W&M Fires Tony Shafer after 16 Seasons
- Thread starter MolivaManiac
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And in reality other coaches were similar to Shaver at W&M. Bruce Parkhill did really well there and had overall winning record. Charlie Woolum had some good years there and was close to Shaver winning %. It was only Rick Boyanges that stunk it up completely. None just made NCAA.
Look I like Shaver. He has improved them recently in a weakened CAA. Unlike Mooney who has regressed in a weakened A10. But you know he got 16 years. They were patient. A new AD comes in makes an assessment of both short term but more importantly the long term. Yes most topics revert to Mooney but this one has quite a lot of parallels and is very applicable imo.
The big difference is they have a real AD, and I fear, we have Jabba the Hardt who either does not have the same pull and management capabilities as the W&M AD or is just here as retirement gig through his buddy Queally.
if W&M makes the tournament next season with Shaver's seniors, I'll argue Shaver could have as well.
if they make the tournament in any of the following 5 seasons, I'll totally agree this was a brilliant move.
if they don't, I'll continue to believe it's an institutional issue.
if they make the tournament in any of the following 5 seasons, I'll totally agree this was a brilliant move.
if they don't, I'll continue to believe it's an institutional issue.
Technically 20 20 17 19 and 14. Have to include this recent season no? Minor point there sman.
Also a minor point but need to deduct 1-2 division III games per year that they played and won
lol. more detail than I want to get into. but I believe until this year (without checking again) ... 5 straight years in the top 4 of the CAA. I know it's not dancing, but not many can say that.
Better yet, can Shaver and Shafer go into business together as a law firm or doughnut shop or something? Give the people what they want!
20 games in a weak conference and playing more games is not a real bench mark any longer. I do like Nathan Davis .800 win percentage in conference at two separate stops. That is hard to do.
Why can't it also be perfectly acceptable to give one more year? Why can't either decision be fine? Instead, the one some of you disagree with gets attacked. Strange.
He had 16 years. Why on earth give him another if your goal is to make the NCAA tournament. Don’t accept losing so easily VT.
We all know that she is a woman.
We all respect the fact that she has huge balls.
I don’t accept every crotchety anti-CM statement put forward as undeniably correct but If you guys didn’t rush to defend every indefensible moment surrounding the program, I think folks would not be so apt to attack like wolves seeking fresh meat.
You look just as silly as the anti-CM crowd when you’re unwilling to acknowledge some very basic problems with the program.
I congratulate W&M for stepping up and moving forward. 16 seasons of zero NCAA appearances is more than enough, despite having some good teams. It always amazes me how afraid people are of change, and it's not just in basketball. I've said it before . . . the pessimism and fear of a coaching change is just as negative as those of us who wanted a new coach. In fact, even if we lost a couple players, I would have finally felt some hope for the future of our program. Now we're at a stalemate, so welcome everyone to purgatory!
I don't fear a coaching change. but I think many people are looking at the past 2 bad seasons as if that's all there is. it was a bad 2 years. I get it. a couple weak recruiting classes caused a lot of it, and that's on Mooney. but I feel the roster rebuild is finally complete. if he didn't rebuild it well, I'd want a change too. if we're non-competitive again next year, I'll admit I was wrong and I'll be on board. but I think we're back on track.
My thoughts exactly. And, if it looked like we definitely could have gotten someone better after this year, I would have been on board with that as well. But, I did not want to see change just to change. I am fine with our AD's decision, but I do expect a real good year next year, and will be very frustrated and disappointed with anything less.
Guys, please, I have pointed out holes on the roster every year the last 8, and guess what: I was right. It's not 2 bad years, it's not having the gusto to need to win and need to fill out a legit roster.
If we can go out and get a legit 6'7 - 6'9 guy that is athletic and can play a little I would feel much much better about our roster next year.
I do think both Gilyard and Francis will be a legit back court. Really looking forward to what they can do next year, and even feel pretty good with our depth in Woj and Gus.
I like the combo of Sherod, Cayo and Golden offensively. But when you put those guys on the defensive end, with two smaller guards, that is a bit scary and really struggling to see how we can beat the big time P6 OOC opponents next year. Hopefully Sal can take a jump, but we are full of depth every year according to the pro Mooney guys. I'm just scared that the frontcourt can't or won't compete on the interior.
If we can go out and get a legit 6'7 - 6'9 guy that is athletic and can play a little I would feel much much better about our roster next year.
I do think both Gilyard and Francis will be a legit back court. Really looking forward to what they can do next year, and even feel pretty good with our depth in Woj and Gus.
I like the combo of Sherod, Cayo and Golden offensively. But when you put those guys on the defensive end, with two smaller guards, that is a bit scary and really struggling to see how we can beat the big time P6 OOC opponents next year. Hopefully Sal can take a jump, but we are full of depth every year according to the pro Mooney guys. I'm just scared that the frontcourt can't or won't compete on the interior.
I don’t see how we will be improved on defense or rebound significantly better next year, both of which have to improve if we are to win consistently. Plus, CM is not a good bench coach. I hope I am wrong, but I have heard the next year argument too many times.
yes we could have gotten someone definitely better. look at all the viable good coaches out there. UR would have long list drooling for the job....u follow a guy who hasn't made NCAA in 8 years so u become loved quickly when u do, get paid lot of $, have the resources to win, and if you do just ok you're not in jeopardy of being fired.
Is 'real good' NCAA? That's 1 big problem, nobody at UR wants to say it. We don't know what real good means. I know it's not 18 wins when u play more games nowadays. To me the only real good year after you've missed 8 in a row is NCAA. Big hat no cattle Hardt gave himself the same out. It's like they've put out the talking points to UR employees across social media, this message board and radio. Get over it fans and I'm pretty sure - IF we stay healthy, if we work harder than other teams, if we catch the breaks you need - we're going to be good. Those IFs are just fluff - big hat no cattle. The real ones are If Mooney can come through finally with an inside grad transfer who contributes not a Kwesi or madrid andrews (spider23 is exactly right), If we greatly improve on D (last in A10), IF we don't lose anyone but the fringe guys to transfer (recent precedent not in our favor).
Everyone's "real good" can be different. The reason I won't say "NCAA tourney or new coach" is because next year we could have some nice out of conference wins, do great in conference, have very few bad games, maybe even correct some rebounding, defensive, and late game issues, and lose a close conference tourney final and go to the NIT if our conference is a little down. If all of that happens, I would certainly want to give the same coach another chance with all of the same players coming back.
l would also look at this the other way. If we have another losing season, and look bad most of the year, and get hot and win the conference tourney, followed by an ugly loss in the first round of the NCAA tourney, I don't think that should guarantee our coach returning. I think as an AD, you have to look at the whole season next year, how the team responds to the coach, how the young guys are improving, and how we did at correcting our issues from this year.
The problem here is that you don't just magically get better by getting older. We might have won one more game this year with Sherod in there all season long, and our schedule this year was much worse than it was last year... Not just OOC but in conference too, because the league was garbage.
I like Francis and would rather have him than not, but the idea that he is going to combine with Sherod to give us a 7-game improvement or something, while the other guys' improvement will give us another 5 more wins in top of that is sheer lunacy based in nothingness.
The top four teams in the league return 95% or more of their points. A few others return more than 65%. It's possible we will win the league next year in the same way that it's possible I will strike oil while picking my nose.
I like Francis and would rather have him than not, but the idea that he is going to combine with Sherod to give us a 7-game improvement or something, while the other guys' improvement will give us another 5 more wins in top of that is sheer lunacy based in nothingness.
The top four teams in the league return 95% or more of their points. A few others return more than 65%. It's possible we will win the league next year in the same way that it's possible I will strike oil while picking my nose.
Your opinion (posted like fact) is we might have won one more game with Nick? One? You really don't think a guy who had games of 32 points, 28, 26, 25, and numerous more high scoring games in the A-10 last year would have led us to more than one win? Really? I know, keep using a few games this year as your sample size instead of all of last year, when he was the best player on the court several games in our conference.
Wojcik had some good games as a freshman for us this year. He also had some games that showed he was a freshman where he barely scored. Can you honestly say Nick, a proven experienced scorer, our best 3-point shooter and also our best inside-outside player, would have only given us one more win had he taken most of Wojcik's minutes? Come on. Just another experienced body would have likely given us a few more wins, and a proven score like Nick would have likely given us many more. I know you hate our coach but, geez, try to be realistic here.
As I think has been said over and over again, Sherod is not a good defender and while he would have contributed more that Wojcik offensively, he is a liability on defense in a lot of situations and as a team we finished DEAD LAST in defense this year.
There are 3 aspects of the game offense, defense, and rebounding. We were abjectly terrible at defense and rebounding but we were an average to above average offense game. Only looking at how a player contributes offensively is not seeing the forest through the trees.
Yes, I think we win probably more than just 1 game with Sherod, but we are still a below .500 team and playing in no postseason tournaments.
I didn't realize I needed to preface my posts on a message board with the notation that what follows is my opinion. Especially when I said Sherod "might" have resulted in one more win.
Kobe Bryant's total career WARP in the NBA was 72 (see link below). He played for 20 years and was one of the greatest players in the history of the league. He therefore was worth about 3.6 more wins per 82-game season to his team than an average player would have been.
I don't think Sherod is to our team what Kobe was to the Lakers, so I'd have a hard time saying he'd be worth 3.6 games over 82 games. And pro-rated to a 33-game schedule, even Kobe would have had a WARP of only 1.44 for his team.
So yes, I believe Sherod might have improved our win total by one game this season.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/vorp_career.html
You just can’t simply outscore quality competition. Nick will help us offensively, but defense is not his strength. You still have yet to explain how we will be a better defensive team and rebound significantly better with the same coach and tired schemes, adding a small starting guard, and adding NS who is an average defender at best. Also, the games we had Nick this past year didn’t go well so you can’t totally ignore that. I like NS and BF and think we will score, but not seeing huge improvements in the areas we need huge improvements in next year to win consistently.
just because Woj is marginally a better defender than Nick, you can't tell me freshman year Woj is a better basketball player.
Woj and Goose will both be much better basketball players next November than they were this year. Sal too. I expect Sal to show Nathan-like improvement, though not as drastic statistically.
and WARP? so Cleveland should only lose 9 more games this year compared to last with Lebron leaving?
and I believe Kobe was worth way more than 3.6 wins per year as compared to an average NBA player no matter what WARP tells you. I'll trust my eyeballs and good sense over the WARP statistician's formula.
Woj and Goose will both be much better basketball players next November than they were this year. Sal too. I expect Sal to show Nathan-like improvement, though not as drastic statistically.
and WARP? so Cleveland should only lose 9 more games this year compared to last with Lebron leaving?
and I believe Kobe was worth way more than 3.6 wins per year as compared to an average NBA player no matter what WARP tells you. I'll trust my eyeballs and good sense over the WARP statistician's formula.
