[quote="Paultzman" post=279336][quote="SJU1512" post=279334][quote="Paultzman" post=279330]When they start those April AAU events you will see more staff out there, but since season ended we have one guy scrambling to fill current gaps. Matt is clearly the “transfer guy” but it is ridiculous to not devote more resources to the process even to assist him. Our recruiting approach in my opinion just sucks, especially for a program trying to claw way back to respectability.
Mullin made a mistake elevating Mitch with understanding he would recruit minimally. Greg SJ at least breaks his ass coaching, running practices & drills in season with a dab of recruiting now & then.
I would hope CM a guy with GM experience would move Mitch back to the SA spot & get another AC to recruit. I wish I felt confident he will. This has nothing to do with Slice $$ either. It just may be a hard decision CM is having difficulty with. Just my opinion, but do feel better venting about this one man approach. Appreciate Matt working hard, but he is in over his head without solid help.[/quote]
All great points Paultz. Think the most confusing and frankly concerning one is what you note regarding a program trying to claw it's way back. This would be an odd approach for a program on cruise control. For a team that, even with a deserved first year pass, is 11-25 in conference in years 2 and 3 it's difficult to see a justifiable rationale.
Expectations don't get reset because you fail to meet them. Almost from the start there was a lot of emphasis around a big 2018 class. Understandable, as kids in that class were finishing their freshman year when this staff was hired, which should be early enough in the cycle for a new staff to engage without being too far behind other programs. Is this class potentially well-rounded support, where you might get a number of rotation-caliber players and 1-2 that perform above expectations at core of rotation? Of course, and that can be a great thing. But this is not a premium class and may not have a single #1 type player.
If you count Ponds for year 1 and Simon/Clark for year 2, this might be the least impactful infusion of talent yet, which suggests recruiting isn't exactly going in the right direction. See what staff does the next few months, but this May it will be two years since staff signed and retained a player on the Ponds/Simon/Clark level. Not talking about Top 25, 5 star pipe dreams. Talking about a reasonably steady (every other year at least?) mix of genuinely frontline high school talent (clearly Ponds, but given that's a high bar Top 50-100), and since we obviously play the transfer market heavily at least operating at the top of that (Simon/Clark). Again debatable whether we've done either in close to 2 years now.
And while clearly recruiting rankings are fickle and not dispositive, and you can get good kids anywhere, it's not an accident that Ponds was Top 40 and Simon/Clark transferred from uber majors. You want to play the recruiting odds with those kind of kids and be pleasantly surprised with the kids who develop/surprise, and of late we are relying too much on the latter it seems.
Which makes the recruiting approach mystifying bordering on unacceptable and, importantly, lacking accountability on multiple levels. I get that this is Mullin's program and he's making the calls, but the line should get drawn in my opinion at him being allowed to have his buddy and his buddy's son, neither of who had a single game of college coaching experience, occupying two of three recruiting positions on staff. Coming off 4-14 in conference in year 3, a coach not named Chris Mullin would likely be informed a coaching change is required, that conversation would be obvious and predictable, and would presumably receive little to no pushback as coach would be happy enough to still have his own job. If that's not happening here then it's arguable there's no checks and balances on a coach who hasn't earned the right not to have any.
Mullin is clearly getting year 4 and I think he should. But a program facing enough of an uphill battle as is just making it that much more challenging on itself, and it's difficult to understand why. This job is a grind, even for the best and most established coaches, and if Mullin isn't going to be everywhere in the front row himself it seems only more critical that he have not 2 but 3 coaches who are everywhere for him.[/quote]
Great post man![/quote]
Thanks Paultz. Two other quick (at least relative to prior post
) thoughts, one related to current team and one related to program:
1. Team - earlier understandable, but by year 3 you'd like to be in a spot where year 4 doesn't seem to hinge almost completely on 1 player. Losing a player as talented as Ponds is going to hurt no matter when it happens, and hopefully he'll be back rendering this moot, but seems he might be the difference between an excellent season and a potentially poor one with real downside. Too big of a delta based on one player at this stage, and in this era of transfers and early departures, can't be so reliant on one guy.
2. Program - part of my frustration as a fan is that it's been difficult to ascertain a baseline of what expectations for this program should be. To simplify if we discard Jarvis and before, it's been almost 15 years since we had a coach with both (1) recent/any D1 head coaching experience, and (2) without question constructed a staff that worked as hard as they could to make the program great. Not that those are requirements or the only way to win (clearly not), but an assistant that rose with Bill Self with no D1 coaching experience, someone in broadcasting for 7 years, and a program legend with no D1 coaching experience are at a minimum non-traditional hires. Layer onto that with the last two coaches, almost a decade now, there have been questions about staff construction and the comprehensive commitment to recruiting needed to win.
10-15 years is a long time and a lot has changed in the sport broadly and with SJU program specifically over that time. Hopefully Mullin wins next year and then it's off to the races. But in the interim it's just difficult to gauge what is reasonable to expect from this program. If Ed Cooley, Buzz Williams, or Danny Hurley - just as examples, fitting the profile of hungry up and coming younger coaches with varying degrees of HC experience over the last 10 years and a reputation for being hard workers - had come here, they might have won, they might not have, but in either event I'd feel like I have a baseline for what this program is right now. Right or wrong, there has just been a lack of simplicity in the way SJU staffs have seemed to do things for a while now that has made that difficult to ascertain.
