Doc Sadler?

[Pony^]

NU fires basketball coach Doc Sadler

http://www.omaha.com/article/20120309/N ... 09732/1626

"Sources in Dallas, Kansas City and Indianapolis told The World-Herald on Friday that Sadler is a strong candidate at SMU, which is expected to fire coach Matt Doherty next week. Doherty, the former North Carolina star, was 80-109 in six seasons."

[Topper]

Story says NU was on a bad trajectory and this wasn't the guy to change course. Aren't we in the same boat?

[Pony^]

Story says NU was on a bad trajectory and this wasn't the guy to change course. Aren't we in the same boat?

I agree, but I don't know much about Sadler. I just thought the speculation in the article was interesting.

[mathman]

Just don't know about this guy. Reading some of the posts on the article it sounds a lot like Doherty. Nice guy that didn't get it done. I know absolutely nothing about him just my observation.

[hoopmanx]

Sadler's a very good coach w/big recruiting connects in Texas. The issue w/Nebraska is more Nebraska. Creighton spends far more on hoops in their home state, than does Nebraska. It's just a very uncommitted program

[LHS81]

Sadler would be about #10 on my list.

[Mitch McConnell]

For the sake of discussion, how is he with the AAU scene?

[hoopmanx]

Sadler would be about #10 on my list.

I bet he's a better X&O guy than about 8 on your list. That said, I want fresh blood too

[WildBillPony]

In my opinion, he coasted on the coattails of Gillespie's recruits at UTEP with a pretty good year, then immediately bolted to Nebraska for more money. So he hasn't really proven himself as far as I'm concerned.

[LHS81]

Sadler would be about #10 on my list.

I bet he's a better X&O guy than about 8 on your list. That said, I want fresh blood too

2 of the guys on my list, Menzies and Jankovich are better X & O guys than Sadler

[hoopmanx]

Sadler would be about #10 on my list.

I bet he's a better X&O guy than about 8 on your list. That said, I want fresh blood too

2 of the guys on my list, Menzies and Jankovich are better X & O guys than Sadler

Jankovich also runs very loose programs from what I hear. Always trouble behind the scenes. Also, no D. FWIW, just stumbled on some news. We contacted an MVC coach, but not Jankovich

[Mitch McConnell]

Ben Jacobson and UNI?

[hoopmanx]

Ben Jacobson and UNI?

Try Greg Lansing at Indiana St. Turns out Jacobson was never contacted

[angryfan04]

There has to be someone else other than this joker. Gillespie left UTEP in great shape for Sadler, and Sadler did not leave UTEP in a better situation than he found it. He's not a proven winner; we might as well bring Dement back if we are considering this guy.

[huskerpony]

Here's my take on Doc--(and I'm not a huge Nebraska basketball fan, but I have followed it a fair amount during the Sadler era, so take it for what its worth)--

First, he mainly got fired right now because they are building a new arena for next season and ticket sales were starting to tank as this year went on. If they weren't as concerned about ticket sales in the new arena, he probably would have gotten another year or two to try and show some improvement.

Overall, the conventional wisdom around here is that he is very good with the x's and o's (especially defensively), very good at motivating his players, and he gets his kids to play hard no matter what. His downside has been recruiting--which isn't exactly a small task at Nebraska, especially for basketball.

He also had a string of bad luck with a number of things with recruiting and injuries. Had a player on campus that turned out not to have qualified somehow and had to leave (and then ended up at Memphis), their best player this year was injured most of the year and ended up not finishing the season, with the conference change this year they had an entirely new set of teams and style of play to adjust to, etc. All that being said, that was all part of the job and he wasn't able to get it done either.

So, as far as x's and o's, his teams always played great defense, they just didn't have much offense ever, but they also didn't have any talent. His best year actually was the year that all of their big men were awful, and he just went with five guards and made it work. They played great defense, and no one was quite sure how to defend their offense, so they won quite a few games.

As for his recruiting woes, one would think that he might have an easier time recruiting in Dallas, and to the Big East, than he did trying to get kids to come to Lincoln. He did recruit a lot of foreign players while he was in Lincoln. As to the AAU question, not sure about his ties, but at Nebraska he was not really allowed to recruit AAU guys.

Other than that, he was a really great guy. Everyone liked him personally a lot. He represented the university well, he was always out at the other sporting events when he could be, he would talk to anyone about whatever when he was out and about.

So, take all that for what its worth. My initial reaction when I heard the speculation was that it might not be a bad hire. I don't know what the other options are either though. He would be much better than Doh, in my opinion, but there might be some better people available too. I think he would have an easier time recruiting at SMU than he did at Nebraska, so it would be interesting to see what he could do with some talent on his team.

(For those who were comparing his results to Doh, let's not pretend that CUSA isn't a 1 team league. Not getting it done in CUSA is a little different than not getting it done against KU, Missouri, Texas, Michigan State, Ohio State, etc. Not that the Big East will be any easier, but at least he wouldn't be trying to recruit kids to live in the cold to come play at a school that has never won an NCAA tournament game in the history of the program.)