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And Oklahoma may now be in after beating Baylor.fordham96 post=463406 said:
X does not deserve to be in, as someone said elsewhere, as they do not pass the eye test.
I hate Indiana, and their smugness, in the game they (and the refs) stole from us.
As Lee Corso would say "not so fast my friend"--Remember the Syracuse play for pay scandal? Official records for 2005-06 and 2006-07 had wins vacated due the scandal. So technically he had 2 losing seasons,stjohnnie75 post=462724 said:
jerseyshorejohnny
Well-known member
Kyle Neptune is always on the move
Zach Braziller
March 9, 2022
Fordham’s first-year head coach is a man in motion all day — every day — planning, coaching, recruiting and fund-raising for a program that is just starting to awaken from three decades of basketball hibernation.It’s 8 a.m. and Kyle Neptune’s flatscreen television is showing the edited version of La Salle-Richmond.
Sitting next to assistant coach Tray Woodall in his Midtown apartment, he attempts to find weaknesses in his team’s next opponent.It is the start of a 14-hour day for the Brooklyn native and former Villanova assistant coach, one that will include staff and planning meetings, practice, film study and recruiting. Once the day begins, Neptune is nonstop. His phone rarely stops buzzing.
Opposing coaches, parents and media members are on the other line.The man tasked with reviving Fordham’s long dormant men’s basketball program is in high demand as he nears the tail-end of a surprisingly successful first season — compared to recent years for the Rams. They enter Thursday’s Atlantic 10 Tournament opener against George Mason 15-15 and 8-10 in the conference, their best season in six years.His job is hectic, but so far enjoyable.
He never saw this as career suicide, as some have described coaching at Fordham in the past.Kyle Neptune has given a Fordham men’s basketball program that hasn’t posted a winning league season since 2007 a sense that better days are ahead.
Corey Sipkin“Wow,” the 37-year-old bearded first-year head coach says, as he allows The Post to follow him through a day in his life as he attempts to make Fordham into a winner, something they have accomplished only twice in the last two decades. “Is that what they say?”“Twelve minutes to go, 44 points, is too much for us,” Neptune says to Woodall, as the two continue to study the La Salle-Richmond game.
They alternate between small talk and scouting, joking about a player embellishing his height and identifying the players La Salle — who Fordham will face the next day — goes to when it needs a basket. They single out those they don’t have to guard and how the Explorers defend ball screens and post-ups.
The conversation shifts to the best players in the Atlantic 10. Neptune cares about one thing.“Who wins?” he asks. “Who makes their team win? Everyone has a leading scorer.”At 9:30 a.m. the film session is put on hold for a staff meeting over Zoom. Neptune’s assistants are scattered. Keith Urgo is in Florida recruiting.
Woodall is next to Neptune. Director of operations Henry Lowe will meet Neptune at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus for a different meeting.Neptune tells his staff a reporter is shadowing him for the day, so keep it clean. Urgo, an animated and experienced coach with nearly 20 years in the business, yells out: “Just know it’s a great f–king day to be a Ram.
”The meeting starts with the staff breaking down the schedule over the next few days. When told the team isn’t flying for a road game at Massachusetts, Neptune is stunned.Neptune spends time breaking down game video with his players after he has already done the same hours earlier with his coaching staff.Corey Sipkin“
What? Busing to UMass? Why are we busing?” he asks.When reminded it’s only two-and-a-half hours, Neptune changes his tune.“OK, good point,” he replies.Senior Night plans are discussed, as is the uncertain status of injured guard Darius Quisenberry, the team’s leading scorer who may or may not return to school next year. Then comes practice, and how it will be divided up later that day.
When it comes time for individual skill development, Neptune wants his star senior, Chuba Ohams, spending extra time at the free-throw line, where he shoots 61.9 percent, and whose 1-for-4 performance at the line opened the door to an overtime loss to George Mason in the Rams’ previous game.“We scored 50 points [in our last game].
Five free throws would be 10 percent of our points. That’s valuable s–t,” Neptune says. “That’s the biggest jump we can make.“Maybe I’ll come out and start talking to him a little bit. Somebody needs to be with him making sure he finishes on his toes, making sure he holds his follow through, making sure the ball comes off his index finger and middle finger, making sure his elbow finishes above his head, and he’s not bringing his arm down. … [George Mason] makes that 3-pointer [in our last game] and then we lose in overtime, we’ll go back and go, Jesus Christ, you know?
”Urgo breaks down the latest in recruiting, a player Fordham is involved with who will be deciding soon and an official visit that is booked. The player wants to bring his family, brother and girlfriend on the visit. There is internal debate if Fordham can pay for all of them to visit. Neptune wants them to check with compliance.
The girlfriend may attempt to attend Fordham if the player picks the school, and she can afford it.“Who has 80 grand a year?” Neptune wonders.“Kyle Neptune,” Urgo cracks.“Listen, if I had a kid right now they would be going to BMCC,” he says, referring to the Borough of Manhattan Community College
.It is 11:30 a.m. when Neptune hops into his sleek silver Tesla, as he heads to Lincoln Center to meet with Lowe for a conference call with Fordham athletic director Ed Kull. He is cut off a few times, and admits he has had to relearn how to drive in New York City after spending so much time elsewhere over the last decade, as an assistant coach at Villanova and Niagara.
“It should be a new license,” he says.After meetings with his staff, Neptune drives into the city for another meeting to review new financial contributors to the athletic program. Corey SipkinHe’s a good fit — for the city and the school. Fordham wanted a coach who exuded youth, who had experience as a winner and had local ties.
Neptune checked all the boxes.In a boardroom at Lincoln Center, Kull is on the speakerphone talking about the upcoming Atlantic 10 Tournament and the financial inroads that have been made. Big money donors, like Vitamin Water co-founder Mike Repole and Florida Panthers owner Vincent Viola, are now involved with Fordham.
An unnamed donor recently donated $250,000 in cryptocurrency.“A little bit of a foreign language to some of our folks in finance,” Kull says.Another donor, who prefers to remain anonymous for this story, is planning to attend the La Salle game, and Neptune offers to meet with him for a pregame chat.
The donor will be at the Atlantic 10 Tournament. After a recent win, Neptune spoke to the person. He wanted three more wins — and a new free-throw coach, Kull adds.“I’ll take all the help we can get,” Neptune jokes
.Since Fordham hired Neptune, it has raised more than $5 million through its New Era Fund, spearheaded by Kull — who officially took over as AD last February.For lunch, Neptune drops into his favorite deli,
The Market at Mercedes House, owned by childhood friend Al Vora. He orders a chicken parmesan sandwich, his regular.“I have a simple palette,” he says.The two go back to the sixth grade. Neptune is the toughest competitor Vora has ever met. It could be a game of Monopoly or cards, and he has to win.
That’s obvious during the course of the day, when the topic of Neptune’s old school — Villanova — is broached regarding its chances in March or his refusal to allow his current team to be graded on a curve compared to Fordham’s past groups. He won’t lose a debate.“He lives for challenges,” Vora says.
That’s not to suggest Neptune is hardheaded. He is comfortable in his own skin, avoiding any temptation to flex his muscles as the boss. Neptune, according to Lowe, empowers his staff.“He’s an extremely self-aware guy that knows what he doesn’t know and knows what he does know,” said Lowe, who came from Villanova with Neptune
.In 11 years as an assistant with Jay Wright, Neptune helped Villanova capture two national championships before leaving for Fordham last spring.
Porter BinksIt’s an approach he took from Villanova coach Jay Wright, for whom Neptune worked for 11 seasons.
Everyone knew Wright was in charge, although he didn’t make a point of reminding them. He didn’t carry an air of superiority, and neither does Neptune.“My role is the head coach, but that doesn’t make me better than anyone else,” he says.Practice starts with a brief film breakdown of the end of the George Mason game, a three-point Fordham win that nearly went to overtime. Neptune is breaking down the last play, which included a missed assignment and an open 3-pointer for George Mason that was off the mark.
He illustrates what went wrong calmly, emphasizing the need for his players to talk to each other more.On offense, Fordham is working on looking at the rim at all times to create the idea of a threat. The Rams focus on driving, cutting and passing on the move, much like Villanova and Wright. Making the defense work and finding the best possible shot.
Asked about the practice later, he says: “a lot of the things [Jay] does, and the way he runs his program, I really, truly believe in. … Some of our concepts are based on some of the things they do.”A few times, Neptune raises his voice. But mostly he offers advice without yelling. He is nonstop motion, sprinting at one juncture to get his point across after a defensive mistake.
Not surprisingly, Neptune has utilized a lot of Villanova’s playbook in installing a system at Fordham that emphasizes moving and passing.Corey Sipkin“He’s all over the court, as much as we are,” Ohams says.Ohams, a senior forward averaging 14.6 points and 11.5 rebounds per game, has been a key figure this season for the Rams, who have had their share of roster upheaval. One of Fordham’s top guards, Antonio Daye Jr., left the school in mid-January. Quisenberry missed five games with a knee injury.
Ohams has been a constant, the first big recruit of Neptune’s tenure. When he took the job, Ohams, a Bronx native, was in the transfer portal. Neptune didn’t try to sell himself at the start. He focused on what Ohams needed to do to finish the year strong academically, and ideas he had to help him develop as a player. It made the decision to stay easy for one reason.“Kyle Neptune,” Ohams says.
Neptune’s day ends in Queens, at Christ the King High School for the Catholic League playoffs. He is recruiting — kind of. Moreso, he is showing his face and support for the local high school programs. A handful of people in the grassroots community come by to shake his hand and chat.
He doesn’t have a Fordham shirt on, and while that is not by design, there is significance behind it. Neptune wants people in the basketball community to eventually know him so well they recognize him without his school colors.“Over time, if people don’t know who you are, you aren’t doing your job,” he says.
Throughout the day, Neptune is asked about the challenges of the job, about the roadblocks that have stood in the way of his predecessors, about why Fordham has struggled so mightily over the past 30 years.
A long day of meetings, coaching and game preparations ends at Christ the King High School in Queens, where Neptune hopes to not only find potential recruits, but raise his profile in the city’s basketball community.
Corey SipkinThe Rams haven’t reached the NCAA Tournament since 1992, when they were in the Patriot League. They last had a winning league season in 2007. The best players in the program’s recent history have transferred.What happened before, he responds, is irrelevant. He wasn’t the coach then.
His staff wasn’t in place. Kull wasn’t the athletic director. He views this as a startup company now that the school is operating differently.Fordham has pledged to put more money into basketball in its quest to build a winner. The team is now taking chartered flights for the first time.
More money is being allotted to cover recruiting costs and the budget was increased for the coaching staff, enabling Neptune to land Urgo from Penn State and Woodall from St. Bonaventure.
The donations Kull has raised will help fund a foreign tour this summer, renovations at Rose Hill Gymnasium and to upgrade the basketball team’s locker room and offices
.“With Ed and the school’s commitment to being good at basketball, this is a completely different job than it was,” Neptune insists.He is convinced this is a new era of Fordham basketball, and will be unlike the last three decades.
Neptune has a four-star recruit, New Jersey guard Will Richardson, signed for next year’s class and he overachieved in his first season. The goal is to one day build a championship team. Others have made similar proclamations. Neptune is certain he can make it happen
.“I wouldn’t be here,” he says, “if I didn’t think we could do it at Fordham.”
Zach Braziller
March 9, 2022
Fordham’s first-year head coach is a man in motion all day — every day — planning, coaching, recruiting and fund-raising for a program that is just starting to awaken from three decades of basketball hibernation.It’s 8 a.m. and Kyle Neptune’s flatscreen television is showing the edited version of La Salle-Richmond.
Sitting next to assistant coach Tray Woodall in his Midtown apartment, he attempts to find weaknesses in his team’s next opponent.It is the start of a 14-hour day for the Brooklyn native and former Villanova assistant coach, one that will include staff and planning meetings, practice, film study and recruiting. Once the day begins, Neptune is nonstop. His phone rarely stops buzzing.
Opposing coaches, parents and media members are on the other line.The man tasked with reviving Fordham’s long dormant men’s basketball program is in high demand as he nears the tail-end of a surprisingly successful first season — compared to recent years for the Rams. They enter Thursday’s Atlantic 10 Tournament opener against George Mason 15-15 and 8-10 in the conference, their best season in six years.His job is hectic, but so far enjoyable.
He never saw this as career suicide, as some have described coaching at Fordham in the past.Kyle Neptune has given a Fordham men’s basketball program that hasn’t posted a winning league season since 2007 a sense that better days are ahead.
Corey Sipkin“Wow,” the 37-year-old bearded first-year head coach says, as he allows The Post to follow him through a day in his life as he attempts to make Fordham into a winner, something they have accomplished only twice in the last two decades. “Is that what they say?”“Twelve minutes to go, 44 points, is too much for us,” Neptune says to Woodall, as the two continue to study the La Salle-Richmond game.
They alternate between small talk and scouting, joking about a player embellishing his height and identifying the players La Salle — who Fordham will face the next day — goes to when it needs a basket. They single out those they don’t have to guard and how the Explorers defend ball screens and post-ups.
The conversation shifts to the best players in the Atlantic 10. Neptune cares about one thing.“Who wins?” he asks. “Who makes their team win? Everyone has a leading scorer.”At 9:30 a.m. the film session is put on hold for a staff meeting over Zoom. Neptune’s assistants are scattered. Keith Urgo is in Florida recruiting.
Woodall is next to Neptune. Director of operations Henry Lowe will meet Neptune at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus for a different meeting.Neptune tells his staff a reporter is shadowing him for the day, so keep it clean. Urgo, an animated and experienced coach with nearly 20 years in the business, yells out: “Just know it’s a great f–king day to be a Ram.
”The meeting starts with the staff breaking down the schedule over the next few days. When told the team isn’t flying for a road game at Massachusetts, Neptune is stunned.Neptune spends time breaking down game video with his players after he has already done the same hours earlier with his coaching staff.Corey Sipkin“
What? Busing to UMass? Why are we busing?” he asks.When reminded it’s only two-and-a-half hours, Neptune changes his tune.“OK, good point,” he replies.Senior Night plans are discussed, as is the uncertain status of injured guard Darius Quisenberry, the team’s leading scorer who may or may not return to school next year. Then comes practice, and how it will be divided up later that day.
When it comes time for individual skill development, Neptune wants his star senior, Chuba Ohams, spending extra time at the free-throw line, where he shoots 61.9 percent, and whose 1-for-4 performance at the line opened the door to an overtime loss to George Mason in the Rams’ previous game.“We scored 50 points [in our last game].
Five free throws would be 10 percent of our points. That’s valuable s–t,” Neptune says. “That’s the biggest jump we can make.“Maybe I’ll come out and start talking to him a little bit. Somebody needs to be with him making sure he finishes on his toes, making sure he holds his follow through, making sure the ball comes off his index finger and middle finger, making sure his elbow finishes above his head, and he’s not bringing his arm down. … [George Mason] makes that 3-pointer [in our last game] and then we lose in overtime, we’ll go back and go, Jesus Christ, you know?
”Urgo breaks down the latest in recruiting, a player Fordham is involved with who will be deciding soon and an official visit that is booked. The player wants to bring his family, brother and girlfriend on the visit. There is internal debate if Fordham can pay for all of them to visit. Neptune wants them to check with compliance.
The girlfriend may attempt to attend Fordham if the player picks the school, and she can afford it.“Who has 80 grand a year?” Neptune wonders.“Kyle Neptune,” Urgo cracks.“Listen, if I had a kid right now they would be going to BMCC,” he says, referring to the Borough of Manhattan Community College
.It is 11:30 a.m. when Neptune hops into his sleek silver Tesla, as he heads to Lincoln Center to meet with Lowe for a conference call with Fordham athletic director Ed Kull. He is cut off a few times, and admits he has had to relearn how to drive in New York City after spending so much time elsewhere over the last decade, as an assistant coach at Villanova and Niagara.
“It should be a new license,” he says.After meetings with his staff, Neptune drives into the city for another meeting to review new financial contributors to the athletic program. Corey SipkinHe’s a good fit — for the city and the school. Fordham wanted a coach who exuded youth, who had experience as a winner and had local ties.
Neptune checked all the boxes.In a boardroom at Lincoln Center, Kull is on the speakerphone talking about the upcoming Atlantic 10 Tournament and the financial inroads that have been made. Big money donors, like Vitamin Water co-founder Mike Repole and Florida Panthers owner Vincent Viola, are now involved with Fordham.
An unnamed donor recently donated $250,000 in cryptocurrency.“A little bit of a foreign language to some of our folks in finance,” Kull says.Another donor, who prefers to remain anonymous for this story, is planning to attend the La Salle game, and Neptune offers to meet with him for a pregame chat.
The donor will be at the Atlantic 10 Tournament. After a recent win, Neptune spoke to the person. He wanted three more wins — and a new free-throw coach, Kull adds.“I’ll take all the help we can get,” Neptune jokes
.Since Fordham hired Neptune, it has raised more than $5 million through its New Era Fund, spearheaded by Kull — who officially took over as AD last February.For lunch, Neptune drops into his favorite deli,
The Market at Mercedes House, owned by childhood friend Al Vora. He orders a chicken parmesan sandwich, his regular.“I have a simple palette,” he says.The two go back to the sixth grade. Neptune is the toughest competitor Vora has ever met. It could be a game of Monopoly or cards, and he has to win.
That’s obvious during the course of the day, when the topic of Neptune’s old school — Villanova — is broached regarding its chances in March or his refusal to allow his current team to be graded on a curve compared to Fordham’s past groups. He won’t lose a debate.“He lives for challenges,” Vora says.
That’s not to suggest Neptune is hardheaded. He is comfortable in his own skin, avoiding any temptation to flex his muscles as the boss. Neptune, according to Lowe, empowers his staff.“He’s an extremely self-aware guy that knows what he doesn’t know and knows what he does know,” said Lowe, who came from Villanova with Neptune
.In 11 years as an assistant with Jay Wright, Neptune helped Villanova capture two national championships before leaving for Fordham last spring.
Porter BinksIt’s an approach he took from Villanova coach Jay Wright, for whom Neptune worked for 11 seasons.
Everyone knew Wright was in charge, although he didn’t make a point of reminding them. He didn’t carry an air of superiority, and neither does Neptune.“My role is the head coach, but that doesn’t make me better than anyone else,” he says.Practice starts with a brief film breakdown of the end of the George Mason game, a three-point Fordham win that nearly went to overtime. Neptune is breaking down the last play, which included a missed assignment and an open 3-pointer for George Mason that was off the mark.
He illustrates what went wrong calmly, emphasizing the need for his players to talk to each other more.On offense, Fordham is working on looking at the rim at all times to create the idea of a threat. The Rams focus on driving, cutting and passing on the move, much like Villanova and Wright. Making the defense work and finding the best possible shot.
Asked about the practice later, he says: “a lot of the things [Jay] does, and the way he runs his program, I really, truly believe in. … Some of our concepts are based on some of the things they do.”A few times, Neptune raises his voice. But mostly he offers advice without yelling. He is nonstop motion, sprinting at one juncture to get his point across after a defensive mistake.
Not surprisingly, Neptune has utilized a lot of Villanova’s playbook in installing a system at Fordham that emphasizes moving and passing.Corey Sipkin“He’s all over the court, as much as we are,” Ohams says.Ohams, a senior forward averaging 14.6 points and 11.5 rebounds per game, has been a key figure this season for the Rams, who have had their share of roster upheaval. One of Fordham’s top guards, Antonio Daye Jr., left the school in mid-January. Quisenberry missed five games with a knee injury.
Ohams has been a constant, the first big recruit of Neptune’s tenure. When he took the job, Ohams, a Bronx native, was in the transfer portal. Neptune didn’t try to sell himself at the start. He focused on what Ohams needed to do to finish the year strong academically, and ideas he had to help him develop as a player. It made the decision to stay easy for one reason.“Kyle Neptune,” Ohams says.
Neptune’s day ends in Queens, at Christ the King High School for the Catholic League playoffs. He is recruiting — kind of. Moreso, he is showing his face and support for the local high school programs. A handful of people in the grassroots community come by to shake his hand and chat.
He doesn’t have a Fordham shirt on, and while that is not by design, there is significance behind it. Neptune wants people in the basketball community to eventually know him so well they recognize him without his school colors.“Over time, if people don’t know who you are, you aren’t doing your job,” he says.
Throughout the day, Neptune is asked about the challenges of the job, about the roadblocks that have stood in the way of his predecessors, about why Fordham has struggled so mightily over the past 30 years.
A long day of meetings, coaching and game preparations ends at Christ the King High School in Queens, where Neptune hopes to not only find potential recruits, but raise his profile in the city’s basketball community.
Corey SipkinThe Rams haven’t reached the NCAA Tournament since 1992, when they were in the Patriot League. They last had a winning league season in 2007. The best players in the program’s recent history have transferred.What happened before, he responds, is irrelevant. He wasn’t the coach then.
His staff wasn’t in place. Kull wasn’t the athletic director. He views this as a startup company now that the school is operating differently.Fordham has pledged to put more money into basketball in its quest to build a winner. The team is now taking chartered flights for the first time.
More money is being allotted to cover recruiting costs and the budget was increased for the coaching staff, enabling Neptune to land Urgo from Penn State and Woodall from St. Bonaventure.
The donations Kull has raised will help fund a foreign tour this summer, renovations at Rose Hill Gymnasium and to upgrade the basketball team’s locker room and offices
.“With Ed and the school’s commitment to being good at basketball, this is a completely different job than it was,” Neptune insists.He is convinced this is a new era of Fordham basketball, and will be unlike the last three decades.
Neptune has a four-star recruit, New Jersey guard Will Richardson, signed for next year’s class and he overachieved in his first season. The goal is to one day build a championship team. Others have made similar proclamations. Neptune is certain he can make it happen
.“I wouldn’t be here,” he says, “if I didn’t think we could do it at Fordham.”
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Kull / Neptune
Cragg / Anderson
I'd sign up for first pair.
Cragg / Anderson
I'd sign up for first pair.
Last edited:
And his replacement at Virginia Tech, Mike Young, has a done a really good job at a very difficult place to win. They are about to bounce Duke in the ACC Tourney Final.
Buzz did a phenomenal job at Va Tech and it looks like Va Tech hit a home run on his replacement. Young seems like a no nonsense solid coach coming from Wofford.
They needed a late 3 to beat Clemson and then preceded to wax UNC and Duke to win the ACC Tourney title.
Buzz did a phenomenal job at Va Tech and it looks like Va Tech hit a home run on his replacement. Young seems like a no nonsense solid coach coming from Wofford.
They needed a late 3 to beat Clemson and then preceded to wax UNC and Duke to win the ACC Tourney title.
As Fordham and Bama said in their Posts , VA Tech bounced Duke 82-67 in the ACC Championship . Coach Mike Young. spent 17 years at Wofford , a nice little SC school where he was successful . Just to know , Young is in his 3 rd Season with the Hokies who were the 7 th seed and played 4 games in 4 days . See it’s not impossible to Win a Championship within a few years . Kind of makes you wonder , if we had ever hired McKillop instead of Norm, Lavin , Mullin or Anderson . Although , after Norm was hired , ever getting McKillop to leave Davidson was unlikely . What would he have done here ?
RedmanMike
Well-known member
McKillop would still be coaching here, and we’d be talking about him the same way we talk about Looie and Lapchim.
Cal to St. John’s rumors starting in three…two…..one.capmaker post=463860 said:
