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Why do we keep Mooney?

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eightlegmonster

Mar 13, 2006
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ok, Mooney is a mediocrity. He doesn't seem to able to inspire his players to play intense and consistent basketball. I can not see UR building a winning tradition under his leadership. It's all about coaching. Remember Beilein? He came in and took a losing program and turned it around in one season. He was a great tactician, unlike Mooney.
Other schools seem to do well, Davidson, for example. They are a small school with an excellent academic reputation . I have seen 2 excellent coaches ar UR: Beilein and Tarrant. Each with different styles, but each a winner.
I have suffered through 11 years of season tickets with Mooney. I say enough is enough.
We have some good players, but they are inconsistent. Somebody scores 26 points in one game and 0 in another.
I am weary of listening to rationalization as to why we lost this game or that game. It's the coach.
Why can't our loyal fans make some noise and get another coach.
Frankly, I don't think it will happen.
 
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You make some valid points, but it boils down to this -- he's under contract for 5 more seasons. The regime hasn't publically defined their standards (besides "winning championships"), so one would assume that 15-20 wins and a high graduation % is good enough. Then again, they've dumped $30 million into the program (Mooney's contract + RC renovation) so maybe that's their statement. We almost never see or hear from Keith Gill, so this is pure speculation but I'm betting that the regime is satisfied with current state of the program. And unless someone forks out the cash for the buyout or he bolts for another school then he's not going anywhere....because the Admin won't voluntarily replace him.
 
Spiders10 said:
You make some valid points, but it boils down to this -- he's under contract for 5 more seasons. The regime hasn't publically defined their standards (besides "winning championships"), so one would assume that 15-20 wins and a high graduation % is good enough. Then again, they've dumped $30 million into the program (Mooney's contract + RC renovation) so maybe that's their statement. We almost never see or hear from Keith Gill, so this is pure speculation but I'm betting that the regime is satisfied with current state of the program. And unless someone forks out the cash for the buyout or he bolts for another school then he's not going anywhere....because the Admin won't voluntarily replace him.
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Gill will ruffle no feathers and hurt his chance of getting an ACC gig.
 
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Again, Gill has never fired or hired a men's hoops coach or a football coach either here or at AU. Maybe he doesn't want the hassle.
 
Fortunately Gill hasn't had to hire/fire in fball or bball, and it's looking like he won't need to worry about it for the foreseeable future.
 
Mooney being under contract until 2021 was likely a big draw for Gill deciding to come here. One less thing he has to deal with. Frankly, at UR, finding and signing a basketball coach is probably the biggest single potential task an AD would have to tackle.
 
We keep Mooney out of fear and money at this point.

Fear - we were so desperate as a fan base and program to have a coach who stayed with us and didn't leave UR for the bigger schools that we pulled out all the stops and money to keep him here, but why? What was wrong with the other way - Beilein came in, took us to NCAA and 2 NIT's and left for bigger program - in comes JW, he takes us to the NCAA and NIT, and leaves for bigger program - Mooney takes us to two NCAA, we try everything to keep him - and guess what, still looking for the return. Let face reality for a second - we are MID-MAJOR. With the exception of Martelli at St. Joes - every coach in the league is possibly looking to move up given the right opportunity. So lets not worry so much about keeping our coach and think that is the long term solution. Look at VCU - they gave Shaka everything they had, and they even had a team going to the tourney every single year, and ranked pretty much every year, and had top 100 recruits coming in. And guess what - they still lost him to the big schools. We are a mid-major, and there are only a handful of coaches who stay at mid-majors and pass on the big schools - and they are either older coaches (Martelli and now McKillop at Davidson) or they have built their programs into Big Time Programs so no need to move up (Gonzaga, Wichita St., Xavier, Butler). We do not fit either of those.
Money - for a school that says we have money and try to claim we are a rich school with our huge endowment, beautiful campus, and nice facilities - we don't spend money like it. Sure - we renovated the Robins Center and built a football stadium on campus - but look how long that took to accomplish. Other big time schools want a new stadium or renovations, they announce today and start building tomorrow. So I just don't see UR in any way firing Mooney and writing him a check over $4 million dollars to not coach our basketball team. Just not going to happen. And unlike big schools - I don't see any line of donors willing to step up and give that money to get rid of money. We say we are a wealthy and rich school - but we don't act like it.
 
well with the recruiting class coming in, can we really fire him at this point? We are so vested that I am guessing we ride it out and see what happens.
 
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I think it's very difficult to part ways with CM. I still contend that he's a decent coach, he took a mostly bare cupboard and got UR to the sweet 16, that's not to be ignored. And of note, Ole Jer did not come in here and do a great job with what he had, he pretty much tanked what Beilein had built in 3 years and ran out of town before the problems he created blew back all over him. So that should be a cautionary tale that if you fire CM, it doesn't mean the next guy will come in and find easy success. Beilein and Tarrant are exceptional coaches, Wainwright is not. Mooney is as stated somewhere in the middle.

There is absolutely a problem though if we want to be more than in the middle.
 
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I think Mooney has developed in many ways as a coach and runs an excellent program and system that could win us a lot of games on a consistent basis. The problem with Mooney is that he has really fallen flat in his ability to recruit. I have harped on and on about the obvious misses but the other thing that is staring us right in the face is the fact that our roster has 7 players on it right now, who can provide meaningful impact in a game.

It has been this way for several years now that we only have 7-8 players who can play at an A-10 level. This is why he is stuck playing Deion and Trey. Yo don't think Mooney doesn't know these guys can't play, of course he does, he just has no better option than to run them out there game after game.

Our rose colored glasses people are right when he says Mooney would play the freshman if they have earned the right to play. I agree, so what does that tell you about Julius, Jesse, and Paul? It tells me the same thing as to why Mooney never played Smithen, Luke P, or Connor Smith, those guys are not good enough to play. And what is really telling is Julius was our Number 1 target in a year where we had only 1 scholarship to offer. You would think our number 1 target would be a guy who can make an impact on the court immediately. He can't. Why?

We have on paper a really good class coming in next year and for that reason alone, I want Mooney to stay. However, I think Gill needs to man up in the offseason and demand some assistant coach changes from Mooney and at the top of that list is to go out and get a assistant coach who can recruit big time players. Any assistant coach who has been on the roster for the past 4-5 years have proven beyond any shadow of a doubt, that they don't have that ability and that is the main thing that is hindering our program right now.
 
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Trap - what do you think we should spend money on that we haven't? And when answering the question, consider things based in reality like return on investment, long term plans for the program, other potential uses of campus land, etc. I'm very interested to hear what you - and others - think we need that we don't have. From my perspective, I would put our facilities up against any other private school in the A-10/CAA level of play in the country. I think we have spent a lot of money over the years renovating existing facilities and building new ones but we certainly have prioritized some things over others.
 
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The program is light years ahead of where it used to be. Thank Dick Tarrant for making people believe that Richmond has what it takes to play at the highest levels and thank the Robins family for their generosity to enable us to build a first class on campus basketball facility. And the new Robins Center provides an even better home court advantage. The situation we face is what is good enough? Making the NCAA tournament every year should be or maybe is our goal? The question then becomes how often is good enough and opinions on that will vary - IMHO we should be in the discussion every year and make the tourney at least 50% of the time. The obvious caveat is that there are no repercussions if we don't. Again IMHO that requirement should have been written into the coach's contract and failure to achieve would resonate financially. Agree with the poster who made the point we were "scared" of having a coach leave after a few years and I think as a result we went overboard in largess in the contract. Moving forward agree with Trap that it is hard to imagine anyone buying out the contract but there are other ways to raise the heat on the coach. At this point appears unlikely any of the dynamic is going to change and that the administration is more than willing to accept the status quo. That leaves us with the dream that Mooney will recapture what got us to the Sweet Sixteen, namely individual players with enough fire, drive, and talent to motivate the rest of the team. Go Spiders!
 
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Ulla1 said:
spider fan, perhaps things are falling into place. OSC
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Good grief, more like falling out of place. For the facilities we have, how the A10 is more than a 2-3 bid league consistently, and the programs reputation of multiple sweet 16s, we shouldn't settle for waiting 5-6 years between NCAA appearances. That's a crazy amount of time to be unsuccessful just so we can dance once every recruiting class
 
I can't imagine any school WANTING Mooney, unless perhaps a high school, so we are stuck with him. His winning or losing depends solely on whether the players are "on" or not, not his coaching.
And what's with his "strategy" of taking a shot and having no one under the basket to rebound? A player is "hot," say like Wood, and he takes him out?
It's a real test of loyalty to continue to have season tickets. I used to look forward with excitement to heading to the Robins Center. I live in the neighborhood. Heck, even with "Deppidy Dawg" Wainwright there was more excitement. Now now. Now against hope, I expect nothing much and that's what I get. We have MOONEYBALL.
Have fun y'all.
 
I've never been convinced that the administration or board cares much about being competitive in athletics. I always get a Judge Smails vibe from those people when it comes to athletics: "you'll get NOTHING and LIKE IT!"

The silver lining I see is when Mooney's contract expires, he did a good job pushing for facility improvements, re-establishing expectations. The program will have a better floor than it did when he arrived. But it sucks that we will always be pissing into the wind when it comes to the non-competitive, non athletic people making the decisions.
 
I am excited about the new recruits over the next two years. I do recommend they do not attend the usual UR Basketball Orientation "We do not box out, absolutely do not rebound, nor dive after loose balls or practice free throws" class on the first day.
 
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64Spider said:
If Gill does anything he should go find us a stellar bench coach and add him to Mooneys staff.
Someone NOT from CMs past associations.
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Judging by UR's history of hiring and firing coaches, just have a parent of a player complain. For some odd reason that is effective at UR, moreso than actually, you know, winning....Even in D-1 athletics....:eek:
 
If someone here can find a coach that they are sure will have more success than Mooney, can pay Mooney's buyout (likely around 5 million) and can pay the new coaches salary for the foreseeable future and can convince the new coach to come here, perhaps you can convince Kieth Gill to fire Mooney. Otherwise unless Mooney has multiple losing seasons or is in some sort of scandal he is here until 2021. STOP POSTING THESE THREADS OVER AND OVER AGAIN. It is a somewhat valid topic, but 3 of the first 7 threads on this forum are about the exact same thing. It is incredibly annoying.

At least add something new to the conversation instead of saying the same thing over and over. Coaching candidates maybe?
 
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fan2011 said:
If someone here can find a coach that they are sure will have more success than Mooney, can pay Mooney's buyout (likely around 5 million) and can pay the new coaches salary for the foreseeable future and can convince the new coach to come here, perhaps you can convince Kieth Gill to fire Mooney. Otherwise unless Mooney has multiple losing seasons or is in some sort of scandal he is here until 2021. STOP POSTING THESE THREADS OVER AND OVER AGAIN. It is a somewhat valid topic, but 3 of the first 7 threads on this forum are about the exact same thing. It is incredibly annoying.

At least add something new to the conversation instead of saying the same thing over and over. Coaching candidates maybe?
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Maybe it means something that "3 of the first 7 are about the same thing" as you put it.
 
fan2011 said:
If someone here can find a coach that they are sure will have more success than Mooney, can pay Mooney's buyout (likely around 5 million) and can pay the new coaches salary for the foreseeable future and can convince the new coach to come here, perhaps you can convince Kieth Gill to fire Mooney. Otherwise unless Mooney has multiple losing seasons or is in some sort of scandal he is here until 2021. STOP POSTING THESE THREADS OVER AND OVER AGAIN. It is a somewhat valid topic, but 3 of the first 7 threads on this forum are about the exact same thing. It is incredibly annoying.

At least add something new to the conversation instead of saying the same thing over and over. Coaching candidates maybe?
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First you don't have to read them, secondly what else are we going to talk about? Our chances of not having to play in the tournament 'play in' games (bottom 4)? We have an upper class team underachieving not a lot of hope from the Soph or Freshmen who, except for Fore, we never see. We'll all offered suggestions, recommendations etc etc. they aren't going to be heeded, and the Coach seems so stuck in his ways we've all but given up anything will change................................... So you mean there's hope?
 
I-M-UR said:
First you don't have to read them, secondly what else are we going to talk about? Our chances of not having to play in the tournament 'play in' games (bottom 4)? We have an upper class team underachieving not a lot of hope from the Soph or Freshmen who, except for Fore, we never see. We'll all offered suggestions, recommendations etc etc. they aren't going to be heeded, and the Coach seems so stuck in his ways we've all but given up anything will change................................... So you mean there's hope?
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Look, I am all up for discussion. I am not complaining about the content of these posts per se, just the fact that these posts are repeated ad nauseam and rarely offer any new insight or ideas. Every time I see a new post, and especially a new thread, I read it hoping to glean some sort of new insight. I don't know if a post will be a rehash of the same comments I have read hundreds of times until I actually read the post. I posted my comment in a selfish effort to encourage my fellow board members to provide me with new content instead of reposting the same things I have read hundreds of times.
 
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SpiderFan26 said:
Good grief, more like falling out of place. For the facilities we have, how the A10 is more than a 2-3 bid league consistently, and the programs reputation of multiple sweet 16s, we shouldn't settle for waiting 5-6 years between NCAA appearances. That's a crazy amount of time to be unsuccessful just so we can dance once every recruiting class
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Unfortunately for some who drink from the cup waiting 5-6 years is OK. Unfortunately they also define success in terms that "dance around" NCAA appearances. Your key phrase " we shouldn't settle" is powerful. Add that to another "unfortunately" - the program and some fans have become complacent with this is who we are as well as looking to the future... the now famous next year.
 
SpiderGuy said:
Unfortunately for some who drink from the cup waiting 5-6 years is OK. Unfortunately they also define success in terms that "dance around" NCAA appearances. Your key phrase " we shouldn't settle" is powerful. Add that to another "unfortunately" - the program and some fans have become complacent with this is who we are as well as looking to the future... the now famous next year.
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directv-settlers-hed-2015.png
 
I will be glad to start a petition stating that the undersigned are "unhappy" with Mooney. After all we are the fan base that buys the season tickets,etc. It probably won't do anything to change the program, but it's a start. Better than whining and repeating the same 'ol same thing on these posts as one guy says.
Also, I will be glad to put up $50 toward The Moonster's buy out.
 
This is crap. Eightlegmonster don't you need to get your papers delivered in the slums around vdu. OSC
 
eightlegmonster said:
I will be glad to start a petition stating that the undersigned are "unhappy" with Mooney. After all we are the fan base that buys the season tickets,etc. It probably won't do anything to change the program, but it's a start. Better than whining and repeating the same 'ol same thing on these posts as one guy says.
Also, I will be glad to put up $50 toward The Moonster's buy out.
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Put 5 more zeros on the end of your $50 check and you are part of the way there.
 
Seriously, Ulla? Do you think he waited 10 years just to take a shot at CM? That would show a hell of a lot of patience and forethought.
 
I think the school has spent money - they are just slow in doing it. One recent example - the improvements to the Robins Center. This has probably needed for the last several years, but just recently did they decide to do a major overhaul. But even that was slow. We should have capitalized on our back to back NCAA run - which ended in 2011, we didn't get the Robins Center completed until 2013 - two years later. By that time we had suffered a .500 season and a CBI appearance. So although I think the improvements are excellent, they did not help us capitalize on the back to back NCAA runs.

Which bring me to my point - the school is not going to break out a check for over $4 million to have Mooney NOT coach this team. They will ride this deal out, and if things continue the way they do - they might get rid of him with 2 years left, likely 1 year left on his deal. Really - I think best case scenario at this point is maybe we make the NIT this year and he can sniff out another job.
 
Marley13 said:
Seriously, Ulla? Do you think he waited 10 years just to take a shot at CM? That would show a hell of a lot of patience and forethought.
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True. Doubt that. However either he has been lurking for 10 years, or has been on another rivals board.
 
SpiderTrap said:
I think the school has spent money - they are just slow in doing it. One recent example - the improvements to the Robins Center. This has probably needed for the last several years, but just recently did they decide to do a major overhaul. But even that was slow. We should have capitalized on our back to back NCAA run - which ended in 2011, we didn't get the Robins Center completed until 2013 - two years later. By that time we had suffered a .500 season and a CBI appearance. So although I think the improvements are excellent, they did not help us capitalize on the back to back NCAA runs.

Which bring me to my point - the school is not going to break out a check for over $4 million to have Mooney NOT coach this team. They will ride this deal out, and if things continue the way they do - they might get rid of him with 2 years left, likely 1 year left on his deal. Really - I think best case scenario at this point is maybe we make the NIT this year and he can sniff out another job.
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Wouldn't surprise me in the least if he was offered an extension regardless of what happens from now until end of contract...the good guy thing, ambassador for school thingy, recruits good kids, graduation rate, etc. Now...conference championships & NCAA appearance maybe not as important????
 
64Spider said:
If Gill does anything he should go find us a stellar bench coach and add him to Mooneys staff.
Someone NOT from CMs past associations.
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Is that up to Gill? He can suggest strongly, but it's really up to Mooney who he has on his staff.
 
It could be up to Gill. Remember when UVA decided that most of Londons staff be replaced. I know we aren't UVA but I do think the administration can cause things to happen through the AD.
 
SpiderK said:
I am excited about the new recruits over the next two years. I do recommend they do not attend the usual UR Basketball Orientation "We do not box out, absolutely do not rebound, nor dive after loose balls or practice free throws" class on the first day.
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Actually Marshall Wood had a great box-out and they called a foul on Davis. Need more box-outs like that and less CAA caliber refs.
 
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