SJ 2009-09 Coaching Carousel thread

Virginia has possibly the nicest arena in college basketball (not counting teams that play in NBA joints) and tremendous practice facilities. They pour something like $25M a year into basketball, and they're quite sick of being out-gritted by Virginia Tech in basketball, of all sports. There's no reason why UVa shouldn't at least be in the top half of the ACC year in and year out with their resources.

 

Without question this is true.

So what has been holding them back? The academic side not being loose enough?

 

Tough to use that as an excuse when Duke is in your league. Not sure what holds them back. Recruiting misses in the ACC are certainly tough to play through, and Leitao has had plenty of them. Sylven Landesberg is the only plus recruit he's brought to C'ville. Lots of mediocrity in there -- Tucker, Farrakhan, Scott, Baker, Zeglinski, etc. You can't compete in the ACC if 80 percent of your recruits are misses.

 

As a Connecticut fanboi, I'm particularly sad to see Leitao step down at Virginia, but I guess it was in the offing.

 

Fancher had some pretty decent talent in Butts, Hunter, Sims and Brand. My guess is the administration didn't want to give Fancher the chance to fuck that up next year like he did this season, when basically noone on that team learned how to play defense.
App. State will likely be the preseason favorite in the SoCon North Division if they put a decent coach in place and there is no player defections. They will be able to score with any team in the league.

 

It won't be Tubby.

 

IMHO, VCU fans should worry more about Grant to Miami than Grant to U.Va. I seem to recall Miami and Florida being two of the "dream jobs" Grant has mentioned, and if Haith goes to Alabama, I could see Miami calling up Grant in a NY minute.
Grant still has a ton of recruiting connections in FL, and coaching in the ACC would mean he wouldn't have to go head-to-head with Billy D. Don't know that Grant would pass that one up if offered, even with future pro Sanders at VCU for two more years.

 

I'm shocked that UVa would play the arrogance card. Absolutely shocked.

With another good NCAA run and a little patience, Anthony Grant can have his pick of jobs that are far better than UVa.

 

Not disputing your main point - Leitao has crapped the bed on recruiting. But you can't honestly argue that Duke's academic standards for basketball players are tougher than, well, anyone's. I think Jay Williams and Carlos Boozer took more classes at N.C. Central than they did at Duke. Their 3-year degree program is a freakin' joke. It's virtually impossible to be academically ineligible as a Duke basketball player.

 

They couldn't keep care of the ball either. It didn't get any better as the year went along. Turnovers were the undoing of this team, and ultimately the coach.

 

See, I didn't realize that. I was basing that thought off of everyone talking about how it's impossible to win in football at Duke or Northwestern or Vandy because of academic standards.

 

Football is a different story, but K's not letting any of his players let their grades slip.