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[BaseRich306]

Maybe I phrased that wrong. I agree Matt, as a fierce competitor, is likely not satisfied with his results. But my impression is that there is often strong resistance here to anyone who suggests that Matt and his staff bear the lion’s share of the responsibility for those results.

[MLC67]

DH!!?

[Bill Cobb]

Methinks if Lee, Mennenga, Dez, and the others didn't bolt y'all would be singing a different tune. Devastating loss of personnel that we have not recovered from.

Some folks could make an argument that we shouldn't have been surprised that they left, but it's something very hard to plan for.

Frankly, I think we are superbly coached on the court. We just need better basketball players, better athletes, and more of them. Really have to step up recruiting and retention.

[Rudy2011]

There were a number of seasons in the A-10 where the team entered a season with high expectations, only to find themselves playing poorly in January, sitting at 2-2 in the conference with one of the wins being an awful 54-51 win where we shot 24% from the floor. It was necessary to believe without visual evidence that we would improve. With Bob McKillop, it became easy for me to say “I don’t know how, but I just assume we’ll go 10-4 or 11-3 to close out the year because he’ll make things work” because he had an established track record of doing so.

It seems fair to say that we are at the belief without seeing stage of the current staff. I want to assume things will work out, but I’m finding it harder than it used to be

[MikeMaloy15]

It's not unfair to note that Bob, Roy Williams, Coach K and Tony Bennett looked at the "landscape" and picked that very moment to hang it up. Three of them were getting old, but the timing has to at least make you raise an eyebrow. [The other "majors" in VA and NC have either fired their coaches (WFU, NC St) or are contemplating it after abject failure this year (Va Tech).] I remember one time Bob saying something along the lines of they'd have to carry him out. No, they didn't have to do that. [I'm glad for him. He's got a boatload of grandchildren.]

It really doesn't seem like an Xs and Os problem.

For critics, the Curry/Berman injection will undoubtedly put more pressure on Matt to produce W-L results better than those of the last 3 years, and that's fair. But before that announcement, I have trouble stifling giggles at the idea that hot shot coaches demonstrably better than Matt were lining up for the Davidson job. "Man, I want no money, an admissions office looking to deny applicants, a tiny fan base, and living alumni you can fit into the Chase Center. I'll be unstoppable." There is a reason Bob was and ever will be considered a miracle worker.

The other schools like us play D-III.

[stevelee]

+1

[slowcat95]

I'm not sure anyone has suggested hotshot coaches were lining up to vie to fill Bob's shoes. Nor do I believe a hotshot coach is what Davidson needs. I've said it before: Matt's a fantastic human and will likely be as good, if not better, a coach for Davidson than his dad. Thankfully, neither of them is a "hotshot."

None of that excuses what seems to be a lack of effort by the college to follow an equal opportunity hiring process.

I'm glad Matt was hired. I wish the selection process had been competitive.
I hope Matt stays. I believe a competitive selection process would have given him a longer leash and a more patient fanbase.
I hope the Curry/Berman fund allows both basketball programs to exceed our wildest dreams. I trust Matt, Gayle, and Chris to make the most of it while honoring Davidson's history and high academic standards.

I hope those who would accuse me of 'lurking' because I rarely post here would take a hot minute to think about the fact that I have very good reasons for laying low here, and that those who've been on this board long enough know exactly what those reasons are.

Go Cats.

[MikeMaloy15]

I'm not sure anyone has suggested hotshot coaches were lining up to vie to fill Bob's shoes.

That's sort of my point. They can't.

Other people's criticism is a little different from yours. I was directing that particular rant at them and, lacking perfect articulation, apparently cast a wider net than intended.

[slowcat95]

gotcha, and sorry I assumed I was targeted in your net.
It's almost like internet forums aren't the best place to understand a wide range of perspectives on contentious topics.

Edited to add a winky face

[ScootCat]

Thank you to MikeMaloy15 for his well reasoned post. Regarding the hiring process, during my long career in business, more often than not, the companies I was affiliated with typically promoted from within to fill the CEO spot when the predecessor retired or left for another job. What happened when Bob retired here was similar, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

[slowcat95]

Thank you to MikeMaloy for his well reasoned post. Regarding the hiring process, during my long career in business, more often than not, the companies I was affiliated with typically promoted from within to fill the CEO spot when the predecessor retired or left for another job. What happened when Bob retired here was similar, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

'That's the way we've always done it' doesn't make it right.

[Dr. Bliss]

When Matt was hired (which I supported for multiple reasons and still feel was the right thing to do), I felt he had 4 years gratis to prove himself. With the sea change brought about by the portal and NIL I believe this period is extended. But not indefinitely. Hopefully, Clunie’s process includes yearly sit-down evaluations with Matt and all the coaches to look at strengths and weaknesses. We are quite incestuous on our coaching staff and it might be that we need some new blood and outside perspective.

With the amount of close games we have lost in the last two years we really need to figure out how to manufacture a few more ppg and get a few more stops. It’s up to the coaches to figure out how to do this. One suggestion I had some games back is to run more stuff for Durkin to get him to the line more, where he is all but automatic. When he gets completely taken out of games we are not effective and we struggle.

Two areas for improvement are our end-of-game and end-of-shot clock management and our ability to get the ball across the time line under full-court pressure. We are sub-standard in these situations and hard questions need to be asked—is the problem coaching or is it personnel? Our offense is deliberate and predicated on numerous cuts, screens and ball movement, so we’re out of our element in a short-clock situation. In fact, we generally suck in these situations. A different approach is needed. I often think we’d be better off running our normal stuff instead of holding the ball until the last seven seconds before starting the play.

We’ve also lost a number of players to other schools who went on to strongly contribute. More hard questions need to be asked here. These players didn’t leave because of NIL money to my knowledge. So what’s going on here? This issue has come up often enough that it deserves close scrutiny. God forbid we’d lose a player with Manie’s potential.

Perhaps most importantly we need to look at recruiting. It seems we often end up with finesse players instead of the strong, athletic bruisers we need to compete in our league. While I don’t particularly enjoy the kind of basketball we saw in the A-10 semis and finals (almost unwatchable), it is clear we need to have some horses who can compete in that environment.

Hopefully our new NIL fund will help us get back to our historic level of competitiveness but I don’t see it happening overnight. Which is why I argue that Matt needs more time. A couple of years to my thinking.

[ScootCat]

Slowcat, I didn’t say it was right or wrong, only that promoting from within is not unusual. It can be a sign of a well managed succession plan, or, to the contrary, something akin to nepotism. It just depends.

[Acorn]

Since many folks today seem to believe that quad wins are the best/most important metric, let’s look at the breakdown for the ‘Cats (153 in the NET rankings) for this past season:

Quad 1: 0–5
Quad 2: 1–2
Quad 3: 4–9
Quad 4: 11–0

Davidson finished the pre-NCAA tournament season 148th in Ken Pomeroy’s rankings (three behind Rikus Schulte’s UC Riverside, and four ahead of Jarvis Moss-led Radford). That would have been good for seventh in the SoCon, fourth in the Sun Belt, and third in the ASun.

[bvgerd]

Oof 4-9 in quad three hurts to see. Flip that on its head to 9-4 (something that seems like a reasonable expectation wed want to see for Q3 games) and wed have finished 21-11 against an easy schedule.