Potential Sha Replacements
- Thread starter MichiganStoleTitle
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There is no talk about replacing the head coach. Not by anyone whose opinion matters, anyway.
Of course not. We couldn’t buy ourselves a McDonald’s Happy Meal for lunch right now, let alone buy out our salary inflated head coach.
He’s not going anywhere but my gut says it would be better for both parties to move on. Sha needs a strong AD to keep him in line, he’s nowhere near ready to run a program in its entirety like is happening here. He would certainly disagree with that, some will say this past season humbled him, i’m not sold. He can be a good coach but he needs to be confined in some ways.
As for Seton Hall, they should be looking at D1 and D2 coaches (I would absolutely throw in Klatsky from D3 NYU he’s a stud) that have consistently high winning percentages. I’d hire a proven tactician because I don’t see the talent getting much better. Shift the focus to an analytics driven program, invest in scouting and pay good coaches what you can and accept they will be moving on every few years. If you have the right leadership (like Drake University) you can withstand that.
As for Seton Hall, they should be looking at D1 and D2 coaches (I would absolutely throw in Klatsky from D3 NYU he’s a stud) that have consistently high winning percentages. I’d hire a proven tactician because I don’t see the talent getting much better. Shift the focus to an analytics driven program, invest in scouting and pay good coaches what you can and accept they will be moving on every few years. If you have the right leadership (like Drake University) you can withstand that.
And where is all the money coming from for these investments and to pay the players anywhere close to market rate. SHU is not the Federal government…we can’t spend money we don’t have.
Klatsky with a GM and a guy like nardi as top assistant would be a legitimate option. Certainly better than the clown camp were hosting on the sideline with our current staff
If I have $2.5-3M to pay a coach & GM, i’d look to pay a coach around $1.5M, maybe go to $2M but just accept the fact he’ll get a better offer soon enough and move on.
Some have correctly pointed out GM’s aren’t as powerful as HC’s in college sports and that’s mostly true (Andrew Luck is an exception).
I think Seton Hall would benefit from a strong GM. We’ll see how much change occurs with the revenue share.
What ever happened to Sha using a portion of his own salary to bring in players? I thought it was said that he was strongly advised by somebody close to him that he should put up his own money.
I was hoping he would follow up in the tradition on K. Willard and sponsor on the Giving Days -- would have been a welcomed gesture. But, it is Sha's money and I have no right to tell him how to spend it.
You mean you don't know? It seems as though you know everything going on behind the scenes, and it's all bad. Everyone from the BOR down is incompetent in all facets of running a university and an athletics program. You've been on here for months telling us as much, with complete confidence.
First line of my original post dude. He’s not being bought out, my thoughts have a 0.00005% chance of happening here. For better or worse he’s got 2 more years here.
But it’s a worthless discussion because no one moves on without getting paid. I’m not happy with his performance this year, but SHU is in no position to fire a coach after one bad season.
I mean…am I wrong? Look at our university president for starters. Look at what our AD and head coach are doing together. Look at the former university president and the BOR. I mean wtf man. You support this? Truly. All pettiness and kidding aside. You support this? Because your message is that it’s all good. That makes me genuinely question your judgement.
And that's exactly the problem. People have their heads in the sand because of what this guy did on the court 25 years ago, yourself included.
He's not that good of a coach and he certainly isn't a good program manager.
Our last coach matched 30% up to a certain amount on Giving Day. It was well publicized as a way to increase donations.
If Sha isn't interested in publishing that, it's bad business.
Mind you, I'm not here to tell him how to spend his money. It's simply in his and the program's best interest to know that the head coach is putting his money where his mouth is.
No matter what he gives, he'll be attacked here by the usual suspects for not giving more.
3 years no tournament. Nobody expected that 3 years ago. April of 2022 this 3 year span would’ve been an epic failure by every possible measure. Tough to say one bad season when expectations at the start were we would be making the tournament right away. And even the people who want to argue the landscape changed, it didn’t change that much from 2022 to 2023
i mean, last year finished pretty tremendous for more than half the year. and that whole elite 8 thing that people try to play down.
so we get a coach, he does decent, he leaves. sha has winning big east seasons and an elite 8 under his belt. hes the only guy in the world that will stay at seton hall. its in our best interest for it to work out with sha, and it can. he has a positive resume and a shiny highlights whether you like it or not. and you really post like he banged your mother tbh.
Buddy he’s 0 for 3 and went to an Elite Eight with somebody else. You and Sha got a little something going on you’d like to tell us about? I promise I will not judge. This is a safe space.
what was willard his first 3 years? 5 years?
0/3 takes out the entire context of what is an acceptable job. go root for a team with money otherwise acquaint yourself with reality. buddy.
35, 36, and 37.
You wanna play Big East basketball and receive some “atta boys” for an “acceptable job” or do you wanna compete? Excuses and more excuses.
Go Sha. Go Pirates. Just win. It’s all anyone here wants.
Interesting to see SHUSA / shuathlete has made his way back to the board. The perseverance is respectable.
Why was he banned the last time? I thought he was more in favor around here this time
No, I'm just clear-headed enough to understand what I'm seeing, and grasping the context in which he is operating. I loved him as a point guard -- he's still my favorite player we've ever had -- but I have no problem compartmentalizing that and evaluating him on the merits of his coaching career.
I'm also not reactionary enough to look at one season -- and it was dreadful; we all can plainly see that -- and think that undoes every other accomplishment he's accrued to this point. It doesn't, and that's the truth.
I actually grade our coaches pretty harshly, which is why I wasn't disappointed to see Willard leave for Maryland. I thought we had plateaued with annual ones-and-done in the NCAA Tournament, which I didn't see as the maximum ceiling for our program. To be honest, even at the time, I would've rather had a coach who knew how to propel a team through a tournament with a chance to reach a Sweet Sixteen or more every now and then even if it meant missing the NCAAs once every second or third year as we reloaded. Just making it every year makes you Iona, and that doesn't excite me.
But nothing shows that someone doesn't understand college basketball in 2025 like saying we haven't made the NCAAs in three seasons, so it must follow that the coach isn't qualified. The entire operation context of the sport is nothing at all like it was in 2021 or 2022. Now, if a coach doesn't have the full financial support of the administration (coupled with a competed Athletic department), he cannot succeed, or at the very least, will have to overcome mountains in order to do so. That's just the fact. And to this point, Shaheen Holloway has had the benefit of neither of these. I mean, we're talking about a university that hired a president who should've been shunned rather than elevated, and is burying its head in the sand now rather than firing him and starting completely over. And I'm sorry, but the athletic department leadership is clueless. That needs to be said, and I've been pretty silent around that subject. They are the ones in way over their heads, and it's screamingly obvious.
Now having said all that, I won't shield Holloway from accountability. He's not totally blameless, but he is also far from the reason this season went in the shitter so quickly. He made a mistake trying to build a roster in the way he did having only a pittance to spend, but he went for it. Gambled and lost. I've seen other coaches try to find their footing in this pay-for-play environment and struggle to land, too. Holloway knows more about this game than everyone on this board combined, so I'm confident he realizes his miscalculation. Still, with just $1.5 million to spend, his chances of having a very good team were akin to buying a lottery ticket (which, coindidentally, is also Seton Hall's approach to development).
I have a feeling, despite what the school told HallDan, that we are waiting until the House settlement is okayed before we start empytying the bankroll. That brand of scared financial conservatism is always Seton Hall's M.O., so why would it not be here? But we are far from the only program proceeding this way. Notice it's only the most moneyed programs singing multiples of guys, the ones with cash to spend independent of the rev sharing.
To me, Sha's biggest failure is his refusal to open up his program to fans and media, his lack of accessibility to them, and his (apparent) refusal to get out there and hit the fundraising trail himself on a consistent basis. This is important, but (at least as far as I can see) he isn't embracing this, and that's a mistake. This is all important.
In the end, I'm not going to bury a guy with a track record of success after three seasons when he is clearly sailing against the strongest headwinds in the history of the sport. I was 100 percent in on Kevin Willard after three seasons, even when his third brought us only one more conference win than this one did, so I'm granting Holloway the same grace. Willard was operating in a landscape that was downright idyllic compared to what this guy is facing today.
Honest question since I’m not on The Trove - what else is there to talk about? The team sucked last year and I don’t see any posts on potential incoming guys aside from Clark. I’m not saying there aren’t guys coming in either.
I’m not suggesting they fire him after one year. I’m sharing an opinion that I question whether each party is still a good fit. The landscape has drastically changed.
Yeah, the team had an awful year so less to talk about in general. And CBB is an epic mess right now. The coach of the National Championship is being accused of stalking. Wonderful.
No offense but “good fit”? We have a President that is basically in witness protection and has had some serious allegations as to why he was hired, a rudderless BOR that is conducting numerous investigations and totally miscalculated the impact of NIL and is still way behind.
What exactly a “good fit” for that mess? To me it’s a worthless waste of time.
What about discussing other BE teams? Maybe post less?
i think Seton Hall would do well with someone whose an elite X and O’s guy because they have virtually no chance of recruiting well in this era. If you’re at a talent deficit you might as well go with a tactician. Sha’s offenses are mediocre and that tracks back to Saint Peter’s. I don’t see that changing.
I don’t post a whole lot to begin with but I don’t pull punches. I think Shaheen with a strong AD and strong NIL could do very well. He doesn’t have that here. Not referring to competence, I mean a strong personality like him. Someone who can check him. A lot of people need that so its not some huge knock on him.
I don’t really care about other BE teams. I can’t tell if your last question is serious?
But not to beat a dead horse, but he took a team to the elite eight with limited talent.
To me it’s just a hypothetical and circular situation. So in your opinion it would be great to have a different coach. It has zero percent chance of happening and less than zero chance of the administration getting it right.
I’ve gone to fewer games this year; I’ve watched fewer games this year; I post less on the Trove and Pirate Crew. I was being serious.
Outstanding post. This needs to be pinned to the top of the board.
Agreed. Outstanding summary by @SHUSource.
fantastic post. spot on. how many people had the same reactions in willard's first 3 years?
i think sha might have one other quality that needs improvement. speculative based on if we actually have some money. i get the feeling he thinks none of these guys are worth the money. hes not wrong, but that will leave you high and dry.
now of course , if thats not true and we simply don't have money then we should hold on to sha for dear life.
It is sad that all of you are beating this horse to death when here it is closing in on May and we really should be focusing on this coming season. Sha is not going anywhere so this is a waste of time to discuss.
What is truly important is who is on the roster for him to coach and us to root for!
What is truly important is who is on the roster for him to coach and us to root for!
Thanks. But I'll say this, too: As much as I stand behind him at this point, I don't think Sha gets a lifetime pass, either, even if the money thing is the biggest obstacle in his way. I think he would have been wildly successful here in the Willard era (in a hypothetical where he already had earned some head-coaching experience, I mean), but he is struggling to adapt to this climate. The money is the most important asset a coach can have today, and he still doesn't have a huge pile of it, but there are other things a head coach can do to mitigate that. And if he clings to the way he would've done things in 2018, then he's not going to work here.
Still, taken from the long view, he's had one bad season, but it was a beaut. He knows it, too. I believe he's got the savvy to pull himself and the program out of it, assuming the institutional support that's been reported. And then the 2025-26 season will be the next bit of data toward evaluating his value.
SHUSource’s point about our invisible president is right on. Rather than going out into the community, seeking engagement, trying to raise funds this guy is doing the El Camino in Spain for a month. One of the most remote regions of Western Europe with a small cadre of SHU alums. How does this make any sense? Of course what business leader or other influential people are going to want to invite our university president into their home or office? The whole thing is pazzo as we say in Italian.
With the way things are going, I’d prefer one @Uncle Hectors Crab Farm ’s CYO coaches at this point…
