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Post by upsetcoach on May 30, 2022 6:52:10 GMT -5
Watts to Oakland. Why aren't we getting the Detroit kids? We need a psl coach on our bench! Asap! I feel like we really should just drop the Detroit from our name. Just by the University of Mercy. So tired of OU out recruiting us, out everything us frankly...all while our administration does squat.
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Post by upbasketballfan on May 30, 2022 8:29:14 GMT -5
Collins seemed to be recruiting Detroit area players. The girl out of West Bloomfield looks to be a really good player and Vowels sent Collins packing. Luckily the player stayed,
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Post by ptctitan on May 30, 2022 9:20:13 GMT -5
Collins seemed to be recruiting Detroit area players. The girl out of West Bloomfield looks to be a really good player and Vowels sent Collins packing. Luckily the player stayed, In fairness, Coach Achter has been recruiting locally and one of her specific emphases is on recruiting locally. On the men's side, the staff has been engaged more locally in the past two years. But the reason Oakland has surpassed us is that there is more excitement, fan engagement, and on-court success out there that began just after Willie Green left here and has continued for about the past 20 years. Kampe's longevity plays a role in it. They have a better PR department. It's a newer and larger campus with lots of students living on it. Their athletic department has also been able to make capital investments in resources that go beyond just basketball. Finally, do not underestimate the severe and longstanding injury inflicted upon our program by Gaither's scandal. From her malfeasance has come the cascade of decisions and bad press that have injured us seriously. Her actions gave those in our university who do not view athletics in the same way as we view them, the upper hand. It's now 10 years since the rot of her actions began to be disclosed. And we still pay the price today. She destroyed all positive momentum built by Ray. We've never been able to regain that momentum. She turned us into a joke soap opera and we became a bigger joke with the 2016 branding policy that destroyed over 100 years of successful branding and alienated a large percentage of the alumni who supported athletics until that time. As you can tell, I dislike Gaither very much because she severely wounded my university.
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Post by Commissioner on May 30, 2022 10:04:32 GMT -5
Collins seemed to be recruiting Detroit area players. The girl out of West Bloomfield looks to be a really good player and Vowels sent Collins packing. Luckily the player stayed, In fairness, Coach Achter has been recruiting locally and one of her specific emphases is on recruiting locally. On the men's side, the staff has been engaged more locally in the past two years. But the reason Oakland has surpassed us is that there is more excitement, fan engagement, and on-court success out there that began just after Willie Green left here and has continued for about the past 20 years. Kampe's longevity plays a role in it. They have a better PR department. It's a newer and larger campus with lots of students living on it. Their athletic department has also been able to make capital investments in resources that go beyond just basketball. Finally, do not underestimate the severe and longstanding injury inflicted upon our program by Gaither's scandal. From her malfeasance has come the cascade of decisions and bad press that have injured us seriously. Her actions gave those in our university who do not view athletics in the same way as we view them, the upper hand. It's now 10 years since the rot of her actions began to be disclosed. And we still pay the price today. She destroyed all positive momentum built by Ray. We've never been able to regain that momentum. She turned us into a joke soap opera and we became a bigger joke with the 2016 branding policy that destroyed over 100 years of successful branding and alienated a large percentage of the alumni who supported athletics until that time. As you can tell, I dislike Gaither very much because she severely wounded my university. I don't disagree with anything you say above. I just want to note that the double tragedy of Gaither is that she was the one athletic director since Dick Vitale with any sense of vision. She launched the lacrosse program, getting us in on a sport that has continued growing in popularity; generally hired good coaches; had the creativity and foresight to promote things like renaming the court for Vitale and getting a nationally TV game out of the effort She actually did seem concerned with the fan experience. As near as I can tell, she was a voice of resistance to the re-branding that came after her time. There is something of a Greek tragedy to her time as AD. A Keri Gaither without the personal weaknesses that led to the events you mention, might have been our best, most foresighted AD since Lloyd Brazil.
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Post by Deleted on May 30, 2022 11:20:47 GMT -5
...and in the midst of this conversation, the following gets tweeted out
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Post by motorcitysam on May 30, 2022 11:33:04 GMT -5
Gaither looks good in comparison to Kinsman on some things, but she also got rid of baseball and took basketball off the air. She never worked anyplace but U-D, so she brought nothing new to the table. Even her big triumph, the new floor, was a regurgitation of the University's decades long one sided love affair with DV, as we probably could have gotten more bang for the buck than a game with St. John's that didn't even sell out. There was plenty, besides her embarrassing affair, to criticize about her.
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Post by nctitan on May 30, 2022 11:43:29 GMT -5
Similar to what BA tweeted, I have the perfect solution: Get in the time machine and go back to (pick a year) and change the course of events. If you can't do that, stop complaining about what can't be changed and set a plan going forward.
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Post by upbasketballfan on May 30, 2022 12:06:38 GMT -5
Gaither looks good in comparison to Kinsman on some things, but she also got rid of baseball and took basketball off the air. She never worked anyplace but U-D, so she brought nothing new to the table. Even her big triumph, the new floor, was a regurgitation of the University's decades long one sided love affair with DV, as we probably could have gotten more bang for the buck than a game with St. John's that didn't even sell out. There was plenty, besides her embarrassing affair, to criticize about her. But even with all her faults, of which she had a lot, she was still way better than what we have now. If we could return our Athletic Department to where it was her last year, I would still be all in to what we have now. I bet you can not name one spot in the Department that is better now.
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Post by Commissioner on May 30, 2022 12:25:11 GMT -5
Gaither looks good in comparison to Kinsman on some things, but she also got rid of baseball and took basketball off the air. She never worked anyplace but U-D, so she brought nothing new to the table. Even her big triumph, the new floor, was a regurgitation of the University's decades long one sided love affair with DV, as we probably could have gotten more bang for the buck than a game with St. John's that didn't even sell out. There was plenty, besides her embarrassing affair, to criticize about her. I don't know. Added fundraising off the floor renaming really falls on the President and Development Office. When was our last nationally-televised game or last game hosting a Big East team before or since? The Titans dropped baseball 3 years before Gaither was named AD. And she hired Ray McCallum.
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Post by happy on May 30, 2022 12:53:51 GMT -5
Never never ever give up or give in! Things are going to get better.
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Post by motorcitysam on May 30, 2022 13:35:28 GMT -5
Gaither looks good in comparison to Kinsman on some things, but she also got rid of baseball and took basketball off the air. She never worked anyplace but U-D, so she brought nothing new to the table. Even her big triumph, the new floor, was a regurgitation of the University's decades long one sided love affair with DV, as we probably could have gotten more bang for the buck than a game with St. John's that didn't even sell out. There was plenty, besides her embarrassing affair, to criticize about her. I don't know. Added fundraising off the floor renaming really falls on the President and Development Office. When was our last nationally-televised game or last game hosting a Big East team before or since? The Titans dropped baseball 3 years before Gaither was named AD. And she hired Ray McCallum. My mistake on the baseball issue. I thought that happened after she was named AD, but i guess shexwas just working in the department at the time. I have heard from what I consider to be a reliable source that she had very little input into the McCallum hire. As far as the floor goes, did she make or advocate for the decision to name it after Vitale? If so, that's not a point in her favor, in my opinion. I would rather have a big donation than a game with St. John's and an opportunity for Vitale to come in and be celebrated without cracking open his check book. That was a huge opportunity to raise funds and the programs profile, but it certainly did more for DV than it did for the program. Plus we ticked off the Calihan family and some of them said they were done donating to the school. Was a nationally televised home game worth it? I don't think so. The last time we hosted a Big East team prior to that was DePaul in 2007. We hosted nationally ranked SEC team Mississippi State the same year we hosted St. John's. We've had a few nationally televised ESPN games since then.
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Post by Commissioner on May 30, 2022 18:31:53 GMT -5
I don't know. Added fundraising off the floor renaming really falls on the President and Development Office. When was our last nationally-televised game or last game hosting a Big East team before or since? The Titans dropped baseball 3 years before Gaither was named AD. And she hired Ray McCallum. My mistake on the baseball issue. I thought that happened after she was named AD, but i guess shexwas just working in the department at the time. I have heard from what I consider to be a reliable source that she had very little input into the McCallum hire. As far as the floor goes, did she make or advocate for the decision to name it after Vitale? If so, that's not a point in her favor, in my opinion. I would rather have a big donation than a game with St. John's and an opportunity for Vitale to come in and be celebrated without cracking open his check book. That was a huge opportunity to raise funds and the programs profile, but it certainly did more for DV than it did for the program. Plus we ticked off the Calihan family and some of them said they were done donating to the school. Was a nationally televised home game worth it? I don't think so. The last time we hosted a Big East team prior to that was DePaul in 2007. We hosted nationally ranked SEC team Mississippi State the same year we hosted St. John's. We've had a few nationally televised ESPN games since then. So, in other words, no, we haven’t hosted a Bog East team since Gaithersburg left, yes, Keri hired Ray, and no, Keri didn’t abolish baseball. Like I say, fundraising off of the court naming goes on the President and development department—the AD is not generally a fundraiser. Naming the court for Vitale was one of the few smart things we’ve done in the last 20 years. You think we should and could have gotten more, and maybe that’s true and maybe it’s not,, but we’ve gotten a fair bit of mileage from it. I doubt very very much that the AD negotiated any deal with Vitale, but frankly, if Vitale just said no, it was still probably a good move for us. And when Dan Gilbert finally coughs up that $30 million so many seem to cavalierly expect, we’ll rename the floor for him. Or anyone else with a couple million who’s been dying to have a bunch of collegiate transfer walking over his name. In the meantime, the Vitale connection is one of the few things that ever gets us positive attention anymore.
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Post by nctitan on May 30, 2022 23:42:36 GMT -5
And we did get a new floor out of the deal. That's probably most important.
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Post by ptctitan on May 31, 2022 6:31:51 GMT -5
My comment about Gaither was not a call for a full HR performance review of her tenure as AD. She carried on with her subordinate for almost 3 years during which time average home game attendance began to decline. Even the year of the St. John's game, average home attendance declined 8% from the prior season. Without the St. John's game, average home game attendance that season was 16% lower than the previous year. The Miss. State game drew a whopping 2200 fans. It was the publicity of the facts about her sudden departure that started events cascading.
Yet average game attendance held in there until Ray's final season when the university announced its new branding strategy. Two years earlier, Vowels had announced a branding strategy that re-emphasized "Detroit" and said specifically that "Detroit Mercy" was not a permitted way to name our teams. Average game attendance rose 15% from 2013. When the university announced the new "Detroit Mercy" branding strategy in 2016, average attendance fell 16% from the prior year and the next season, it fell another 19%. In two years, average game attendance dropped 32.6% once the university forced the current branding strategy upon Athletics. Now, part of this decline can be attributed to the record of Bacari's first team. But not all of it. The consilience between the change in branding and the attendance is staring at us right there in the numbers. And the attendance gains in 2014 and 2015 under the "Detroit Titans" branding policy of Vowels are also right there in the numbers. And those gains were made even though Ray's teams in those years struggled with their W-L records compared to his previous teams.
This gets back to my point about the importance of getting fans in the stands. And the role that attendance plays in making players want to come and play here rather than us being their Plan Z.
In turn, this gets us back to our current situation. How do you generate excitement for players considering us such that it makes them want to play here? To get the better players who will produce more W's that, in turn, will draw more fans to watch our games, we must offer them facilities that are competitive with the ones that they will see when they visit other schools. That does not mean that we have to provide a luxurious power school experience. It does mean that we have to offer them something that is competitive. Otherwise, the excitement and winning will remain elsewhere. Housing, nutrition, sports medicine, conditioning, and fans in the stands. We won't get all at once. The reason we started with the Titan Club room is because that addresses nutrition by providing players with a newly remodeled room in which they can eat meals that will help them improve their physical conditioning. It's a start. But the university itself must step up to the plate here so that alumni and fans have something to sell to potential donors.
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2022 7:15:32 GMT -5
We've done a great job taking Davis off the hot seat and giving him many excuses for not getting the Detroit kids, but at the end of the day, he's the head Coach, he's responsible for recruiting players and acquiring talent, regardless of the perceived obstacles, and he's responsible for our substandard results during his tenure. He cannot and should not receive get a free pass. (And he's been very generously compensated for his disappointing results)
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