I have no faith in anyone at St. John’s making that decision so I’d go with any option that kept Pitino associated with the team.
Rick Pitino - Head Coach at St John’s University!!!
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If Shanley outlasts Pitino, I don't agree. But if he's gone.... yeah
Good point. I do trust Shanley completely. He’s a monster. Beyond him though…yikes.
Cragg will come up with Pitino 2.0
Don’t even jokeCragg will come up with Pitino 2.0
Redenbacher
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They did it at Duke and Syracuse.
And North Carolina.
A huge difference in those situations is that Davis/Scheyer/Autery were all first time coaches, and Mas had coached in Manhattan for 10+ years. The resutls were not good. Two NCAA appearances, four seasons above .500. Only five seasons .500 or better in-conference.
If he's our coach after Pitino, we're back to pre-Pitino days.
If he's our coach after Pitino, we're back to pre-Pitino days.
Saw
In college hoops, Coach K was 14 games over .500 in his 5 years at Army; 9 games under his first 3 years at Duke, an even worse 16 games under in-conference those same 3 years. Jay Wright was 20 games under .500 his first 3 years at Hofstra.
Prior success or failure is not necessarily an accurate predictor of the future, certainly it is a very appropriate, important datapoint but nothing more nor less.
Absolutes and projections are tough, two of the greatest, or at least most successful, Yankee managers of all time had plenty of experience but very little success as managers prior to going to the Yanks; Casey Stengel was 161 games under .500 in 9 years, with only one year over that mark at 77-75; Joe Torre was 109 games under .500 prior to be hired by the Yankees.
In college hoops, Coach K was 14 games over .500 in his 5 years at Army; 9 games under his first 3 years at Duke, an even worse 16 games under in-conference those same 3 years. Jay Wright was 20 games under .500 his first 3 years at Hofstra.
Prior success or failure is not necessarily an accurate predictor of the future, certainly it is a very appropriate, important datapoint but nothing more nor less.
I actually don't agree with those comparisons though.
Pro MLB/NBA/NFL managers are typically not also in charge of roster building like NCAA coaches are. I agree that to place a value on a manager's record is a very difficult, if not impossible task.
But for NCAA coaches, they are responsible for the roster and in-game coaching (as you know), so a lot of the factors for the wins and losses ultimately fall on them. Jay Wright and Coach K both coached in the non-transfer era (and for Wright's Hofstra tenure, the non-1 & done era); you had to give these coaches at least 5-7 years to properly judge them. Hofstra's last four years under Wright were very successful, and showed a clear upwards, sustainable trajectory for success.
I'd also say the context of Army is completely different than any other non-military academy school. What type of recruiting is he supposed to do? Having a 19 and 20 game winning record is very impressive.
I'm sorry, but there's nothing from Mas' resume that should make us excited and certainly make him an heir apparent without a national search. This is all premature and conjecture, but I don't see why this should be a solution we're excited about.
Not concerned now, but if Pitino gets the results we hope, I can't see how Mas can carry that if he doesn't have the brand name swagger remotely close that would keep donors (corp, big & small)..but perhaps he builds those connections over next 5+ years.
One can rationalize any which way to fit an agenda. My point is looking at a past record at a different school, which plays on a different level, during a different time period, and then absolutely stating Masiello would bring us back to “pre-Pitino days” makes IMO no sense.
And what I posted were not comparisons, but rather examples of the futility of your premise, that the past can be used as an absolute predictor of the future. You want to say he shouldn’t be an ordained successor, I would tend to agree; but because I KNOW he will fail? Not remotely.
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Duke / UNC / Syracuse are the only two programs (recency bias) that i can think of that went from Legend -> Assistant.
What a position to be in lol... we have not had one coach since Louie to "move on" on his own accord... how sad is that? Such a unusual (fortunate) mindset lol
You have to love how nuts we all are. We are just 8 games into a finite era that we've been waiting for 30 years to arrive - for some their entire lives - and arguing about his successor. 
.
I'm not taking shots at anyone. It's just funny.
.I'm not taking shots at anyone. It's just funny.
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Chris Ledlum is just so damned mature, so damned smart, and so damned aware. He gets it, totally gets it.
You see, he knows that basketball is a nuanced game, completely and totally. It's freeform art. Whereas football is so structured, executing plays from a playbook where every guy on the field must perform as the play goes, while basketball has many of those attributes, football is more like a symphony. Basketball is often jazz, free form motion.
So what Chris can produce depends on the space created by Soriano and Jenkins being in sympatico. Soriano excels in the post, now Ledlum's mannhas to pay as much attention to helping out as stopping Ledlum. Defenses collapse, and that gives more room for midrange and outside shots. Beautiful, really.
I love Chris; he is just really smart. Maybe not Harvard smart without basketball, but lots has rubbed off on him. This is a guy who is going to have tons of post basketball success.
Charles Barkley, who CRP compared Ledlum to (maybe more wishfully or motivationally) certainly physically, once said "Basketball is a game that rewards many talents". Brilliant statement. He said that in response to many NBA players looking down on plodding Euro players who could neither run as fast nor jump as high. Still those guys could shoot and pass, and play smart ball and were excelling.
My first conversation with Chris I said to him in front of our entire table, "Wow, this must be so hard for you to handle the rigorous academics of St. John's after going to a smaller school like Harvard". Instead of laughing, he politely flashed his million dollar smile, then got serious without missing a beat and said "You know, my major here in grad school is international business, and the courses are difficult. I have to work really hard to keep up."
Happy to have him. Another PHD.