[quote="Eric Williamson" post=340659][quote="SJU1512" post=340629][quote="mattc" post=340487]Cluess may work out just fine, but I'll never be convinced that Cragg handled this well. You force Mullin out the door and your only two options are Hurley and Cluess, the latter of whom you could hire next year if you're so inclined? This is laughable. I readily admit I don't know all the facts about how this played out, but from where I sit we look once again like a mom and pop store. You HAVE to have a plan B, and it looks like Cragg did not. What a friggin joke. I'm furious.[/quote]
Bingo.
Cluess can win here. Cluess could have ended up being the right hire after going through the right process. But this was not executed properly and likely closed us off to, at a minimum, other options.
Why did it take 3 weeks from our last game for Mullin to "resign"? Unless Mullin out of thin air said he doesn't want to coach anymore - seems unlikely - any scenario after our season ended on March 20 should have been predicted by a seasoned AD. He asked for an extension you didn't want to give him? The sky is also blue.
And if you wanted to push Mullin out, even less explicable to let it drag 3 weeks and end as as messily as it did. That should have been handled swiftly and decisively right when the season ended like a competent program would.
Because Alabama got Oats. Arkansas got Musselman. Nebraska got Hoiberg. I mean goodness, even Nevada was able to quickly and effectively replace Musselman with Alford.
The open market dictates value. If you put all those guys, Bobby Hurley, and Tim Cluess on the market Cluess would be, by an incredibly wide margin, the coach in least demand.
Doesn't mean Cluess isn't a unique fit for SJU in particular. Doesn't mean he can't have more success or stay here longer than some of these other more valued guys. But Tim Cluess was going to be there AFTER you gave yourself an opportunity to look at coaches that are in greater demand to evaluate if they might be a better option for your program. And Cragg didn't even give SJU that chance.
Which is a pathetic and important point. SJU didn't need Cragg to sloppily move on from a program legend, create player angst with mis and non communication, and then hire Cluess. They could promote the most junior administrator in the department to do that.
The problem is 100% not Tim Cluess, who has a lot of things many have clamored for that our prior 3 coaches lacked. This is about SJU's seemingly persistent inability to even come close to entering the ballpark of a coherent process when hiring a men's basketball coach.
One freaking time, just one time, it would be great to at least see if you can get the Oats of a given year when we happen to have an opening. A guy who was a 6 seed at a public university in your own state. Maybe you can'get him! Maybe you can't get any of the guys above who are at big state schools now. Maybe we just can't compete at that level of hiring anymore in general. And that's fine. Then you hire Tim Cluess and maybe even feel great about it.
But at least give yourself a freaking chance to get one of the top guys on the market that cycle. SJU has failed to give itself that opportunity with 4 consecutive hires, which is mind boggling to begin with and frustrating that an AD coming from Duke couldn't change that direction.[/quote]
Do you know for certain what happened between Mullin and Cragg, and how it all went down? As many people have said over and over again, no one knows what went on behind the scenes.
My personal opinion as to what may have happened is that Mullin and Cragg met at the end of the season and discussed what their vision for the program was. Mullin told Cragg that without an extension, it would make his job almost impossible to do (which I don't blame him for). Cragg, at that time, was not ready to give him an extension, and wanted Mullin to go one more year, sort of a prove it year, to evaluate everything and then they could discuss an extension. Obviously Mullin was not happy with that answer, but that's what it was left it. No information from either side that either one was potentially thinking about a change. Fast forward a few weeks and Cragg is informed that Mullin supposedly went over him, and approached Bobby G and others about an extension. That did nothing but piss off Cragg, as any boss would be upset if their employee tried to go over them to get the answer they wanted. As AD, he felt he should be the one making the decisions regarding extensions. That's what he was hired to do. He wants to be in a situation where his employees report directly to him, and no one else, and that did not happen. As a result, Cragg called Mullin in and informed that he would no longer be head coach. But Cragg didn't want to be known as the guy who fired the best player in program history, so he asked Mullin to resign. Mullin then said he would only resign if he was paid the full amount of the remainder of his contract. The whole situation caught all parties off guard, but that is what led us to where we are now.[/quote]
Wow, no one would have EVER predicted a scenario like this could have occurred especially with a prideful coach facing fan unrest, least of all someone with 30 years of athletic dept experience.
