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Post by Titan Jim on Mar 26, 2024 17:36:11 GMT -5
The four finalists for the Detroit Mercy job appear to be: UM assistant Saddi Washington, MSU assistant Mark Montgomery, Marquette assistant DeAndre Haynes and Iowa State assistant JR Blount.
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Post by motorcitysam on Mar 26, 2024 18:06:01 GMT -5
IF that's true, Montgomery obviously made a good impression on the Titan brass when he spent some time under Davis a couple of years ago. As someone (I think it was PTCTitan) said, the team certainly seemed to respond positively to him being around.
If it's a career assistant who gets the job, I hope he hires a veteran coach with D1 head coaching experience to be on staff.
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Post by dtowntitan on Mar 26, 2024 18:12:27 GMT -5
Based on this list of candidates... give me JR Blount from ISU.
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Post by ptctitan on Mar 26, 2024 18:37:09 GMT -5
Interesting to see this. The same search firm we are using placed Danyial Robinson from Iowa State at Cleveland State two years ago.
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Post by rbj on Mar 26, 2024 19:50:45 GMT -5
I would prefer someone under 50 with head coaching experience. If I had to pick someone it would be DeAndre Haynes, solely due to my Detroit bias.
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Post by ptctitan on Mar 26, 2024 20:55:53 GMT -5
I would prefer someone under 50 with head coaching experience. If I had to pick someone it would be DeAndre Haynes, solely due to my Detroit bias. Our finalists are the two guys who replaced Bacari and Jordan under Beilein, an Izzo guy from Inkster with 10 years head coaching experience, and the search firm's next guy up from Iowa State who was Loyola's point guard from 2005 to 2009. Of the 4, the only one with any experience at a small private school is Blount who worked at St Leo College in Florida. And Montgomery's 4 months here in 2021 after which he returned to the comfort of East Lansing. Quite frankly, I don't see any out of the box alternatives in these names. |
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Post by Titan Jim on Mar 26, 2024 21:06:02 GMT -5
Let’s not forget that this according to Tony Paul. We don’t even know if he is correct.
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Post by rbj on Mar 26, 2024 21:12:03 GMT -5
I would prefer someone under 50 with head coaching experience. If I had to pick someone it would be DeAndre Haynes, solely due to my Detroit bias. Our finalists are the two guys who replaced Bacari and Jordan under Beilein, an Izzo guy from Inkster with 10 years head coaching experience, and the search firm's next guy up from Iowa State who was Loyola's point guard from 2005 to 2009. Of the 4, the only one with any experience at a small private school is Blount who worked at St Leo College in Florida. And Montgomery's 4 months here in 2021 after which he returned to the comfort of East Lansing. Quite frankly, I don't see any out of the box alternatives in these names. Rumor has it that Izzo advised Dwayne Stephens to turn the UofD job down, not once, but twice. I wonder why he's giving Montgomery the nod of approval at this time? |
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Post by Commissioner on Mar 26, 2024 22:24:17 GMT -5
If true, it's a solid lot, but not particularly inspiring.
Montgomery turns 54 years old this week. He was 126-179 with just 2 winning seasons in 11 years as HC at Northern Illinois, with one post-season appearance--losing in the first round of the legendary Vegas 16 in 2016.
Washington turns 49 this summer. He has never been a head coach, even at the HS level.
Haynes turns 40 this week. He has never been a head coach.
Blount is the youngest of the group, in his late 30s. He has never been a head coach. In addition to years at St. Leo's noted by PTC, he was also an assistant for 4 years at Drake, which has an undergrad enrollment of less than 3000. Like UD, it has law and other professional schools. It started as a church school (Disciples of Christ) but no longer. As PTC noted, none of the others have experience at private schools, but for Montgomery's short stint at UD.
I am encouraged that having spent a season at UD, Montgomery wants the job.
I would like to have seen someone who had real success as a head coach--not a journeyman D-1 coach, but someone who is young and won a bunch at D-2 or in a lower level D-1 school--Bronkema, Donte Jackson, Fee, Bashir Mason (now at St. Peter's, previously at Wagner, 40 years old). I do think the four possible finalists are decent candidates, from what I know (which isn't that much), but it doesn't see like anyone was using much imagination, which would be Robert Vowels to a T.
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Post by ptctitan on Mar 27, 2024 4:18:02 GMT -5
... but it doesn't see like anyone was using much imagination, which would be Robert Vowels to a T. It's the 21st century version of the Ricky Byrdsong hire. As you said without much imagination. Where's the out of the box thinking here, Dr. Taylor? But what would you expect from a search firm based in Raleigh using UVA's former AD to run our search? These are likely good people, but we have ended up with a group of finalists that I feared the most - the high major assistant in his first head coaching job. Or in Montgomery's case, his second after failing at NIU. In his defense, NIU is not a basketball school and his replacement there has not improved things. The attribute that made Vitale and Watson successful was that they were both very successful high school coaches who just happened to be high major assistants when we hired them. In other words, Mike Thomas with high major assistant experience. Also, I know we had at least one very successful D2 head coach applicant. Here's another interesting excerpt from the Tony Paul article that got me so angry. This appears to have been part of the Monday afternoon update to the article when he added Montgomery. Mann had been an assistant to Cuonzo Martin at Mizzou before Martin was fired and replaced by Dennis Gates. Again, you see the CSA template at work at GVSU - placing D1 assistants into head coaching jobs. |
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Post by titanmike on Mar 27, 2024 8:01:21 GMT -5
Let’s not forget that this according to Tony Paul. We don’t even know if he is correct. EXACTLY!!! |
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Post by royaloakdave on Mar 27, 2024 9:41:49 GMT -5
I was hoping Andy Bronkema from Ferris State would be given consideration. He has 10 years of head coaching experience with a record of 224–85 (.725).
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Post by dtowntitan on Mar 27, 2024 9:44:23 GMT -5
Based on this list of candidates... give me JR Blount from ISU. My thoughts on Blount.... He started at a D3 program, Wisconsin-Steven Point, and won the national championship. Moved on to Saint Leo, a private University, and then eventually Drake where he was at for four seasons. Moved on to Colorado State and eventually on to Iowa State. He has coached at every level, at every stop his teams have won. At every stop his recruiting classes have been highly rated. He has shown that he can recruit extremely well at the Mid-Major level, has been influential in the development of the players that he has recruited, some of which have went on to win player of the year for their conference. At each stop it appears that the win totals for the teams have increased during his time there, and has been involved in major program turn arounds already. All of this tells me that he knows what it takes to turn a program around, build a program, recruit and develop players, and win. He has ties to the midwest from his time at Loyola, from Milwaukee and various coaching stops. He is also the youngest of the group of 4. |
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Post by Commissioner on Mar 27, 2024 9:46:32 GMT -5
I was hoping Andy Bronkema from Ferris State would be given consideration. He has 10 years of head coaching experience with a record of 224–85 (.725). Me too. Perhaps he was, though. At the time of the Davis search, Michigan prep recruiting guru Steve Bell made a couple tweets that could be interpreted as suggesting that the University either had or was near to a deal with Bronkema, and then reneged. Don't know if that's what happened, as Bell's posts were kind of cryptic, but my sense was that we had burned bridges there. |
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Post by Commissioner on Mar 27, 2024 9:55:07 GMT -5
Based on this list of candidates... give me JR Blount from ISU. My thoughts on Blount.... He started at a D3 program, Wisconsin-Steven Point, and won the national championship. Moved on to Saint Leo, a private University, and then eventually Drake where he was at for four seasons. Moved on to Colorado State and eventually on to Iowa State. He has coached at every level, at every stop his teams have won. At every stop his recruiting classes have been highly rated. He has shown that he can recruit extremely well at the Mid-Major level, has been influential in the development of the players that he has recruited, some of which have went on to win player of the year for their conference. At each stop it appears that the win totals for the teams have increased during his time there, and has been involved in major program turn arounds already. All of this tells me that he knows what it takes to turn a program around, build a program, recruit and develop players, and win. He has ties to the midwest from his time at Loyola, from Milwaukee and various coaching stops. He is also the youngest of the group of 4. While I think that this is a competent group of four, and who knows, maybe one of the other three would emerge as a Dennis Gates-type success, Blount is the only one who much excites me, for the reasons you gave and for his youth. I do appreciate that it is a tough call for the people who have to make it. Another fiasco like Bacari (who looked solid on paper, loves the Titans, and understood what the fan base wanted--just not how to do any of it) or Willie McCarter, and it could be curtains on the program. So you'd be nervous about handing things over to a relatively unproven commodity such as Jordan Fee or Hassan Nizam. But it's hard for me to see the two older guys, Montgomery and Washington, really bringing the program the energy it needs. Haynes, maybe. But based on just what a typical fan can see (I continue to stress, we don't interview these guys, talk to their references, etc) Blount seems to me the easy choice if this is the final group. |
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Sept 2, 2015 17:18:54 GMT -5
Sept 2, 2015 17:18:54 GMT -5
