So, Stanford finally got around to actually hiring a coach.
Not, mind you, a coach with a day of head coaching experience, or one who is likely to be loyal to the school (not that I'm implying that blind loyalty is a virtue, but you know that if the guy is good, Duke's going to snag him when Krzyzewski retires), but a coach nonetheless. And for what it's worth, at least he's a total unknown rather than a known mediocrity like Doug Oliver. To slip into baseball prospect-speak, he's got the tools and he's got the upside-- he just doesn't have any kind of track record.
Unfortunately, the process took so long that the team's highest-rated recruit, Miles Plumlee, has asked out of his commitment to attend the school. I honestly can't blame him a bit. The team next year is unlikely to be a strong one. He'd be likely to see a lot of playing time, but that's about all that one can say on behalf of the '08-09 Cardinal. It's not impossible that Dawkins can talk him back, particularly because-- as a Duke assistant who undoubtedly ran into his brother Mason during Duke's recruitment of the latter-- he probably knows the guy and the family somewhat. As I joked to my dad, maybe he can get Coach K to give him a call and tell him to take the education. But it's no sure thing, and if he ends up going elsewhere, it will be a major loss and one that could very probably have been avoided.
Others have already done a better job than I ever could of critiquing this bestiality of a coaching process from the journalist's perspective. I encourage any of my, optimistically, two readers to check the link-- it's almost like reading The Decline and Fall of a Major Program. Despite a pretty solid record of success in the Johnson years, the program's prestige has collapsed to the level of a third-tier BCS program, where your choices in coaching hires (and, I fear, recruiting) are between raw guys with theoretical upside and known quantities with none. Bob Bowlsby, the Stanford Athletic Director, now gets to contend with the notions that the school is
a. cheap (not willing to pay market rates for a BCS school, not willing to extend Johnson and risk the possibility of having to buy him out, not willing to pay for an experienced coach) and
b. stupid (letting the Coach of the Year walk, having no apparent backup plan, not realizing that prevaricating would make recruits question their commitments).
So the program is facing a total rebuilding job in more ways than just on the court. The team's prestige has also vanished. I've never been one to complain about arrogance-- that would be part of the Lectures On Hypocrisy Series in my own case, I have to admit-- but when arrogance leads to decisions that don't make sense (like playing margin games with your coach and hoping he'll take it like a good boy) it turns into hubris. The Icarus-like flight path of the Stanford program over the past 5 months and change would be a fitting subject for any Greek tragedy, if it wasn't for the sizable amount of sheer incompetence involved (Daedalus, whatever his faults, was never accused of incompetence).
More on the Plumlee situation as soon as things shake out. I'll presage my upcoming preview (to be appearing around mid-June) of the forthcoming season by saying this: Where Stanford was a solid #3 in my "early hunch" thoughts, which assumed that both Robin Lopez and Miles Plumlee would be playing for the program, it's currently sitting at #8, and I think I might be overly homer-istic to even put it that high. 10 scholarship players? No height whatsoever? Lawrence Hill playing the 5?
Ugh. That's my take on the entire situation.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Johnson leaves Stanford for smelly swamp
...er, excuse me, bayou.
Link.
My initial shock at seeing this dissipated once I learned that the LSU job pays twice as much. That knowledge, however, begs the question: why does LSU pay twice as much?
Let's face it, LSU is not a basketball powerhouse. They did make a run to the Final Four two years ago, to be sure. But that was the first real sign of life in the program since the Shaq years, and even the Shaq teams were not particularly good at anything other than blocking shots (incidentally, Jarvis Varnado of Mississippi State somehow ended up exactly tied with Shaq for the single-season block record in the SEC, which must be a little frustrating since he didn't get credit for a single block after about the 6 minute mark of the first half of MSU's last game against Memphis and thus had about 26 minutes to break it-- and wow, did that tangent end up being longer than I expected). Stanford won 4 titles in a major conference during the last 10 years. I couldn't even tell you the last time LSU won a title.
So from a prestige standpoint, there's little question that Stanford is the superior job. And yet, it pays less. This is not logical from a market standpoint. High-prestige jobs should land high-value coaches, who should earn the best salaries and obtain the best returns in terms of ticket sales.
Of course, anyone who's read anything I've ever written about economics knows that I'm a frequent mocker of the "everyone is rational" school of economic theory. People act like idiots all the time, and right now it appears that one or both of Bob Bowlsby and Stanford's budgetary committee are idiots. If Bowlsby had the chance to extend Johnson at competitive rates and didn't, he's an idiot. If he wanted to and the committee wouldn't pony up, they're idiots. Johnson is a good coach who earned conference-wide recognition this season, and losing him to a literal backwater of college basketball (man, those Louisiana puns are flying thick and fast today) reflects really badly on Stanford as a program.
Now we enter the "rampant speculation" phase of things, so let me state from the outset which horse I'm backing: Mark Fox. As a former Johnson assistant, he helped recruit a lot of the players which were involved in Nevada's 2004-2007 run of tourney appearances. He's familiar with Johnson's style and offers a semblance of continuity. He's not particularly tied down in Nevada, as most of his best players are leaving. And he's, you know, good. His record has actually been better than Johnson's since he took over the program, although we all know that raw W/L record is oft-misleading in college hoops.
We'll see what happens. The new coach is going to have his hands full, that's for sure. He has to recruit 5 new players for 2009, rerecruit the incoming commits, and convince the current players not to transfer. That is one hell of a rebuilding job. The athletic department had better make a hire quickly, because there's a lot of work to be done.
Link.
My initial shock at seeing this dissipated once I learned that the LSU job pays twice as much. That knowledge, however, begs the question: why does LSU pay twice as much?
Let's face it, LSU is not a basketball powerhouse. They did make a run to the Final Four two years ago, to be sure. But that was the first real sign of life in the program since the Shaq years, and even the Shaq teams were not particularly good at anything other than blocking shots (incidentally, Jarvis Varnado of Mississippi State somehow ended up exactly tied with Shaq for the single-season block record in the SEC, which must be a little frustrating since he didn't get credit for a single block after about the 6 minute mark of the first half of MSU's last game against Memphis and thus had about 26 minutes to break it-- and wow, did that tangent end up being longer than I expected). Stanford won 4 titles in a major conference during the last 10 years. I couldn't even tell you the last time LSU won a title.
So from a prestige standpoint, there's little question that Stanford is the superior job. And yet, it pays less. This is not logical from a market standpoint. High-prestige jobs should land high-value coaches, who should earn the best salaries and obtain the best returns in terms of ticket sales.
Of course, anyone who's read anything I've ever written about economics knows that I'm a frequent mocker of the "everyone is rational" school of economic theory. People act like idiots all the time, and right now it appears that one or both of Bob Bowlsby and Stanford's budgetary committee are idiots. If Bowlsby had the chance to extend Johnson at competitive rates and didn't, he's an idiot. If he wanted to and the committee wouldn't pony up, they're idiots. Johnson is a good coach who earned conference-wide recognition this season, and losing him to a literal backwater of college basketball (man, those Louisiana puns are flying thick and fast today) reflects really badly on Stanford as a program.
Now we enter the "rampant speculation" phase of things, so let me state from the outset which horse I'm backing: Mark Fox. As a former Johnson assistant, he helped recruit a lot of the players which were involved in Nevada's 2004-2007 run of tourney appearances. He's familiar with Johnson's style and offers a semblance of continuity. He's not particularly tied down in Nevada, as most of his best players are leaving. And he's, you know, good. His record has actually been better than Johnson's since he took over the program, although we all know that raw W/L record is oft-misleading in college hoops.
We'll see what happens. The new coach is going to have his hands full, that's for sure. He has to recruit 5 new players for 2009, rerecruit the incoming commits, and convince the current players not to transfer. That is one hell of a rebuilding job. The athletic department had better make a hire quickly, because there's a lot of work to be done.
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