What Coach Could Automatically Make Minnesota B-Ball Elite?

Donate To GopherHole
Eric Henderson or John Beilien. Beilien knows what it takes to compete in the B1G and would be very motivated
 

Bob_Loblaw said:
I have a similar short list.

But if we're talking about a blank check Jay Wright or Brad Stevens.
Click to expand...
Blank check does not get Wright or Stevens. If Stevens ever comes back to the college game it would be Indiana, Duke or UNC. IU has always been his dream job. None of those top 5 guys are coming here. Bennett, Beard, Wright essentially have blank checks with annuities. As hard as it is , get the next level down or find the next Bennett, Beard or Wright.
 

Long time Gopher fan and I will continue to be that but I don't think there's a coach alive that could make Minnesota B-Ball Elite. I'm afraid any great coach would be "mediocre" in a short time because he wouldn't get the players.

Not sure what it is, but Minnesota can't compete for enough of the really good recruits. Maybe they don't pay enough. Maybe they don't pay at all. Whatever it is, we don't have it......
 

Maybe a parallel question - whose assistants should we be targeting? Does Bennet or Wright have a prolific coaching tree yet?
 

AgedFan said:
Long time Gopher fan and I will continue to be that but I don't think there's a coach alive that could make Minnesota B-Ball Elite. I'm afraid any great coach would be "mediocre" in a short time because he wouldn't get the players.

Not sure what it is, but Minnesota can't compete for enough of the really good recruits. Maybe they don't pay enough. Maybe they don't pay at all. Whatever it is, we don't have it......
Click to expand...
Simply not true. A Bo Ryan would have won here. Coaches like that do not get the best players, they get the right players.
 


bc2211 said:
Maybe a parallel question - whose assistants should we be targeting? Does Bennet or Wright have a prolific coaching tree yet?
Click to expand...
Nardi and Neptune are prospects but Wright is the magic. Williford is a really good assistant and Bennetts guys that left are Mckay and Sanchez at Liberty and Charlotte. I like Fife. If Matta got healthy, he would win here. Great coaches win anywhere.
 

builtbadgers said:
Simply not true. A Bo Ryan would have won here. Coaches like that do not get the best players, they get the right players.
Click to expand...
I want to believe you.

I don’t think you’re being dishonest, at all. I think you fully believe what you think the truth is. Your truth.

Maybe they kept you in the dark on some of it? Did you ever consider that? Because you’re such a staunch, straight shooter?
 

AgedFan said:
Long time Gopher fan and I will continue to be that but I don't think there's a coach alive that could make Minnesota B-Ball Elite. I'm afraid any great coach would be "mediocre" in a short time because he wouldn't get the players.

Not sure what it is, but Minnesota can't compete for enough of the really good recruits. Maybe they don't pay enough. Maybe they don't pay at all. Whatever it is, we don't have it......
Click to expand...
Only way we could be consistently elite is if we somehow kept every top player home, and that will never happen. Kids want to go to school somewhere other than where they grew up. That’s a strong driving force in an 18 year old’s mind.

But of course, like many have expressed, I think a lot of fans could settle for less than elite.
 

I know great coaches would win here. UW was a dumpster fire worse than here. Hire the right coach and they will win. The rest of it i have no idea what your talking about. In the dark on what cheating ! That you will have to prove . Not even a shred of evidence. Do you consider who they recruit ?
 




builtbadgers said:
Blank check does not get Wright or Stevens. If Stevens ever comes back to the college game it would be Indiana, Duke or UNC. IU has always been his dream job. None of those top 5 guys are coming here. Bennett, Beard, Wright essentially have blank checks with annuities. As hard as it is , get the next level down or find the next Bennett, Beard or Wright.
Click to expand...

A truly blank check gets anyone.
 

MplsGopher said:
I want to believe you.

I don’t think you’re being dishonest, at all. I think you fully believe what you think the truth is. Your truth.

Maybe they kept you in the dark on some of it? Did you ever consider that? Because you’re such a staunch, straight shooter?
Click to expand...
If Bo was banging the secretary here, the TC media would have made it into a major scandal instead of looking the other way like Madison did.
 

Bob_Loblaw said:
A truly blank check gets anyone.
Click to expand...
Everyone has a price. Even Tony Bennett. There's a price we could pay (in theory) that Mr. Jefferson would never approve of and UVa wouldn't match.
 




howeda7 said:
Everyone has a price. Even Tony Bennett. There's a price we could pay (in theory) that Mr. Jefferson would never approve of and UVa wouldn't match.
Click to expand...
UVA has a lot more money than we do. Bennett would not take this job for 10 million a year. They love Charlottesville, they have been set financially for generations by what Ab Nicholas and company did for them. Investing is a marvelous thing. Plus he bet on himself two raises ago on incentive laced contracts and met them all. His last raise he gave away to assistants, other sports programs and charity.Wright and Bennett have turned down NBA jobs that are north of 9.8 million annually.
 

howeda7 said:
If Bo was banging the secretary here, the TC media would have made it into a major scandal instead of looking the other way like Madison did.
Click to expand...
Agree with you. It would not be tolerated here. I never liked him as a person but he did his winning before his affair. We are not the ones to throw stones. We hired a coach who recruited really bad people.
 

Ben McCollum at Northwest Missouri state. Won’t make them instantly better but hopefully players would improve as opposed to regress while playing. I can’t believe the numbers of players that come to Minnesota and appear to regress no matter who the coach is.
 

From the Parkinglot said:
Ben McCollum at Northwest Missouri state. Won’t make them instantly better but hopefully players would improve as opposed to regress while playing. I can’t believe the numbers of players that come to Minnesota and appear to regress no matter who the coach is.
Click to expand...
Very intrigued. Love guys that when building something lose first because they put culture 1st. then all they do is win. He has something special to accumulate victories like that.
 

Smith, Dutcher, or just about anyone at this point.
 

What I don’t want is a 17 person committee including Mike Grimm going out to hire the coach. This has to be the AD’s call and that’s it. If he needs to call boosters to get money for the buyout or other items like a plane fine. Minnesotans are always too worried about finding one of our own and having everyone give input. Bleep it just go get someone that can coach cause Pitino has shown he doesn’t have that capability.
 

I will add another character reference for the Dutcher family. Good people.
Guy is going to work pretty hard at his dream school.
Is it Musselman’s dream school?
Belein is going to recruit shooters and have us compete. He’s the shocking immediate right now guy. So many fundamentals the current team does not display.
 

Belien or Dutcher are the top 2 options i think. In my opinion the reason they are is that the both showed that they could thrive before getting top end recruits. Yes Belein eventually got them but he succeeded far before that. Let's just call a spade a spade, the Gophers are never going to be a 5* destination, so we are going to have to have a coach that can identify and improve under the radar guys and find the right transfers. Look no further than a Malachi Flynn or Duncan Robinson. Those were the type of kids we realistically could get and those coaches thrived with them. Pitino fishes in his dads old waters and then has to settle for guys he can't develop.
 

What a naive thread. No coach will automatically make Minnesota basketball "elite". There is probably a coach out there--somewhere--that has what it takes to build a consistent winner at Minnesota, but it would take time--more time than Beilein or Dutcher have remaining in their respective coaching careers.
 

I’ll be very surprised if the next HC isn’t black. Right now there are no black head coaches at the U.
 

Jesus or his dad since it’s probably going to take a miracle.
 


Reading the replies in this thread and it's very clear that the definition of "elite" is causing a lot of the disagreements. I'd say that only Michigan State meets the definition of elite in the conference. Nationally, you have Duke, Kansas, and Kentucky are in that group for sure. I think Gonzaga and Virginia have joined that group and Villanova is in that group as well but need a good season this year to stay there. North Carolina is probably still in that group as well but certainly is trending in the wrong direction the past two seasons.

So I come up with 8 truly elite college basketball programs right now. Who could automatically make the Gophers one of them? Coach K, Calipari, and probably someone like Doc Rivers if he for some reason wanted to coach college basketball players. The only guys that could do it immediately anywhere are guys that immediately get multiple top 20 kids on their roster.

Guys like Izzo, Wright, and Bennett would take time. I'd love their chances to be very good, but to get in to the rarified air of elite consistently it takes skill and luck. You shouldn't have a defeatist attitude about it but look at it as an opportunity. There's no reason for Gonzaga, Villanova, Duke, or Michigan State to be on this list because of natural advantages. Duke was terrible before Coach K and UNC has a long history of tradition in their own state they had to battle. If I told you Villanova would be the power and Georgetown, Syracuse, and St Johns would be solid to below average programs 20 years ago, it would have sounded crazy. Michigan is a better school with deeper pockets and a larger fan base than Michigan State, but not a better basketball program. Virginia won exactly 1 NCAA tourament game in the 14 years before Tony Bennett was hired. Gonzaga speaks for itself. On the other hand you have schools like UCLA and Indiana that seemed like they were elite "lifers" who have moved well down the list.

The first step is doing much better regionally, and I think that's a very modest goal. Wisconsin has had the most success in the region over the the last decade plus. Then it's arguably Iowa State. Then Creighton and Marquette. Iowa has even had more success than Minnesota in the Pitino era. You could argue even Nebraska has done better than Minnesota in the Pitino era. Tim Miles was 52-76 in the conference through 7 years and got fired. Richard Pitino was 48-82 through his first 7 years at Minnesota. There is NO excuse for that. The biggest mistakes this University has made in my lifetime have surrounded keeping Monson and Pitino way past the point it was clear they were poor hires. If they combined for 6 or 7 seasons of coaching in the past 22 years instead of 16 (!), I don't think people would feel so hopeless. Schools make bad coaching hires all the time that set their programs back, but they don't compound the problem by keeping them around so long.
 

EG#9 said:
Reading the replies in this thread and it's very clear that the definition of "elite" is causing a lot of the disagreements. I'd say that only Michigan State meets the definition of elite in the conference. Nationally, you have Duke, Kansas, and Kentucky are in that group for sure. I think Gonzaga and Virginia have joined that group and Villanova is in that group as well but need a good season this year to stay there. North Carolina is probably still in that group as well but certainly is trending in the wrong direction the past two seasons.

So I come up with 8 truly elite college basketball programs right now. Who could automatically make the Gophers one of them? Coach K, Calipari, and probably someone like Doc Rivers if he for some reason wanted to coach college basketball players. The only guys that could do it immediately anywhere are guys that immediately get multiple top 20 kids on their roster.

Guys like Izzo, Wright, and Bennett would take time. I'd love their chances to be very good, but to get in to the rarified air of elite consistently it takes skill and luck. You shouldn't have a defeatist attitude about it but look at it as an opportunity. There's no reason for Gonzaga, Villanova, Duke, or Michigan State to be on this list because of natural advantages. Duke was terrible before Coach K and UNC has a long history of tradition in their own state they had to battle. If I told you Villanova would be the power and Georgetown, Syracuse, and St Johns would be solid to below average programs 20 years ago, it would have sounded crazy. Michigan is a better school with deeper pockets and a larger fan base than Michigan State, but not a better basketball program. Virginia won exactly 1 NCAA tourament game in the 14 years before Tony Bennett was hired. Gonzaga speaks for itself. On the other hand you have schools like UCLA and Indiana that seemed like they were elite "lifers" who have moved well down the list.

The first step is doing much better regionally, and I think that's a very modest goal. Wisconsin has had the most success in the region over the the last decade plus. Then it's arguably Iowa State. Then Creighton and Marquette. Iowa has even had more success than Minnesota in the Pitino era. You could argue even Nebraska has done better than Minnesota in the Pitino era. Tim Miles was 52-76 in the conference through 7 years and got fired. Richard Pitino was 48-82 through his first 7 years at Minnesota. There is NO excuse for that. The biggest mistakes this University has made in my lifetime have surrounded keeping Monson and Pitino way past the point it was clear they were poor hires. If they combined for 6 or 7 seasons of coaching in the past 22 years instead of 16 (!), I don't think people would feel so hopeless. Schools make bad coaching hires all the time that set their programs back, but they don't compound the problem by keeping them around so long.
Click to expand...

Tougher job imo too.
 



You must log in or register to reply here.



Top Bottom