ponyboy wrote:Mitch McConnell wrote:Look I love SMU and am passionate but am not afraid to voice opposition or frustration when I think we're not doing something well. I think we've done a very poor job executing this search.
It's OK to have a different point of view.
I respect your point of view. What are the reasons you think we've doing a very poor job executing this search? Is it merely the timeline? Do you not like the candidates? Are we aiming too high? Too low? Too inexperienced? Not able to recruit? Bad X's and O's? Bad haircuts?
My $.02 - We definitely aimed high, which in and of itself isn't a bad thing. We always talk in terms of fb recruiting "Hey, why aren't we offering this 4 or 5 star guy who already has every SEC school on his list." We complain about our coaches not going after the big fish, and instead settling on 2 stars with no other offers. So I have no problem with aiming high in Buzz Williams, Amaker, Majerus, etc.
That being said, I sure wish we could have kept those conversations (and possible contract offers) in house, so that we could have limited the negative publicity. Some basketball insiders on this board say that it is impossible in today's day and age to conduct a coaching search in secret. So maybe that wish is an impossibility.
The major complaint I have is that these possible coaches should have been vetted first to see if they had legit interest, and weren't just using SMU to get a raise from their current school. We knew we were firing Doherty months ago, so we had a head start on the hiring process over many schools that have since already named their coach. So the negative pub and the delay in naming our coach have really reflected negatively on our school, IMHO.