Womens - @ Duq - Sunday 2/9 2pm CBS Sports Network
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Can we keep Aaron around long enough so that he can coach his daughter? We need to convince her she wants to play ay Richmond.
Massive game against the Hawks on Thursday. I hope we continue to have a big crowd for that game. Should be a really good one.
I've watched so many men's games, I think I've forgotten what good well coached basketball looks like. The women are an outstanding watch on both ends of the floor.
I really enjoy watching them play. They do get sloppy at times but their ball
movement is best I have ever seen with a UR women’s team. Just look at 3 starters
returning next year and a few decent reserves. Hopefully some recruits or transfers will
fill in for Budnick and Hill and keep us at top of A10.
movement is best I have ever seen with a UR women’s team. Just look at 3 starters
returning next year and a few decent reserves. Hopefully some recruits or transfers will
fill in for Budnick and Hill and keep us at top of A10.
From Duquesne Coach
QUOTABLE
"This is one of the days when you go to the office and you learn a little about yourself, your team, and you get your teeth kicked in and that's what happened today," head coach Dan Burt said. "We certainly didn't play our best basketball by any stretch. I thought before the game that we had a really good game plan, and we were well prepared for it. We knew what they were going to do. They don't really deviate from what they do, and we couldn't stop them. I've been in the Atlantic 10 for 18 years as an assistant and as a head coach, and that's easily one of the three or four best teams that I have seen. They have positional size, they shoot the ball so beautifully, and they move the ball even more beautifully. That's a great basketball team that we played today with tremendous veteran experience. I will say kudos to our team for never quitting and playing with great effort until the end of the game. We won the fourth quarter with taking Meg out, who never comes out of the game, and them having starters in at the three-minute mark. So, I'll take that away that was a good sign, but obviously very disappointed. And we'll wash this off at midnight because we must prepare for UMass."
QUOTABLE
"This is one of the days when you go to the office and you learn a little about yourself, your team, and you get your teeth kicked in and that's what happened today," head coach Dan Burt said. "We certainly didn't play our best basketball by any stretch. I thought before the game that we had a really good game plan, and we were well prepared for it. We knew what they were going to do. They don't really deviate from what they do, and we couldn't stop them. I've been in the Atlantic 10 for 18 years as an assistant and as a head coach, and that's easily one of the three or four best teams that I have seen. They have positional size, they shoot the ball so beautifully, and they move the ball even more beautifully. That's a great basketball team that we played today with tremendous veteran experience. I will say kudos to our team for never quitting and playing with great effort until the end of the game. We won the fourth quarter with taking Meg out, who never comes out of the game, and them having starters in at the three-minute mark. So, I'll take that away that was a good sign, but obviously very disappointed. And we'll wash this off at midnight because we must prepare for UMass."
what's even stranger is playing them twice in the second half of the season...usually if your're playing a team twice the meetings are split...one in the first half and one in the second half of the regular season.
I believe Women's schedule is like the Men's...there's several opponents each team plays twice...we've played Dayton twice already...will play VCU again and St. Joseph's...
Big game Thursday night. Mason and the Hawks won't give us any breathing room!
Go Spiders!
4 of final 6 are at home, which is nice, but 2x against St. Joe's and then Davidson isn't bad and you can never consider VCU a gimme. Still plenty of tough games left, but fantastic to be rolling like this on a 10-game winning streak.
Agree that Thursday's game is absolutely huge. We already have the win over Mason in our sole meeting of the year, and would love to assure no worse than a split with St. Joe's and push the lead over them to 1.5 games with a win on Thursday.
Joe's has a really tough final 5 games with 2x against us, their second Mason game, and Rhode Island not the road who can be tough.
Mason also has a tricky tough finish with their second game against Joe's plus URI, Davidson, and Duquesne mixed in there.
So nobody is a position to just cruise the rest of the way...gotta keep the intensity up.
Agree that Thursday's game is absolutely huge. We already have the win over Mason in our sole meeting of the year, and would love to assure no worse than a split with St. Joe's and push the lead over them to 1.5 games with a win on Thursday.
Joe's has a really tough final 5 games with 2x against us, their second Mason game, and Rhode Island not the road who can be tough.
Mason also has a tricky tough finish with their second game against Joe's plus URI, Davidson, and Duquesne mixed in there.
So nobody is a position to just cruise the rest of the way...gotta keep the intensity up.
I don't know either, but that would have been my guess. One daughter was on bench wearing a Richmond jersey.
Can money from the Spider Collective be used to pay coaches? Have to assume Rousell's name will come up in the off-season coaching carousel, but can we entice him to stay with some big time money. My guess is he making 400K, maybe 500K and that is a just wild guess out of the air. But if you could increase that to 800K or more, that may give him some pause before leaving. No need for a 10 year deal, but just increase the money and maybe increase the money into the program and see if UR can become a top A10 team year in and year out and put together a streak of NCAA appearances.
I don't think so but to your point. We need to go all in to retain Rousell. Yeah, certainly we don't need to do a 10 year deal, but give this man a hefty raise. What he is done with our women's program which basically has zero track record to go off and was left in a state of perpetual mediocrity after the last coach is amazing.
And yeah, if we are gonna keep Mooney and his 55% winning percentage maybe we should divert some of our NIL money to making our women's program into a top tier program. It would take a lot less money to do on the women's side and we have the right coach to actually make it happen.
Maybe some of our NIL guys (the ones who aren't Mooney bros) use this an angle to slowly starve the beast. Give next year, but designate some of your $$$ to the women. That would send a message to those in power.
I would hope he's at least $500k base, but he's probably not hugely higher than that.
Mason coach was hired back in 2021 at a $450k base with up to $232,500 in potential bonuses available.
gmufourthestate.com
Mason coach was hired back in 2021 at a $450k base with up to $232,500 in potential bonuses available.
CONTRACT DETAILS OF WOMEN’S BASKETBALL HEAD COACH VANESSA BLAIR-LEWIS RELEASED | Fourth Estate
Photo Courtesy of Mason Athletics A comparison between the contracts of Mason men’s and women’s basketball’s head coaches BY DOMENIC ALLEGRA SPORTS EDITOR On Tuesday, April 13, Fourth Estate obtained head coach Vanessa Blair-Lewis’ contract through a Freedom of Information Act Request. The detai ...
gmufourthestate.com
Agree with many sentiments shared above. Roussell has the makings of becoming a program defining coach. Someone, who I believe, can go down as the best UR coach of all time if he keeps this up for many more years. Also someone who can change the perception of Richmond women’s basketball where it is a sought of as a Gonzaga-esque team. He absolutely deserves to get a raise and whatever resources he wants. Basketball is our flagship sport at UR and he is certainly doing his part by having us be a top 30 NET program, top of A10, and getting votes in AP poll. The A10 is getting better each year. 3 teams right now all have a chance for an at-large. The conference is #8 in the country in NET rankings too.
I have made the same comment about NIL. Could the NIL collective have a designation on whether one donates to the men’s or women’s team? The men’s program get about $500-700K/year I think from prior reports. I think even if our women’s team raised $75-100K per year that it could make a meaningful difference in recruiting.
I have made the same comment about NIL. Could the NIL collective have a designation on whether one donates to the men’s or women’s team? The men’s program get about $500-700K/year I think from prior reports. I think even if our women’s team raised $75-100K per year that it could make a meaningful difference in recruiting.
Pretty sure I've expressed my opinion on here before, but I think it's going to be very hard to keep him. He feels a bit like a Beilein to me in that he seems to like to move up, build a program, and then rinse and repeat. We've just about reached that high point in this cycle, so I'd think one more successful season here, if not after this one, and he'll have his choice of P5 options. Feels to me like mostly a matter of the right fit for him coming open that will determine how much longer he stays.
That said, of course I hope we do whatever we can to try to keep him. Feel like he could be easily $800k, maybe even $1m, at his next stop, and I don't know that we can match that. And even then, he feels like a motivated mover who would still want the challenge of building another team in a higher-level conference.
We just extended him last year, so we'll see what we might have to put on the table just a year later if things finish well this season.
That said, of course I hope we do whatever we can to try to keep him. Feel like he could be easily $800k, maybe even $1m, at his next stop, and I don't know that we can match that. And even then, he feels like a motivated mover who would still want the challenge of building another team in a higher-level conference.
We just extended him last year, so we'll see what we might have to put on the table just a year later if things finish well this season.
I agree that ultimately it will come down to what his preference is. Hopefully he and his family liking Richmond, knowing he has essentially job security here for as long as he wants, and us providing him with a salary and resources that he likes, all factor in his decision. We all know that we give coaches long leashes here anyway, which in his case he absolutely deserves because of all of his success. While he seems like a very motivated coach to be the best, there will certainly be less external pressure at UR to achieve that than at P5s, which mentally can be comforting for some coaches. That is certainly something to consider too.
I disagree with the statement you made about us having reached our high point. I think this program has a way higher ceiling. We are getting votes in AP poll in several, non-consecutive weeks, we are in a conference that has a chance for 3 bids to NCAA, we are getting invited to top-tier tournaments, we host top ranked teams in the Robins Center, and we are on the cusp of beating these programs, and have even beaten an Ok State team that is currently ranked. Our recruiting continues to get better each year too. Not to mention fan support continues to grow. I don't know how many times that happened when he was at Bucknell, but I think for us this is just the start of an upward trajetory. So knowing that with all the things I mention in the first paragraph can be enticing enough reasons to want to stay.
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I'd certainly like to think we're not at our high point. Just meant that we're at the point with likely back-to-back NCAAs, potentially back-to-back conference championships, first key recruiting class will be out the door...it's a natural time when next-level schools will be calling and there can be a little uncertainty about how much more there is to accomplish here.
Point take and agreed. If he wants to go to BCS program, we probably can't afford to keep him and even if we could if that is his dream than we can't stop him. We should still try and show him as much love as possible.
He has to look and Mooney and say, if this guy can be coach for life with no pressure, than so can I. There would be legit pressure at a BCS program.
I expounded on this on one of the numerous CM threads. If Roussel aspires to win a national championship or be in that stratosphere, his chances of doing that at UR are low, so he has to look seriously at alternatives where he can take that next step. It's a noteworthy "if" and would depend a ton on what options come calling. I don't know much about him but we should be wary of repeating the CM model, there's a bunch of parallels here about back to back NCAAs, etc. I'd love the guy to stay but also think turnover happens, we just have to be prepared with our list of promising HC candidates to come take over an exciting program.
The Ivy league looks strong at the top and we also like to compare ourselves to the Ivy's from an academic standpoint, I could see Princeton, Columbia, or Harvard HC being on the list.
Roussell is seeing fan interest and looks to be having good recruiting success at UR. Next year looks to be a strong one also with Ulstrom, Sweeney and Doogan returning as a strong nucleus. We just need 2-3 strong players from our recruits, reserves and the transfer portal to fill in the graduating players positions.
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