in the program by going out and getting a big time high D1 coach that will excite the town- then great..fire Ben and do it.

I have seen the former strategy with the firing of Pitino and we all know how that has worked out. Until I see differently, I have no trust in the administration to do this right.
Click to expand...
I would add that the "new" coach will either have to be the kind of coach that can pull in boosters/ investors that will add to the NIL purse, or the program (Athletic Department) will need to somehow figure out a way increase NIL money. If not, we could be looking at starting over every season/ every other season again.
 

Maybe we hired Ben to save money for the real coach at a much higher cost to give us maybe a window of 3 to 5 years to hit it big and then watch the coach walk away for the "Dream Job." Given our track record, we get to have this type of coach for a max of two years until he walks away.
 

STPGopher said:
I would add that the "new" coach will either have to be the kind of coach that can pull in boosters/ investors that will add to the NIL purse, or the program (Athletic Department) will need to somehow figure out a way increase NIL money. If not, we could be looking at starting over every season/ every other season again.
Click to expand...
There is zero chance of that happening with Ben. There is no scenario where sticking with Ben is the better option, even if we don't know what's behind door #2. It can't be worse.
 

howeda7 said:
There is zero chance of that happening with Ben. There is no scenario where sticking with Ben is the better option, even if we don't know what's behind door #2. It can't be worse.
Click to expand...
The point is a coach alone will not significantly elevate this team. At best we'd have a good season followed by a rebuild. We won't get an Izzo, Calipari, etc. Even if the AD could cut the check, they would see that the support just isn't there.

Obviously just my opinion.
 

bga1 said:
You don't hire the guy who failed at Indiana where you start out on third base.
Click to expand...
Crean won 2 Big Ten championships and went to 3 Sweet 16's over a 9 year stretch at Indiana. And he took over a complete dumpster fire there after the Kelvin Sampson scandal.

He failed at Georgia big time. And I'm not necessarily endorsing him here as our theoretical next guy.

But in retrospect, his overall run with the Hoosier was pretty damn good. They certainly haven't touched highs like that since.
 

Zeppelin Gopher said:
Crean won 2 Big Ten championships and went to 3 Sweet 16's over a 9 year stretch at Indiana. And he took over a complete dumpster fire there after the Kelvin Sampson scandal.

He failed at Georgia big time. And I'm not necessarily endorsing him here as our theoretical next guy.

But in retrospect, his overall run with the Hoosier was pretty damn good. They certainly haven't touched highs like that since.
Click to expand...
He had some highlights but... his first four years at Indiana were 19-53 in conference- similar to Ben. I'd rather take on a post Sampson dumpster fire at Indiana than this job. Crean was 71-91 overall at Indiana in conference.
 

bga1 said:
Yep- this is exactly why I won't vote in this poll. The devil is in the details. If we are going to go small ball and go after what is perceived as an affordable new coach, an incremental upgrade- don't bother. Stick with Ben. If we are going to go big, and invest in the program by going out and getting a big time high D1 coach that will excite the town- then great..fire Ben and do it.

I have seen the former strategy with the firing of Pitino and we all know how that has worked out. Until I see differently, I have no trust in the administration to do this right.
Click to expand...
I doubt that any successful, high profile coach would take this job because of the lack of NIL funds. Maybe it would be a step up for successful mid major guy with a poor NIL budget.
 

Very good coach, very good recruiter, very good at selling the program and bringing in NIL dollars and Ben's tenure as HC has demonstrated that he is NONE of them. Seems like a nice guy but not what this program needs if they want to improve.
 

bga1 said:
He had some highlights but... his first four years at Indiana were 19-53 in conference- similar to Ben. I'd rather take on a post Sampson dumpster fire at Indiana than this job. Crean was 71-91 overall at Indiana in conference.
Click to expand...
Yes but if you recall, Crean's first 2 seasons at Indiana he had like 9 players on scholarship due to the sanctions. They were severely undermanned and the horrific record reflected that.

They stole Verdell Jones from us (Tubby) at the last minute and he was a key player for them.
 

STPGopher said:
The point is a coach alone will not significantly elevate this team. At best we'd have a good season followed by a rebuild. We won't get an Izzo, Calipari, etc. Even if the AD could cut the check, they would see that the support just isn't there.

Obviously just my opinion.
Click to expand...
I don't think anyone is asking for Izzo or Calipari. The baseline candidate is Niko Medved IMO and there's about a 90% chance he would do better than Ben and a 10% chance he'd be a wash. Almost no way he could be worse, absent some sort of scandal. There's 4-7 guys I'd rather have, but at worst, I'm pretty sure he'd take the job.

How MUCH better would he be? That's debatable. But let's at least start our ascent from rock bottom.
 

Zeppelin Gopher said:
Yes but if you recall, Crean's first 2 seasons at Indiana he had like 9 players on scholarship due to the sanctions. They were severely undermanned and the horrific record reflected that.

They stole Verdell Jones from us (Tubby) at the last minute and he was a key player for them.
Click to expand...
I'm not that bothered by Tom Crean's stint at Indiana for those reasons. But his stint at Georgia? Woof. And that's a very similar job to this. Hard pass.
 

ShushPush said:
Given our track record, we get to have this type of coach for a max of two years until he walks away.
Click to expand...
Actually there's zero track record of that. The U Men's basketball program has never had a coach walk away for a better job, at least in modern times. In football it happened once, 40 years ago. The level of paranoia Gopher fans have over this is way over the top.
 

Absolutely not. Not only is he a bad in game coach but his roster management from the start has been horrible. No rhyme or reason on who he plays, how much they play, or when they get in the game. Huge head scratcher watching him manage all of the rosters he has had over the 4 years. The man is clueless.
 


howeda7 said:
Actually there's zero track record of that. The U Men's basketball program has never had a coach walk away for a better job, at least in modern times. In football it happened once, 40 years ago. The level of paranoia Gopher fans have over this is way over the top.
Click to expand...
Yes, but it is a hybrid variant of the mentalities in this state. "We're victims", "We don't deserve nice things", "Money is the root of all evil", etc.
 

howeda7 said:
Actually there's zero track record of that. The U Men's basketball program has never had a coach walk away for a better job, at least in modern times. In football it happened once, 40 years ago. The level of paranoia Gopher fans have over this is way over the top.
Click to expand...
Lou Holtz. It is only way over the top if you never lived the experience. If you did live the experience and came to this sad conclusion, you might need to read Plato's Republic. I highly recommend it just so we might come to a common definition of what is justice and what is virtue signaling.
 

You must log in or register to reply here.



Top Bottom