In Game: at St. Joe's

[CatsForTheWin]

At some point we are going to have to address the fact that the nepotism hire was a terrible and avoidable mistake. My hope is that will happen sooner rather than later.

[DC69Wildcat]

At some point we are going to have to address the fact that the nepotism hire was a terrible and avoidable mistake. My hope is that will happen sooner rather than later.

Think before you speak jackass. What a moronic statement

Easy. Wildcat98 expressed his opinion. It's OK to disagree with him, and obviously, a lot of people do, but name-calling is not appropriate. Wildcat98 is a good fellow who has been a loyal Wildcat fan for many years. He is neither a jackass nor a moron.

[mccabemi]

Matt may have been the best person for the job. But when the person you intend to hire happens to be the son of the prior coach, there should be a long list of check boxes that an institution must follow to make sure that person, is indeed, the best person for the job, so that any perception of nepotism can be put to bed. One of those check boxes should be considering other candidates. When the AD is a close friend of the person being hired, there needs to be triple checks.

There are those here that don’t give a rats behind that Matt got the job because, among other attributes, he is a really good person. But there are many good people out there—-some of those with deep Davidson connections— that also deserved consideration for the job.

So now we have a struggling coach who very much appears to have been handed a job. The thing is, it never had to be that way.

[MLC67]

Agree that “Cats for the Win” was a bit intemperate in castigating Wildcat98. Nonetheless, 98’s ad hominem attack on Matt was so way over the line that it offended most of us. 98 may well be a fine fellow and long time Cats fan, but that status does not reflect a sound judgement on the quality of our current head coach. The lads play incredibly hard for Matt,with great discipline and full TCC. No one else could get more out of this young group of student athletes. Accordingly, stay the course as better results will follow soon.

[ScootCat]

It’s too early for such consternation. I get it, but it’s just too soon.

[stevelee]

Did Davidson go through the charade of interviewing other people or hiring a search firm or anything before hiring Sam Spencer? The process, whatever it was, was much ridiculed in The Davidsonian. Spencer may have been the best man for the job for all I know. That didn’t make the jokes any less funny.

[GoCats]

The St. Joe's mascot is sporting a "new look" costume this season. Not sure if I like it.

I did not care much for the new look either.

[Wildcat98]

I’ll explain further given a day to reflect on it. I was opposed to this hire from the time it was announced because I was concerned that it was not the best thing for the basketball program as a whole. As we all remember, Matt’s hiring was announced simultaneously with Bob’s retirement, and there has never been any public discussion that I have seen of what other candidates may have been considered. Now, it is entirely possible that if a full and open coaching search had been done that Matt would have emerged as the best candidate for the job. However, I am skeptical that would have been the case as he brought zero head coaching experience to the table. With no record to evaluate, any opinions as to his ability to be a head coach would have been speculative at best.

So, was my nepotism comment inaccurate? Given the textbook meaning of that term, no. Would I have preferred a more robust coaching search for the good of the program? Absolutely. Do I think that there would have been more accomplished coaches interested in the job? I suspect there would have been. Ultimately, a coach is judged on wins and losses—as Bill Parcells famously said, you are what your record says you are. Our record over the past two seasons says that we have been a mediocre-to-bad basketball team, and we are trending in the wrong direction. I hope that Matt can pull us out of this tailspin, because that would be the best thing for Davidson basketball. But right now we are digging a hole that we’ll have to climb out of and I am concerned that we don’t yet know how deep it will be. Ignoring those problems gets us nowhere.

[i77cat]

The only way forward is to attract and retain better basketball players. There may be coaches who would win more games with our current roster, but there can't be many of them.

[Acorn]

But he built the roster! I don’t understand why people keep offering that as a defense.

[Acorn]

Also, to be clear, I don’t find the roster to be so bad that we couldn’t win a lot more games. And had Skogman not been hurt, Davidson might have won several more games.

Before we lost and posters were lamenting the lack of athleticism, someone had posted that we looked like the quicker team. This seemed like a pretty big and athletic team for Davidson. The big problem was the lack of outside shooting and the overdribbling that spawned. The offense was very poor compared to previous teams.

I agree with those who think that Brizzi could be a better PG for the system. But he needs to improve his shooting and clean up his mistakes. Bailey scored a lot, but on a _ton_ of shots. He has to be more efficient next year.

I’m worried about the shooting still. The coaches said they knew shooting was a problem last year and they worked on it all summer. They also told us the team had dramatically improved in that area. Why?

[i77cat]

But he built the roster! I don’t understand why people keep offering that as a defense.

He built it. Free transfers, NIL, and the Covid year destroyed it. The decline of the A10 didn't help. We never had players leave with eligibility remaining. It's an every year event now. And it it'll stay that way in all probability. Bob didn't mean to leave the cupboard as poorly stocked as he left it, but it happened. Does anyone think we'd be better off with Bob still coaching? Even Bob in his prime wouldn't do better with this roster.

[seamac77]

Hope..

https://www.instagram.com/p/CSkJsjcHjX8/

[i77cat]

I’m worried about the shooting still. The coaches said they knew shooting was a problem last year and they worked on it all summer. They also told us the team had dramatically improved in that area. Why?

I think they believed it. I also think they believed that we had 8 or 9 starters and 13 who would regularly contribute. Or whatever insane numbers we were fed. I'm sure we shoot well in practice. Big deal. In games, we are poor shooters.

[i77cat]

Hope..

https://www.instagram.com/p/CSkJsjcHjX8/

Decent hops. Not like Jordy or anything, but decent. He was still pretty young then. Maybe he can help us.