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Post by nycrusader2010 on Mar 2, 2022 8:23:12 GMT -5
CoVID is not an excuse, unless someone can convince me that there was no virus in upstate NY or at the eastern end of the Mass Pike. Based on what we've seen, and what can objectively be described as YTY improvement, would we just be hoping for a jump to a 13-18 record next year? That doesn't cut it for me. I'd rather have a "real deal" new coach next year who can really turn things around in the years that follow, as opposed to continuing on the present course toward "better mediocrity". 13-18 is in all likelihood where we'll end up next year with Nelson, which would almost undoubtedly result in a new coach being hired for 23-24. I still say the benchmark to extend him beyond next year would have to be Patriot League title contention. Hard to exactly define that but I'd go roughly with this -- 11+ league wins and within 2 or 3 games of the top team or teams in the standings. In addition, a PL tournament effort that is becoming of a contender which would roughly translates into a semifinal appearance at minimum. This past year I gave Nelson a "pass" on the non-conference as I called it effectively an exhibition season. I stated that my judgment of the program would lie primarily on how much we improved between the two run-throughs of the PL schedule. Nelson passed that test, but barely. We had a nice run and he clearly managed to not lose the team despite a very challenging first half of the season. So I have to give him credit there, but of course our 1-6 finish was disappointing as was losing the PL pillow-fight at home.
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Post by longsuffering on Mar 2, 2022 8:33:21 GMT -5
CoVID is not an excuse, unless someone can convince me that there was no virus in upstate NY or at the eastern end of the Mass Pike. Based on what we've seen, and what can objectively be described as YTY improvement, would we just be hoping for a jump to a 13-18 record next year? That doesn't cut it for me. I'd rather have a "real deal" new coach next year who can really turn things around in the years that follow, as opposed to continuing on the present course toward "better mediocrity". 13-18 is in all likelihood where we'll end up next year with Nelson, which would almost undoubtedly result in a new coach being hired for 23-24. I still say the benchmark to extend him beyond next year would have to be Patriot League title contention. Hard to exactly define that but I'd go roughly with this -- 11+ league wins and within 2 or 3 games of the top team or teams in the standings. In addition, a PL tournament effort that is becoming of a contender which would roughly translates into a semifinal appearance at minimum. This past year I gave Nelson a "pass" on the non-conference as I called it effectively an exhibition season. I stated that my judgment of the program would lie primarily on how much we improved between the two run-throughs of the PL schedule. Nelson passed that test, but barely. We had a nice run and he clearly managed to not lose the team despite a very challenging first half of the season. So I have to give him credit there, but of course our 1-6 finish was disappointing as was losing the PL pillow-fight at home. Best definition of a play-in game evah. "Pillow-fight"🤣
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Post by nycrusader2010 on Mar 2, 2022 8:38:39 GMT -5
13-18 is in all likelihood where we'll end up next year with Nelson, which would almost undoubtedly result in a new coach being hired for 23-24. I still say the benchmark to extend him beyond next year would have to be Patriot League title contention. Hard to exactly define that but I'd go roughly with this -- 11+ league wins and within 2 or 3 games of the top team or teams in the standings. In addition, a PL tournament effort that is becoming of a contender which would roughly translates into a semifinal appearance at minimum. This past year I gave Nelson a "pass" on the non-conference as I called it effectively an exhibition season. I stated that my judgment of the program would lie primarily on how much we improved between the two run-throughs of the PL schedule. Nelson passed that test, but barely. We had a nice run and he clearly managed to not lose the team despite a very challenging first half of the season. So I have to give him credit there, but of course our 1-6 finish was disappointing as was losing the PL pillow-fight at home. Best definition of a play-in game evah. "Pillow-fight"🤣 I first heard the term years ago when I used to attend the CAA tournament with my dad in Richmond in the late 90's and early 00's. During that stretch, the CAA had 9 teams and the bottom two would play in the "Friday night pillow-fight" as fans casually called it. Then Saturday would be the quarters, Sunday the semis and Monday the championship. Growing up a William & Mary fan during that time, we were bounced in the quarters basically every single year. CAA back then was: UNC Wilmington, Richmond, VCU, ODU, W&M, American, East Carolina, George Mason, James Madison
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Post by longsuffering on Mar 2, 2022 8:43:41 GMT -5
Best definition of a play-in game evah. "Pillow-fight"🤣 I first heard the term years ago when I used to attend the CAA tournament with my dad in Richmond in the late 90's and early 00's. During that stretch, the CAA had 9 teams and the bottom two would play in the "Friday night pillow-fight" as fans casually called it. Then Saturday would be the quarters, Sunday the semis and Monday the championship. Growing up a William & Mary fan during that time, we were bounced in the quarters basically every single year. CAA back then was: UNC Wilmington, Richmond, VCU, ODU, W&M, American, East Carolina, George Mason, James Madison Super geographic integrity for that league compilation of teams.
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Post by bigfan on Mar 2, 2022 8:46:07 GMT -5
We lost all of our basketball tradition when we joined the PL. I know that people will knock me for this but the facts are that the league is holding us back. Just watch the Big East & A10 on TV and see the fans and students into the game. We seldom have more than 25 students attending the games. Time to upgrade the schedule and you will see the improvement in recruiting better players. Right now we are a poor shooting team.
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Post by Non Alum Dave on Mar 2, 2022 8:46:25 GMT -5
In hindsight, CBN probably would have been better off taking his first head coaching job at a Big West, Big South or Summit League type of school, where he would have been able to recruit/coach more in line with what he grew up with.
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Post by hchoops on Mar 2, 2022 8:50:25 GMT -5
We are #349 out of 358. Even if Nelson is given a pass on the first two years, this is not an improvement. We lost 6 of our last 7, including a season ending home loss to the last place team in a game where Nelson made no adjustments after AU beat us the same way for the third time. There is no improvement here.
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Post by Ray on Mar 2, 2022 8:59:31 GMT -5
I'm not at all optimistic, but I still lean toward giving him another year, with clearly-defined expectations (for instance: over .500 overall, top-4 in the league, advance to PL final). I think the rookie AD is a huge issue. Give Kit a full year to evaluate the program, build a list of possible candidates and mine his network about them. Basically, it's a lesser evil to give Nelson another year and the chance to prove me wrong by taking a step forward, than to make yet another bad hire now, and sentence us to another half-decade lost in the wilderness. This presumes that we will make another bad hire . Couldn’t the presumption be a good/ very good coach ? We did it in football. No, because I think that’s a really tall order for a rookie AD in his second month on the job.
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Post by Sons of Vaval on Mar 2, 2022 9:31:57 GMT -5
In hindsight, CBN probably would have been better off taking his first head coaching job at a Big West, Big South or Summit League type of school, where he would have been able to recruit/coach more in line with what he grew up with. Without question. I've said it time and time again, but he's just a fish out of water at HC from a geographical, academic, school size, and "type of student" perspective. Colorado State VCU Marshall Arkansas Drake Ball State Marquette Holy Cross Which school doesn't belong?
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Post by gks on Mar 2, 2022 9:33:29 GMT -5
Our current football coach didn't come from the sacred walls of PL, Ivy, etc. How's he doing?
The fish out of water excuse is nothing but that. You can either recruit and coach or not. I don't care where you are.
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Post by Tom on Mar 2, 2022 9:34:56 GMT -5
I voted to keep Nelson for another year as I have seen progress against all PL teams except American. However, my opinion is based upon the players returning next year. If they make a mad dash for the transfer portal now that the season is over . . .? Then we would need a new coach.100%. Hope that doesn't take place. That would be a scenario where cutting ties now and initiating an immediate search is the only option. I hope all of our guys stick around. From what I saw at the more recent games I attended, we seem to have a cohesive group. The elated team I saw running off the court together at West Point is the group I hope to see next year, in addition to RJJ and our incoming recruits/transfers. Maybe Gates moves on, maybe he stays ( if he even can academically at liberal arts Holy Cross) -- wish him the best either way. As we suspected and Coach Evans confirmed at chalk talk, the original plan was for Gates to sit out last season and play this year and next. Coach Evans said he has been taking a normal course load all along. My read on that sentence was that he didn't take extra classes to make up for credits that didn't transfer from New Orleans, distribution requirements, and major at HC requirements. I think there is zero issue with Gates struggling to figure out an academic way to stay in Worcester another year. It would be a bigger hurtle for him or anyone transferring in after two years to figure out an academic way to graduate in just eight total semesters
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Post by Tom on Mar 2, 2022 9:39:13 GMT -5
Not sure whether it helps or hurts BN’s case to stay but we will only have one scholarship to recruit for in the high school class of 2023 unless we lose some to the portal. If we give him another year, the new guy is going to be way behind schedule in April 2023 filling a massive class entering HC in 2024. I think you're missing one. Current roster has 12 scholarships for next year. If HC brings in a transfer via the portal and makes that number 13, then you are correct, the only opening for the high school class of 2023 would be Gates spot. Without a transfer in, there could be two spots for the high school class of 2023 even without any transfers out
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Post by Sons of Vaval on Mar 2, 2022 9:40:22 GMT -5
Our current football coach didn't come from the sacred walls of PL, Ivy, etc. How's he doing? The fish out of water excuse is nothing but that. You can either recruit and coach or not. I don't care where you are. Chesney spent his entire career as a head coach in New England, played and coached at higher-academic schools (Dickinson and Johns Hopkins), and had eight years under his belt of running his own programs. That's significant.
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Post by crusader1970 on Mar 2, 2022 9:43:50 GMT -5
We are #349 out of 358. Even if Nelson is given a pass on the first two years, this is not an improvement. We lost 6 of our last 7, including a season ending home loss to the last place team in a game where Nelson made no adjustments after AU beat us the same way for the third time. There is no improvement here. Well stated. Could not agree more.
Based on what we have seen, to think that magically Nelson is going to take this group and contend for a PL Championship is just not logical. There is absolutely nothing there to expect that.
Bringing him back for another year is just putting off the inevitable.
This is NOT the coach who will breathe life and enthusiasm back into the HC program.
He was a bad fit from the day he walked on campus.
IMO it may be a difficult conversation but it is time for our new AD to step up and get this thing going in the right direction NOW....not after another disappointing year.
Kit did a great job extending Chesney. It's now time for him to make another decisive move.
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Post by gks on Mar 2, 2022 9:46:39 GMT -5
Our current football coach didn't come from the sacred walls of PL, Ivy, etc. How's he doing? The fish out of water excuse is nothing but that. You can either recruit and coach or not. I don't care where you are. Chesney spent his entire career as a head coach in New England, played and coached at higher-academic schools (Dickinson and Johns Hopkins), and had eight years under his belt of running his own programs. That's significant. He came from Assumption. USNews.com says their acceptance rate is 80%.
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Post by jkh67 on Mar 2, 2022 9:59:58 GMT -5
Our current football coach didn't come from the sacred walls of PL, Ivy, etc. How's he doing? The fish out of water excuse is nothing but that. You can either recruit and coach or not. I don't care where you are. Chesney spent his entire career as a head coach in New England, played and coached at higher-academic schools (Dickinson and Johns Hopkins), and had eight years under his belt of running his own programs. That's significant. I expect you're right. The year Nelson was hired, I had a chat with a former HC b'ball player who is now an HS coach in the NYC area. He was very concerned about hiring someone with no head coaching experience and emphasized the difficulties of stepping up from assistant coach to the head man even at a program like HC.
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Post by lou on Mar 2, 2022 10:02:30 GMT -5
Director of Athletics is not an entry level position. I expect someone in this job to make big decisions right away if necessary, when he accepts the offer. I for one do not want to wait while Kit gains experience and decides the inevitable a year from now, that nothing has changed regarding men's basketball. We still stink
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Post by bringbackcaro on Mar 2, 2022 10:04:04 GMT -5
We are #349 out of 358. Even if Nelson is given a pass on the first two years, this is not an improvement. We lost 6 of our last 7, including a season ending home loss to the last place team in a game where Nelson made no adjustments after AU beat us the same way for the third time. There is no improvement here. To say there is no improvement in the program is just plain wrong. 1) We won 5 of 6 in Jan/Feb (or 6 of 9), and may have been playing our best basketball outside of the Carmody pLT 1-3-1 fluke in over a decade. 2) The roster is in exponentially better shape than what Nelson inherited. In July 2019, Nelson inherited absolutely nothing in the Frosh and Soph classes -- two guys in Lowder & Pridgen who had a 0.0% chance of making it anywhere near 4 years at HC, and other guys who weren't D1 players, 0 Senior contributors, and a Junior class that was a mess. There was no positional balance, no athleticism, no thought behind how the pieces fit together -- just a total disaster. Contrast that with where we are today -- returning a two-time all pL player, pL ROY, a major shift towards positional balance (assuming Rabinovich is ever healthy), exponentially more athleticism, competing with legit D1 programs for recruits, etc. etc. Certainly fair to say that the program may not be improving as quickly as you'd like, but saying that there has been no improvement from the disaster that Carmody left behind is just such a disingenuous take.
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Post by bringbackcaro on Mar 2, 2022 10:19:18 GMT -5
I'm not at all optimistic, but I still lean toward giving him another year, with clearly-defined expectations (for instance: over .500 overall, top-4 in the league, advance to PL final). I think the rookie AD is a huge issue. Give Kit a full year to evaluate the program, build a list of possible candidates and mine his network about them. Basically, it's a lesser evil to give Nelson another year and the chance to prove me wrong by taking a step forward, than to make yet another bad hire now, and sentence us to another half-decade lost in the wilderness. I think this post nails it. The team played hard all year , which means to me that Nelson never lost the team. Apart from Gates this was a very young and inexperienced team. When I watched them play teams like Colgate and BU I thought: these teams are not more talented than HC, but teams loaded with seniors and grad students have a huge advantage. I'm not a big fan of Nelson as a coach but I think he will, and probably should, get another year. This is the correct take. On the subject of Colgate and BU, these two teams both lost a ton this year (and maybe their coaches as well if they want to try and follow their loaded Senior classes out the door). Colgate brings back 0 contributing guards, and BU returns basically nobody. Next year the door is wide open for HC to shoot up the standings, and should be the year that Nelson was building towards. Starting from scratch with a new coach now is just a really bad idea. The correct move for ADKH to make is sign Nelson to an extension that voids if strong performance thresholds are not met for next year, as a show of support to the current roster and recruits, and give Nelson an opportunity that he has earned to coach a roster with upperclassmen. If the program was marred in the wake of a bunch of miscreants getting kicked off the team/out of school like the previous coach (who still had his fair share of bag carriers around here) and issues off the court, it may be a different decision at this point. But to fire Nelson just because he isn't a magician who could turn around a train wreck program in 2.5 years in the midst of a global pandemic is going to look really bad for anyone taking a look at the program from the outside. Nothing against Kit Hughes, but he was at Bowling Green when they hired Chris Jans (https://www.si.com/college/2015/04/02/chris-jans-bowling-green-state-fired), and NC State when they hired Mark Gottfried (https://www.si.com/college/2019/03/09/former-nc-state-coach-mark-gottfried-connected-ncaa-fraud-trial), and his background is in Lax. He doesn't exactly have a resume that says he is prepared to make an extremely quick decision on hiring a new basketball coach at HC.
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Post by Ignutz on Mar 2, 2022 10:19:37 GMT -5
Best definition of a play-in game evah. "Pillow-fight"🤣 I first heard the term years ago when I used to attend the CAA tournament with my dad in Richmond in the late 90's and early 00's. During that stretch, the CAA had 9 teams and the bottom two would play in the "Friday night pillow-fight" as fans casually called it. Then Saturday would be the quarters, Sunday the semis and Monday the championship. Growing up a William & Mary fan during that time, we were bounced in the quarters basically every single year. CAA back then was: UNC Wilmington, Richmond, VCU, ODU, W&M, American, East Carolina, George Mason, James Madison They can have American back whenever they'd like to - and not just because of this year's results. I've never seen AU as a fit with the original PL make-up, and feel that the PL benefits AU's image a lot more than the converse.
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Post by trimster on Mar 2, 2022 10:25:19 GMT -5
To say we are playing our best basketball in over a decade is passing an exceedingly low bar. Overall, HC had another dreadful season and I have little optimism for anything over .500 next season. I think you are really overrating the talent level of this roster and I see little evidence our coach has the ability to make the whole greater than the sum of the parts. To end the season with a performance eerily similar to the Quinnipiac game 4 months ago in which we were backdoored to death, was a huge disappointment. The cherry on top of the sundae came at the end of first half interview where BN threw his players under the bus with some of the few words he has spoken to the media in three years. Between that, the Senior Day fiasco of not starting DJ Hart and allowing Colgate to dribble out clock uncontested, it was a tough week for CBN. Hopefully he learned from it.
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Post by WCHC Sports on Mar 2, 2022 10:25:29 GMT -5
My initial reaction is that if we fire BN, we won't be in a better spot next year. We'll undoubtedly have a bunch of players transfer out, because that's the excuse/trigger these days for players to bail on a school. HC has had enough players come and go without fulfillment/success in the program. I don't want any more of that.
I also will be furious when the new coach comes in, sucks year one, does okay in year two, sucks in year three and then I have to read hundreds of posts here saying, "The talent pool was barren when he got here," then, "He still has to bring in his players," and then, "We have to see how the recruits pan out," and then, "It's tough to recruit in the PL."
So I think those things, and then I say, we finished with abysmal records and terrible national ranking with all those players, and we can do so without them. It's akin to saying that I'm tired of this long and arduous medical treatment, but even though the ailment still remains, I am going to give up on taking the steps to get healthy and cure it. Not prudent... we'll never get better.
So I have to be Darth Vader in my management methods. I have to separate the person and how "good" they are and not think of the consequences for family, for their future job prospects, etc. from the role I need filled and the job I need done. I need success. I need wins. I need growth and development. I need an EXEMPLARY representative of the school, in what should be a highly-visible, national role. I need the person who can turn chicken scratch into chicken salad.
Did BN do those things? No. So I voted to move forward without him. HC forever.
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Post by jkh67 on Mar 2, 2022 10:27:06 GMT -5
Last night's game was a major disappointment. The defense was more than porous against a team we had already played twice and the offensive performance was poor. (If there was a game plan beyond passing the ball around the outside and then forcing it in to Gates for difficult shots with the clock running down, it wasn't apparent to me.) Beyond that, my sense all year has been that our players are generally not quick and are at best mediocre shooters in the main. (That's not meant as a knock on the players. They put out all year, as best I could tell. How talented some of them are is the question.) And the lack of a good big man in the middle has been a glaring problem all year long.
All other things being the same, I would cut the cord with Nelson now. But all other things are not the same. First and foremost, getting the right guy the next time is absolutely essential and that will likely take a lot of time. So, unless the AD can pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat in the short term, I would stick with Nelson for another year and hope for the best.
Until the football team arrived en masse (kudos to them), I thought the turn out for the game last night was embarrassing. The lack of enthusiasm was deafening. On the other side of the coin, there were about 75 people logged on to the Crossports site, a graphic demonstration of the continuing interest in Crusader basketball. TPTB need to understand that basketball is a key part of HC's genetic inheritance. We can...and must...do much, much better on the hardwood. It's up to the President and Board of Trustees.
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Post by lou on Mar 2, 2022 10:36:28 GMT -5
"My initial reaction is that if we fire BN, we won't be in a better spot next year"
Well here's where we disagree
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Post by hchoops on Mar 2, 2022 10:36:52 GMT -5
304 (3-29) 344 (5-11) 349(as of this AM) (7[9]-22) Pomeroy rankings and records from ‘20-‘22 Improvement ?
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