I'm saying this is his 9th year as a head coach after 9 as an assistant. why would a couple of years at W&M change your opinion of him in either direction? The CAA is consistently a worse conference than the Ivy.
Non-Conference Road Games
- Thread starter MDspider8
- Start date
Because that's how it works. why wouldn't it change or reinforce an opinion? student17 asked for thoughts on Earl and said he'd be a great fit at UR. I explained why he's not ready here imo. Pretty straightforward. Not sure where the disconnect is. Of course he could possibly do great here but I'm going to roll with the much better odds and coaching options out there for us. Earl only did decent at Cornell. Pretty hard job. Now probably a harder one at W&M. Let's see how he does. Starting well but that's it. He was a solid hire for W&M. If we were making a hire this past offseason he would not have been the same for UR.
Also spiderman and student17 are definitely off the SpiderFans coaching search committee.
For anyone else it meets formally every Friday afternoon. For the past 10 years. If u like Friday afternoon Groundhog Day meetings at work this is the committee for you.
For anyone else it meets formally every Friday afternoon. For the past 10 years. If u like Friday afternoon Groundhog Day meetings at work this is the committee for you.
lol. not saying Earl should be hired at UR. if Earl wins an NCAA tournament game or something, that would impress me.
I'm saying W&M is probably a lower level team than Cornell ... or at best it's equal. in fact, I'd say it's probably easier for W&M to win the CAA tournament than it would be for anyone outside of Harvard, Princeton or Yale to win the Ivy. so his succeeding at W&M doesn't add much to his resume to me.
I'm saying W&M is probably a lower level team than Cornell ... or at best it's equal. in fact, I'd say it's probably easier for W&M to win the CAA tournament than it would be for anyone outside of Harvard, Princeton or Yale to win the Ivy. so his succeeding at W&M doesn't add much to his resume to me.
I still maintain that on paper, UR would love this kind of hire. The idea of hiring someone from Princeton who coached at Cornell and W&M is something they would love. Digging deeper, I haven't seen enough of him yet that it would translate at A10 level so my personal opinion is I would not hire him right now and a couple more years of success at W&M would change my opinion. He had a 48.2% winning percentage at Cornell, 46.9% conference win percentage after 7 years. Granted, the last few years he did much better so have to consider that too since most coaches don't find immediate success when starting at a program.
Right now at W&M he has a 60.9 win% and 80% conference win percentage. Considering the fact that W&M has historically been a very bad basketball program that has never made the NCAA (this board would lose its mind if it were W&M fans given no NCAAs lol) he is showing a lot of promise, but would want to see him have a sustained success first. If he can keep up this win rate at a school like W&M for 3-4 years then I think we would have enough evidence to say he can be successful at UR. Keep in mind, its not just the optics that he is an Ivy league grad. It's that he knows how to succeed as a coach with other very strong academic institutions and presumably has familiarity and can navigate the academic restrictions of these schools in order to find success.
For me it would be impressive and directly translate to UR's circumstances. W&M has been a very bad program for a very long time. Not only that, they are battling other schools like Towson, Delaware, UNCW, Stony Brook, etc. who are have different academic standards. Sounds very similar to our situation, no? Except ours is better because unlike W&M, we devout the resources to basketball success and have a history/reputation of basketball success dating back to the Dick Tarrant years. Same idea too with Vanderbilt in SEC, though different in many ways too. This is like my point with Hardt and hiring good coaches with not as significant sports teams to trust him to do it with basketball. If Earl can show that he can succeed with a school like W&M under their restrictions, lack of history, and institutional fit to other schools in the conference, then he can absolutely do it here too, where he will have higher conference reputation, more money/resources, and better basketball history going for him.
Last edited:
Ok. I agree with last part, it probably is easier to win CAA. but idk why u were questioning me saying he needs more time at W&M then and how if he absolutely kills it there for a few years, it can change opinions & abiity to land other jobs. the whole context was about being ready for UR now.
So I guess we agree. sman u can sit in on the coaching search meetings. but u can't speak.
I missed the part where you said "if he absolutely kills it there for a few years, it can change opinions & abiity to land other jobs".
that would be obvious. and shocking.
I took "Earl needs more time" to mean more experience.
Nancy and have her bring a $5 million NIL budget and let's get to work.
while not amongst top choices, I did like Nancy as an out of the box option. Of course she's now 66. we sit around and lose viable choices. Odom could have easily been here. & wanted to be here. Fact.
Post 23. very 1st post on the subject. "if he just kills it for a couple years at W&M sure maybe he makes the list. ". Also I said more time at W&M directly to u.
like I said ... I missed that part. I saw "earl needs more time". guess I skimmed.
