WHO replaces White?

Plus they are on the road against a 26-7 team because the First-Four games are in Dayton.

 

Boule’s former player, Kylie Irving, popped for 60 points tonight. It must have been a history teacher coaching the opponent.

 

It seems that many of those who vote "No" to Grant focus on his time at Bama- a team he hasn't coached since 2015, and dismiss any possibility of growth in his coaching ability while not long ago claiming that MW would continue to develop and improve at UF. They ignore the value of Grant rejoining (and learning from) Donovan or his rebuild of Dayton. If you watched some of Dayton's games over the last few years you'll see that Grant's offensive philosophy has evolved since Bama. He build that team to 29-2 overall, #2 in the nation, and a #1 seed in the canceled tourney. He then lost almost the entire roster, rebuilt it again with a top 20ish recruiting class, and was one rolled ankle away from a tourney bid with 11 freshman and sophomore scholarship players. Dayton is the youngest team in the country and they beat Belmont, Miami, Davidson, and Kansas, finished 14-4 in the A10 one game behind Davidson, and is a 1 seed in the NIT. They're a projected top 25 team and the favorite to win the A10 next year.

 

With respect to you and AG….

Rebuilding? Dayton had mostly better seasons in the years just prior to Grant’s arrival. . . 4 straight tourney appearances, an elite 8 and two 1st place finishes.

Awarding the obvious Covid season, Grant has one tourney appearance in a 5-year tenure.

And if we are going to make concessions for injury misfortune, roster turnover or youth…. There is a coach at Georgia we may want to look into.

Tbh, I wouldn’t be upset if we hired Grant. I just don’t think it’s the right fit. I really like the guy, and would hate to see him not succeed. And I’d have some real concerns that could be the scenario here.

 

I think that last final 4 run of Donovan’s was purely style of players. It was a very blue collar team with a dominant post defender in Patrick Young. So that team was about efficient half court offense and dominant half court defense.

The back-to-backs also won with half court efficiency and insanely tough D, but they had more lottery pick talent across the board so had flexibility to be more explosive, whereas the ‘14 team had less margin for error (yet despite this relative lack of NBA level elite talent they executed across an entire perfect 21-0 season). The fact they were perfect despite not a single NBA player shows just how well oiled that team was, and to be fair having guys together 3-4 years goes a long way.

I have no problem trying to win the efficiency battle, that is winning basketball. But if you want to win with that style you can’t be turnover prone, can’t shoot a low % from 3, can’t be poor rebounders, etc. You can’t win an efficiency game if you are an inefficient team (deep thinking, I know!). White could never get a team to stick together 2 years, let alone 4, so hard to say that contributed to the lack of offensive execution. But we did so much “dumb” bad fundamental stuff on offense I lean towards coaching issues.

I’m not so locked in to style of play as you can win with any style if you have the talent and coaching to make it happen. Although a coach with truly good X’s and O’s can probably teach good half Court offense AND how to push tempo. White did have a pretty good ability to put together “good” teams on paper, but never got the most out of them and never had guys stick 3 or 4 years. Almost every player was a 1 or 2 year situation.

 

We need to step up our game. When a new football coach is being looked for we have flight trackers and people hiding in the bushes at Gainesville Regional.

 

hahaha!!
I forget which of our NBNers created some sort of infamous football coach thread.

 

And THAT, IMO is the definition of a great coach. The ability to adapt to the players you have and be (ultra) successful with multiple styles of play depending on your personnel.

 

UF will hire a qualified college coach (or maybe a pro coach, though that seems unlikely) without regard to race. UF will not hire a white high school coach, who is obviously not qualified on paper, which is all the media will care about despite your credible arguments for why "on paper" shouldn't be determinative. What kind of press would such a hire bring to UF? How easy would it be for the national media to write endlessly about the many highly qualified minority candidates (Anthony Grant and Shaka Smart to name just two head coaches, plus countless assistants paying their dues at the college level) who were passed over in favor of a guy who has never run a college program, has never recruited at the college level, etc., etc., etc. This simply will not happen. If Kevin Boyle wants to be a major college coach, he needs to start with a college job for which he is qualified -- as an assistant or perhaps as head coach at a very small school that wouldn't be in the mix to hire a qualified college assistant coach from a major program. He has to pay his dues like everyone else, regardless of how successful he's been at the high school level, to build a resume worthy of consideration by major college programs.

 

Kevin Boyle is living in a gorgeous area of Florida. He’s probably making a million dollars a year between his salary, his camps, etc. The best high school players in the world want to play for him. His teams travel all over the country and win. He is not taking an assistant job in college. He also likely would not take a mid-major job. Stricklin hired a guy from Louisiana Tech who ran a lousy offense and couldn’t win his conference tournament to replace a hall of fame coach. I don’t trust Stricklin as far as I could throw him. That being said, I agree that he won’t hire Boyle although I believe that Boyle’s credentials are better than most of the names being tossed around.

 

Just making sure. I could have sworn Jeremy Foley was responsible for hiring Mike White in 2015, not Stricklin (who was hired as UF's AD in 2016)?

 

Can’t I still blame Stricklin?

 

My mistake, let me clarify what I meant by rebuild. Dayton had a depleted roster after Miller left and I know for a fact the Dayton folks were not expecting much from that team. Grant had an young squad that first year with little carry-over from the previous team, and 3 years later he had them at #2 in the country.
As for MW, I never faulted him for any injuries that hit the team during his time here. But there is a big difference between losing your floor general in the middle of a win-or-go-home game vs. losing him during the season when you have time to regroup and develop a new plan for the rest of season.
There's also a big difference between having roster turnover/youth and being able to drastically improve, vs. having turnover and no improvement year to year.

Thank you, I don't post often so I appreciate the civil discussion.

 

gotcha.

I still would argue that the injuries, and specifically the loss of Keyontae, represented much more challangong hardship than that which Grant faced.

Nonetheless… some valid points. As I’ve said, I really like AG and hate making a case against him.

 

I might have missed a few, but my intent was to look at head coaches who have won titles in the modern era. These guys don't traditionally fail at jobs.
They basically move up the ladder and get that job and stay there and win titles. I didn't realize gary williams had coached so many place, and the same with Pitino - i never knew he was at BU.

I just get the sense the best of the best don't get fired from previous jobs, not saying it's not possible etc.

Scott drew
Valpo\Baylor

Jim Boeheim
Never had a job elsewhere

Izzo
Never had a job elsewhere

Kevin Ollie
Never had a job elsewhere

John Calipari
Umass\Memphis\Kentucky

Bill Self –
Oral Roberts\Tulsa\Illinois\Kansas

Pitino
BU\Providence\Kentucky\Louisville\Iona

Jay Wright
Hofstra\Villanova

Tony Bennett
Washington State\Virginia


Retired:

Coach k
Army\Duke

Roy w
Kansas\Unc

Jim Calhoun
Northeastern\Uconn\(St Joseph)

Billy D
Marshall\Florida

Gary Williams
American\BC\Ohio State\Maryland

 

Yeah, they were rebuilding. Miller's elite eight team's top four guys in minutes were seniors and he basically didn't recruit his last season.

 

I think one of the main appeals of Grant is the staff he'd be able to assemble. McCall is an obvious guy he'd bring in, and I'm sure there would be other Donovan-era names he could get.

No other option has better ties to the state of Florida.

 

I always heard one of the most important pieces that went unrecognized during our back to back titles was the contributions of Larry Shyatt.

 

Ok….rebuilding a roster is different than rebuilding a program.
Grant had to fill-in major roster gaps.

 

Lost on the discussion of “would we want Anthony Grant?”, is the question of whether or not he would want us.

i don’t think so.