And so the endless and pointless debate marches on….with the certainty that no one is going to budge a single millimeter in their opinions. What’s especially sad is that fools like me still read every entry in these threads.
Can't resist. Willard and Maryland go down to Davidson
- Thread starter ivyhillparkk1963
- Start date
Obviously those investors, more well-heeled and ostensibly more intelligent than the author of this post, thought his run at SHU was much more than "mediocre," as would any objective observer.
Might want to let the season progress before you make that assumption. I think it will be interesting to see how the 3 centers work out this year. .
I agree. He was good. Better than all but pj. If we get 4 bids in a row, to me the next coach to do it did a good job even if we go nowhere on narch.
If you think the level of success to be thought of as a good coach at depaul or northwestern is the same as at nova or osu, i think you are nuts.
Willard is extremely good at getting more while working with less. I look at a year like 2018-2019 and think he did an incredible job getting that team to the tournament.
On the flip side, he clearly was not comfortable when the weight of expectations were put on him. During 19-20, probably the pinnacle of his tenure, SHU had a record of 2-5 while being ranked inside the top 10.
Clearly Willard is more comfortable being the hunter than the hunted. Nothing wrong with that, but it puts a ceiling on how high a coach can take their program.
On the flip side, he clearly was not comfortable when the weight of expectations were put on him. During 19-20, probably the pinnacle of his tenure, SHU had a record of 2-5 while being ranked inside the top 10.
Clearly Willard is more comfortable being the hunter than the hunted. Nothing wrong with that, but it puts a ceiling on how high a coach can take their program.
I think it’s safe to say we’re stronger with Tyrese Samuel than without. This is not an addition by subtraction.
We owe Willard our gratitude. Nothing less.
I continue to appreciate what Willard did here esp. cleaning up the mess of the Gonzo embarrassment. But I agree with you about the 2020 end of season flop. Yet many posters feel we were poised to make a big post season run. I disagree.
Lost 66 to 63 dont worry he will tell you he didn't pick this event
2 in a row. Im sure it was that damn late tip time
Guess the preseason wasn't enough time for him to install his vaunted offensive sets.
I like to deal I’m facts:
- Willard got SHU back to respectability and had a good run getting to the post season.
- Had his share of hits and misses recruiting but overall got good kids.
- Underperformed when his teams made the NCAA’s.
The UM job over time will show if the resources held him back from greater accomplishments or not.
- Willard got SHU back to respectability and had a good run getting to the post season.
- Had his share of hits and misses recruiting but overall got good kids.
- Underperformed when his teams made the NCAA’s.
The UM job over time will show if the resources held him back from greater accomplishments or not.
Just read a Washington Times article previewing the weekend. He said if he could do it over, he would rather have played mt. St mary's monday night on the road because having a tuesday home game lessened the prep time for davidson. The maryland women happened to play home monday night.
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Yep. Video here. Condescending as always to both the professional and student reporters in the room as well.
Top Topic on Maryland forums: “Who is our next Basketball Coach (Serious)” 🤣
Gonzo was not bad. He was a better recruiter than Willard. Was I MUCH more difficult Conference. Several years the team was snubbed for ncaa bid. Likely because of Gonzo. It certainly wasn’t like the time under Blaney.
Like I have said since he left. He won’t see the end of this contract.
"Several years the team was snubbed for ncaa (sic) bid."
Our records during Gonzo's years were 13-16, 17-15, 17-15 and 19-13.
I'm not sure we were snubbed any year. Even that last year our best wins were Pitt and a down Louisville team. I don't remember us being particularly close to the bubble.
In the 2008-2009 season
They were 17-15 (7-11)
Beat #19 USC and #10 Gtown
Lost 3 conference games in OT
Big East was loaded that year. 4 30 win teams and 2 in the Final Four.
I know you can always say ifs and buts. However flip 2 of those OT games and they would have been in the conversation to make the tournament.
In 2009-10
19-12 (9-9) heading into selection Sunday with yet another 4 OT loses on the resume.
Yeah they absolutely sucked that year too. 🤦♂️
Gonzalez’s tenure while coach, had the Pirates playing respectable basketball on the court. He is just remembered for the off the court issues and the way they embarrassed themselves in that last NIT game at Continental.
Hmm..interesting parallel as some people just want to remember how Willard exited stage left and finished with a clunker vs TCU.
Now I am not even saying they were remotely comparable. But people make it sound like the Hall was non competitive under Gonzalez and that is just not true.
A good recruiter, arguably, but many of his targets couldn't qualify even by the day's low standards.
Can I also ask why the Louis Orr run is considered a failure or not mentioned in the good run category?
2 out of 5 years made the tourney. With an absolute legit snub with a 10-6 conference record.
And he won as many tournament games as Willard did.
Yet he was still fired… Because we had a higher standard in terms of where recruiting was headed and it wasn’t acceptable to get pasted by 20 in the first round of the dance or to be non competitive and lose by 30 to Duke. We also expected our head coach to be more engaged with the alumni/ donors from what I heard.
I feel Louis Orr does not get a fair shake in how he represented Seton Hall basketball.
2 out of 5 years made the tourney. With an absolute legit snub with a 10-6 conference record.
And he won as many tournament games as Willard did.
Yet he was still fired… Because we had a higher standard in terms of where recruiting was headed and it wasn’t acceptable to get pasted by 20 in the first round of the dance or to be non competitive and lose by 30 to Duke. We also expected our head coach to be more engaged with the alumni/ donors from what I heard.
I feel Louis Orr does not get a fair shake in how he represented Seton Hall basketball.
You fail to mention in 2009 we had a very similar loss to RU at home in March we should have won similar to 2012 that people never forgot. We also had some piss poor non conference losses.
And remember we missed the NCAA tournament in 2010 because we started John Garcia on senior night 🤦♂.
You talk give Bobby G the benefit of if we only flipped a game or 2. Never saw you give 2012 the benefit if we only flipped a game or two. You can see similar to Willard in 2012 in 2009 I believe we had a road loss at USF and a late home loss to RU.
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My point is that the Gonzo years weren’t as bad as pelt make it sound. We were in a ridiculously deep conference and were competitive. We didn’t underachieve. With Willard ask they had to do was win the games they were supposed to win and there have a winning record especially his last 5 years where everyone gives him all these accolades.
Gonzo was an embarrassment to the University. Good riddance.
If only we had $75 million to throw around frivolously like Texas A&M! They didn’t even bat an eye. And I’m not talking about letting any coaches go here. Just to have that much money is daunting.
Gonzo never made the NCAAs
Period Stop
Don’t understand to hear his name mentioned in the same breath as Willard if we’re carefully comparing Seton Hall coaches
Period Stop
Don’t understand to hear his name mentioned in the same breath as Willard if we’re carefully comparing Seton Hall coaches
They get nuts. He’s going to feel heat there that he didn’t here. A different planet.
I would love to know which Rutgers loss you are referencing as Gonzalez beat Rutgers in both late season games in both 08-09 and 09-10.
And yes I wish we could have flipped the USF loss in which Theodore missed the front end of a 1 and 1 down 1 with 3 seconds to play. It started the typical January swoon. Believe we lost 5 in a row starting with that game, when we were ranked in the top 25 prior to that game.
But let’s not sugar coat that the home OT loss to Rutgers and road loss to DePaul were to two opponents who were dead last in the conference and had a combined 6 wins before beating us. And the loss to DePaul wasn’t a tough luck game in OT but a 28 point debacle. Gotta win that game in that spot. They had only 1 win prior.
Maybe Sha will take Willard on his staff when he wears out his welcome at Maryland. 😂
And remember the Big East was much tougher when Gonzo and Orr coached
My apologies I mixed up 2008 and 2009 in my head. I thought the Inman buzzer beater was 2009. When I looked it up I saw I had it mixed up.
Just a comedy that there is so much negative speak about a team whose 6th man was Brandon Mobley a freshman who missed the first half of the season, and 7th man was freshman Harolds Karlis that was in the hunt for a tournament bid. A team with no depth which clearly was drained at year end, minus the one big game vs Georgetown where Theodore was spectacular. Yet people can talk so positively about the 2009 team which had at least one player off the bench with JT as a 6th man that lost to IUPUI and James Madison and never had a chance for an NIT bid. FYI we only lost 2 OT games that year in conference play not 3.
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I will never think that Seton Hall is a job that just takes care of itself. There is no autopilot here. But it is like a great many other schools in that when we hire a good coach, we have good teams. When we hire bad ones, we don't. P.J. Carlesimo was a great coach and we had great teams for a while. When he left, we made a terrible hire and immediately lost all of that momentum.
When Blaney was shown the door, we hired a very effective recruiter who was an average coach, and we had our best team in the last 30 years in a season when we were also waiting on a No. 1 recruiting class. It didn't work out in that next year and Amaker left before that situation sorted itself. I'm a pretty firm believer that the ship would've been righted and we would have become an upper-echelon Big East team again. But who knows?
Our next coach was not the recruiter Amaker was, and he wasn't dynamic enough to swim in the shark tank the Big East had become by then, but he still managed to get us to two NCAAs (should've also been a third in 2003), and even win a game. Then we hired an unstable, pathologically insecure nut and he stripped the program of its dignity.
He was replaced by our last previous coach who did a terrific job restoring pride to the program and assembled some very good rosters that also chronically underachieved. Liked having a whistle around his neck but not doing the off-court stuff a head coach at Seton Hall needs to do. What I always perceived as an unearned sense of entitlement from him helped shape the way I feel about him, and his constant March failures didn't do much to ameliorate that feeling. He left me feeling that a few of our teams could've done more - maybe much more. Then again, a few others did a good job just to make it to the NCAAs, and in those years, that's fine. I have no delusions about being Duke or Kansas. But if your annual goal is just to make the NCAAs, you are not in the right league in the Big East. You just aren't doing it right.
Taken as a whole over the last 40 years, when we have good coaches, we have good teams, and it works on a sliding scale given their relative abilities. But the idea that competent coaches cannot win here is false.
Excellent post. I love this sentence: "What I always perceived as an unearned sense of entitlement from him helped shape the way I feel about him, and his constant March failures."
I feel the same way and have a critical eye toward those who are earning huge salaries and have great job security but dont think that's enough and sacrifice integrity for an even bigger payday. I'm not opposed to a person wanting a different job, a better job, new scenery, more resources, etc. But you have to do it the right way, especially when your current employer has invested so much in you and shown so much loyalty. To be halfway out the door when such a school/team is in a major moment (the Big Dance), lacks integrity.
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