Thoughts on Teague/Ellis

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scher215 said:
Not a bad statement. Not sure on the turned down by Shaka part, but overall he's right.

You may disagree with their tactics, but Teague and Ellis have one goal: making Minnesota elite.

If they succeed, great, if not it is goodbye.

I hate to break it to folks though, it sometimes takes more than 5 days for that to happen.

Relax my friends and be calm. Save your outrage for when we have a 5 win season in year 4. Not at the press conference, not after the name leaks, not after the first loss.

Relax and let things play out.
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Yeah, it's a process but at the same time there's an awful lot of people rationalizing & making excuses for Woody. Firing Tubby was the right move, but with no replacement waiting in the wings, while UCLA is simultaneously trying to fill their vacancy was crap management. Stevens was never coming here, can't put that on Woody. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I'm bummed he couldn't bring in 'his guy' Shaka. It would have been a real statement hire. Buzz was never coming here & certainly not now. Instead we move on & whiff on the Mayor (not shocking either). Grant? I'm not sure he's even an upgrade over Tubby? Now Flip's off the list too (not that he was the guy I wanted) & down & down the list we go. Should we really congratulate Woody if he lands their 8th or 9th choice?
 

scher215 said:
So everyone spent the whole season complaining about Tubby. He was a terrible awful coach. We wanted him gone.

No practice facility? Just another lame excuse from Tubby. No excuses. No accepting mediocrity.

Now, we all just want a practice facility with no care over who the coach is. Heck, hire Clem back if he can raise the funds.

I don't get it.

(And FYI, I do actually get it. This has nothing to do with winning or losing or facilities. It is about everyone's love affair with Flip and nothing else)
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Well said Sir.
 

The practice facility is huge. If you don't think so, you're not paying attention.

One of the criticisms of the UCLA job was that their dedicated practice facility is too old (I think it's like 20 years old), and they have to share the court with the women's team. What do we have? An 85 year old arena that needs work, and nothing else. Meanwhile, Nebraska just built a state of the art basketball facility:

read this: http://www.huskers.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=100&ATCLID=205315979.

84 THOUSAND square feet. Dedicated courts for men and women as well as a workout room for wrestling. 103" plasma screens and iPads at every locker. I suspect this pales in comparison to some of the things Phil Knight has given to Oregon too.

Where are we going to get that, and where are we going to build it?


Coaches also now expect to have access to a private plane, basically 24-7, and they expect dedicated charters for all team trips (this was another issue at UCLA - the team flies commercial). Izzo didn't fly here commercial to see Tyus Jones play.

Does the U allow coaches access to private aircraft at will? Are they willing to include that perk?
 

Costa Rican Gopher said:
Yeah, it's a process but at the same time there's an awful lot of people rationalizing & making excuses for Woody. Firing Tubby was the right move, but with no replacement waiting in the wings, while UCLA is simultaneously trying to fill their vacancy was crap management. Stevens was never coming here, can't put that on Woody. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I'm bummed he couldn't bring in 'his guy' Shaka. It would have been a real statement hire. Buzz was never coming here & certainly not now. Instead we move on & whiff on the Mayor (not shocking either). Grant? I'm not sure he's even an upgrade over Tubby? Now Flip's off the list too (not that he was the guy I wanted) & down & down the list we go. Should we really congratulate Woody if he lands their 8th or 9th choice?
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Except Hoiberg came out and said we never offered him, but whatever suits your narrative.
 

minny01 said:
No - you're wrong with that bold statement. It is not about a love affair with Flip. It is about what is doing what is best for the program. If we could have got Shaka, or Stevens, or some other big name coach, the fund raising would have picked up immediately and we could have started on the practice facility. It is now a given that a big name coach is not coming our way. We now have to fall back to plan B and that is a man who will bleed maroon and gold and do everything that he can to put the program back where it belongs. He can still coach, no one can question that. He still has a love for the game and could energize the boosters. He would give us a fighting chance at getting some portion of the big 3. I just hope that Norwood hasn't completely cut ties with him or it is going to be a long 2-3 years before we will know if he made a successful hire or if we are in this spot again, with no shovel in the ground.
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See how the dots connect?
 



If Teague is going to dictate assistant coaches, then this is going to be a longer, sadder exercise than it already is.

OTOH I remember once upon a time the Gophers tried to hire some guy named Cal Luther, who accepted the job and came to Minnesota for a press conference, and then announced that he had changed his mind, he was going to stay where he was. The Gophers settled for Bill Musselman, who injected more excitement into the program that it has ever seen before or since. Sure, he injected a problem or 2 but, c'mon, what do you want? A Final Four appearance later vacated is better than no Final Four appearance at all, isn't it?

Seriously, my point is that an embarrassing process doesn't mean you can't find a good coach.
 


bigticket1 said:
Do you expect Fred to say " Yes,the Gophers offered and I used that offer to wring more money out of Iowa State" ?
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I expect GopherHolers to pull comments out of their asses to keep arguments and nonsense going. My expectations have been exceeded.
 



And PS. Tubby was unanimously hailed as a terrific hire.

So 1st impressions ain't worth much.

That said, your 1st impression ain't gonna be good.
 

positively4thstreet said:
Except Hoiberg came out and said we never offered him, but whatever suits your narrative.
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We haven't offered any of them according to Woody:) That's how the game is played, you don't offer so that they can't turn you down & make you look bad. That doesn't mean we didn't fly them in, talk to them, talk to their agents, informally offer them and/or ask them if they're interested. Whatever didn't happen with the Mayor he got a 10 year, multi-million dollar extension within 48 hours of it. Just coincidence I suppose?
 

Costa Rican Gopher said:
We haven't offered any of them according to Woody:) That's how the game is played, you don't offer so that they can't turn you down & make you look bad. That doesn't mean we didn't fly them in, talk to them, talk to their agents, informally offer them and/or ask them if they're interested. Whatever didn't happen with the Mayor he got a 10 year, multi-million dollar extension within 48 hours of it. Just coincidence I suppose?
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Think NFL draft. The only thing that's guaranteed is that after a Coach is hired Teague will say that the guy "was the one he targeted all along."
 

minny01 said:
Do you not believe that we need a practice facility or how is your plan to get one financed?
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Of course we need a practice facility but you don't hire a coach because he has the best chance of raising money for that. That's the job of the AD. You hire the best coach you can and that may not be a well-known name.

I have much more confidence in Teague selecting the next coach than you and all the rest of the Flip thumpers. Can you give a reason I should have more confindence in you and your experience?
 




station19 said:
Of course we need a practice facility but you don't hire a coach because he has the best chance of raising money for that. That's the job of the AD. You hire the best coach you can and that may not be a well-known name.

I have much more confidence in Teague selecting the next coach than you and all the rest of the Flip thumpers. Can you give a reason I should have more confindence in you and your experience?
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I'll counter you with this - I also believe that Teague may have the ability to find a very good head basketball coach, but is that going to give us a new practice facility? I have my doubts that Norwood is going to be able to raise the funds without a name coach. He is going to find out that Minneapolis is not Richmond. As I've said before, we couldn't raise funds when we had a Hall of Fame coach, ranked in the top 10 with a 15-1 record. How are we going to do it when we have a no-name coach? We've yet to hear from all of you Flip opponents how you are going to get this done.
 

minny01 said:
I'll counter you with this - I also believe that Teague may have the ability to find a very good head basketball coach, but is that going to give us a new practice facility? I have my doubts that Norwood is going to be able to raise the funds without a name coach. He is going to find out that Minneapolis is not Richmond. As I've said before, we couldn't raise funds when we had a Hall of Fame coach, ranked in the top 10 with a 15-1 record. How are we going to do it when we have a no-name coach? We've yet to hear from all of you Flip opponents how you are going to get this done.
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I'm not a Flip opponent and as you said we didn't get a practice facility with our big name coach Tubby.

You hire the best basketball coach to coach the team. You hire an AD to raise funds and build facilities.

You want the AD to hire the coach. You don't want the coach to hire the AD, we had that last time.
 

Post the 800K payout to North Carolina, I have no confidence in Woody at this point. Hopefully, the BB hire will change that.
Mind boggling he would not anticipate the backlash of the payout in today's economy. Especially to an average program that is on probation.
 

station19 said:
Of course we need a practice facility but you don't hire a coach because he has the best chance of raising money for that. That's the job of the AD. You hire the best coach you can and that may not be a well-known name.

I have much more confidence in Teague selecting the next coach than you and all the rest of the Flip thumpers. Can you give a reason I should have more confindence in you and your experience?
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Your point is obviously well taken. Personally, I never thought that Flip was that great a coach. Only offended at the way this went down and even that is heavily mitigated by the fact that we don't really know how it went down anyway. On record as thinking that Flip wouldn't have been one of Norwood's "guys" and as such Teague was more focused on getting rid of him rather than hiring him.

The question I'd ask is why so much faith in Mr.Teague? He made a seemingly great hire in Shaka Smart but that's the one and only Head Basketball or Football Coach that he's hired isn't it? His VCU resume certainly mentions that but it's mainly concerned with fund raising. It's 10 paragraphs in before anything else is discussed. He did a fine job of that out there and we should be hopeful that he can do it here also. He hasn't had much time to do that to be fair, but if you really want to be fair, the things that he's done during that short time here haven't inspired much confidence.

Brewster was hired because he could recruit and they hoped he'd hire the coaching "experience" he needed. It's hard not to look at Mr.Teague and not think that he was hired because he can raise the money they need and he'd hire the "experience" in Administration and Coaching. So far every Administrator he's brought in came from VCU and now's his chance to bring in his coach. Flip was not going to be "his" coach. The irony is if the story about Flip not taking the job because he didn't get to choose his own staff, well coming from a guy who only has brought in his own "guys" that's pretty ironic indeed.

So why are you so confident in Norwood or are you just supporting the position rather than the player?

http://www.vcuathletics.com/information/directory/bios/Teague_Norwood
 

station19 said:
I'm not a Flip opponent and as you said we didn't get a practice facility with our big name coach Tubby.

You hire the best basketball coach to coach the team. You hire an AD to raise funds and build facilities.

You want the AD to hire the coach. You don't want the coach to hire the AD, we had that last time.
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Outside of the fact that Joel did hire Tubby last time around, I would agree with you 99% of the time. This may be that 1%.

First and foremost, we need a practice facility. The people who write the checks like Flip. Flip is still a good coach. He can give you the short term fix, build your practice facility and leave the program in a much better place than it currently is. In my opinion, where we are currently at in the process, this is a simple solution.
 

scher215 said:
You think Flip should have the power over his boss? Are you kidding?
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I don't want to speak for goldengophers, but I don't think he meant that Flip should have power over his boss. I think the word he was looking for was leverage -- leverage in negotiations. Although that obviously didn't help Flip, that's not really the point goldengophers seemed to be making.
 

Iceland12 said:
Your point is obviously well taken. Personally, I never thought that Flip was that great a coach. Only offended at the way this went down and even that is heavily mitigated by the fact that we don't really know how it went down anyway. On record as thinking that Flip wouldn't have been one of Norwood's "guys" and as such Teague was more focused on getting rid of him rather than hiring him.

The question I'd ask is why so much faith in Mr.Teague? He made a seemingly great hire in Shaka Smart but that's the one and only Head Basketball or Football Coach that he's hired isn't it? His VCU resume certainly mentions that but it's mainly concerned with fund raising. It's 10 paragraphs in before anything else is discussed. He did a fine job of that out there and we should be hopeful that he can do it here also. He hasn't had much time to do that to be fair but if you really want to be fair the things that he's done haven't inspired much confidence.

Brewster was hired because he could recruit and they hoped he'd hire the coaching "experience" he needed. It's hard not to look at Mr.Teague and not think that he was hired because he can raise the money they need and he'd hire the "experience" in Administration and Coaching. So far every Administrator he's brought in came form VCU and now's his chance to bring in his coach. Flip was not going to be "his" coach. The irony is if the story about Flip not taking the job because he didn't get to choose his own staff, well coming from a guy who only has brought in his own "guys" that's pretty ironic indeed.

So why are you so confident in Norwood or are you just supporting the position rather than the player?

http://www.vcuathletics.com/information/directory/bios/Teague_Norwood
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Some of it is the position as opposed to the quoted and other posters and 'Flip is so great' thumpers. I was leery of the fan favorite Flip angle from day one. No I never stated it on GH.

One of Teagues 'guys' is a gal and she came from Butler.

Brewster and Maturi were given more time than some are giving Teague. Let the guy do the job he was hired to do. It may be hard to hire some one here at MN but Tubby had to go no matter what and Teague and Ellis saw it right away. If Maturi were still here Tubby would still be here.
 

The UNC dodge was a terrible mistake - but my reading is Kill all but demanded it given how fragile the FB program is. If Teague made a mistake it was bending to Kills pressure.

So - yes - coaches can run their bosses if they aren't careful.
 

station19 said:
If Maturi were still here Tubby would still be here.
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That still might have been the right course.

1. Get the Practice Facility built
2. Suffer through one or two more seasons of late swoons.
3. Really network - Villa as well as more local conventional channels - get an understanding of the real possibilities.
4. Then make a change as Tubby's contract wears down and buy out disappears.

That was my first thoughts even before they fired him. Buy time and 'study options'.
 

station19 said:
Some of it is the position as opposed to the quoted and other posters and 'Flip is so great' thumpers. I was leery of the fan favorite Flip angle from day one. No I never stated it on GH.

One of Teagues 'guys' is a gal and she came from Butler.

Brewster and Maturi were given more time than some are giving Teague. Let the guy do the job he was hired to do. It may be hard to hire some one here at MN but Tubby had to go no matter what and Teague and Ellis saw it right away. If Maturi were still here Tubby would still be here.
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Understood, though if the stories are true the boosters would have pushed Tubby out. The question then becomes how much has the Flip situation affected them. Oh on Goetz, yeah, I knew that she was a "gal" and from Butler. She was also a North Carolina "guy" if not exactly a Tar Heal. Norwood just have to have that "connection" I guess :eek:


Goetz was an accomplished collegiate soccer player and earned All-America recognition at Brevard College in North Carolina before heading to Clemson. She would lead the Tigers to a combined 29-11-1 record over the next two years.

"Beth is a true professional who has extensive experience in all facets of collegiate athletics: as a former student-athlete, as a former coach and as an administrator," said Minnesota women's soccer coach Stefanie Golan. "This background gives her the ability to critically analyze things from each perspective and to take each group into consideration as decisions are made. I know she is going to get things done and that we are going to be a better department with Beth on board."

Goetz earned an Associate of Arts degree from Brevard in 1994 and a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from Clemson in 1996. She received her Master in Education degree from Missouri-St. Louis in 2000.
 

lugnard said:
That still might have been the right course.

1. Get the Practice Facility built
2. Suffer through one or two more seasons of late swoons.
3. Really network - Villa as well as more local conventional channels - get an understanding of the real possibilities.
4. Then make a change as Tubby's contract wears down and buy out disappears.

That was my first thoughts even before they fired him. Buy time and 'study options'.
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NO
 

station19 said:
NO
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Well it didn't happen. And now they have a messy coaching search that might end badly as well.

I think it is always a mistake for an AD to precipitate an important search in his first year unless he absolutely for sure has a slam dunk prospect in mind. Then if he does has to be right. If it blows up he probably doesn't have the years of goodwill to live on.

Teague rolled the dice and frankly the risks were higher than he realized. I give him 50:50 of surviving this [being here 2-3 years from now].
 


lugnard said:
That still might have been the right course.

1. Get the Practice Facility built
2. Suffer through one or two more seasons of late swoons.
3. Really network - Villa as well as more local conventional channels - get an understanding of the real possibilities.
4. Then make a change as Tubby's contract wears down and buy out disappears.

That was my first thoughts even before they fired him. Buy time and 'study options'.
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BTW - I am not saying they could actually have pulled this off either - just saying we might look back in hindsight and say 'maybe we should have moved slower transitioning Tubby out'. Sort of like not rushing to dump Mason until we had a better plan of who and how we wanted to replace him. In short skip the Brewster phase.

But maybe we had to go through Brewster before we could be 'happy' with a Kill like [boring but no nonsense] alternative. Mistakes are sometimes the only way people learn.
 

lugnard said:
BTW - I am not saying they could actually have pulled this off either - just saying we might look back in hindsight and say 'maybe we should have moved slower transitioning Tubby out'. Sort of like not rushing to dump Mason until we had a better plan of who and how we wanted to replace him. In short skip the Brewster phase.

But maybe we had to go through Brewster before we could be 'happy' with a Kill like [boring but no nonsense] alternative. Mistakes are sometimes the only way people learn.
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NO AGAIN. It's not done that way.
 


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