Dude he got a 3 year extension in 2022 after the ncaa. He then had a losing season followed up by a first round loss in NIT in the next 2 seasons. He already has 3 years left on existing deal. What exactly screams another extension?
Long contract extensions for sitting coaches r complete overkill in this new era with 1-2 year cycles. & nobody is trying to hire him away from Richmond. Btw idk if Keatts gets extension without the clause. U seem fixated on what other schools do but don’t realize literally nobody else operates like we have. Yeah Moon might have an auto extension clause too, I brought this up actually back in December that it’s possible. But at nc state at least they tell u he had a clause & r transparent about contract details here at UR who the f knows it’s super top secret. Also yes ppl can improve that’s 1 reason I asked if we should have higher expectations of a 20 year coach but u said no they r the same expectations whether we hired a newbie coach in his 1st year.
You bring up several valid points that I agree with. I do think its hard to discuss the contract extension without knowing the exact details of the contract that UR keeps private. Like being vocal on social media, I wish UR was transparent about these types of things. However, we don't operate like that and as a private school, are not obligated to share this information. A Recent JOC article came out saying it was a 2 year extension:
https://richmond.com/sports/college...cle_89eb7fa4-2d98-11ef-a431-a78ed62264f5.html Unfortunately the article is behind a paywall, but I believe that then puts him through the 2028-2029 season.
This would fall in line with the mentality of ADs like having coaches at contract lengths of 4-5 years for recruiting purposes. I don't think any AD in the country would say "Look, you did well this year, but I am not going to give you an extension. Let's be honest, we know you aren't going to leave this job so I am going to take advantage of that and not reward you when you do well." Whenever Mooney leaves/retires/gets fired, other coaches and agents would probably hear of that reputation if we were to do that, and no good coach would want to come if that was the case. It's not like Hardt gives Mooney 10 year extensions after every A10 championship. He does enough to keep him at the 4-5 year contract length. Seems reasonable to me.
In principle though, what warrants another extension is that he won an A10 regular season championship this year and A10 coach of the year award. He was also a finalist for the Jim Phelan National Coach of the Year. He should get rewarded for this. Same way he was rewarded for winning a championship in 2022. Yes, we had several bad years the past couple of years, but every team has bad years. Mooney did not get contract extensions after those seasons. The difference now is our bad years have been sandwiched between very good years.
The reason I bring up other teams is to give examples how other teams operate too. UR is the school I care about the most, obviously, so its not like I care if Saint Joseph's AD made a good decision or not with their coach or what NC State does, but we can see and learn what other schools do and how that works out for them. It can highlight the fact the grass isn't always greener.
Yes, the expectation should always be championships and NCAA appearances for our basketball team whether its year 1 or year 20. My dream would be that we increase our expectations to sweet 16 and more runs, but I also want to be realistic with our goals. Whether Mooney has met the expectations over the years is a different conversation. I gave him a B- over his 19 years here. I agree that 2016-2019 seasons was around the time where the biggest case could be made for him to be let go. If I was the AD, I would've made the coaching change at that time. We did not for reasons, I believe could be the case, that I discussed in another thread. However, the way I view it now is "what does our current trajectory look like?". Our situation now is not the same as 2016-2019. Since 2019, we have had several changes: supposed loosening of academic requirements, Mooney got new assistant staff with different perspectives, he changed his match-up zone defense, we got a practice facility, and we've utilized the new transfer portal and NIL at a high A10 level to attract some of the best recruits we've gotten. We are seeing the results of that now.
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