A view from Carolina

[CarMichael]

Hello, Tar Heel fan here. Matt screwed up political and personal relations at Carolina, but I, and probably most of us, think well of him and expect he will learn from mistakes and do very well. He has a gonzo approach to the job, overdid some things and tried too hard in some ways. He was under fearsome pressure to succeed at Carolina with only one year of head-coaching experience before that. But apparently things have gone very smoothly at FAU.

Doherty is a very smart tactical coach who learned the trade under three of the best, Dean Smith, Bob McKillop, and Roy Williams. He is very hard-working as a recruiter and a manager, and he understands how these things are done.

No need to worry about his compatibility with SMU's academic standards. At Davidson College he recruited to some of the most stringent admissions standards for athletes in Div. I-- literally Ivy League standards. His recruits to Carolina all succeeded academically. Our early entries to the NBA last year will all be back in summer school this year, even Marvin Williams who left as a freshman, and the seniors graduated. At FAU, he took the kids he could get to come there. His first class was mainly JC because he needed bodies for the coming season to sign that spring. He did take one kid from a shady prep school, Philadephia Lutheran. But that's a different situation.

He will be good with the boosters and the media and will bring immediate attention to the program.

I'll check back on Monday and try to answer any questions, assuming the deal is still on.

[Grider]

Good info, thanks for the input

[stonedpony]

perfect post - thanks for the concise and completely accurate synopsis on MD - hopefully any and all naysayers on this Board will read it and "get it".

[Pony_Fan]

Thanks for the insight. So far I have read conflicting stories - he sometimes sounds bipolar.

[Stallion]

actually it wasn't just his first class where signed mainly JUCOs-he's already signed 4 JUCOs for next year.

[DallasDiehard]

Thanks for the insight, CarMichael! Like Pony_Fan, I had mixed impressions of Coach Doherty, but your report is extremely encouraging.

If this move works out like we hope, I'll be a huge fan of Coach Doherty and of Steve-O, who clearly has no intention of taking a backseat to anyone when making hires.

I'm going to assume the search committee rubber-stamps this tomorrow. In which case:

WELCOME TO SMU, COACH DOHERTY!

[CarMichael]

About recruiting-- according to Scout, at FAU he signed two 3-star recruits out of high school, one for the past season and one for next, both signed within his first half-year on the job. That's pretty impressive, since one 3-star per year is about what a top mid-major team averages. Before last year, FAU was a #250 program, playing in a half-empty high-school size gym.

[LeeDee UNC]

Doherty is a recruiting monster. He was the primary recruiter for Roy Williams at Kansas. He recruited all but one of the players who won UNC/Roy Williams 2005 national championship, including 3 of 4 NBA lottery picks who left UNC early last year. Doherty recruited the 3 upperclassmen, unheralded diamond-in-the-rough types, who led UNC to 2nd round NCAA tourney this year.

He won Coach of the Year after his 1st season at UNC, so he knows his Xs and Os.

He runs a squeaky clean program.

He's charismatic. Fans get excited, high school kids want to play for him, women swoon.

Unfortunately for Doherty there's tremendous pressure and more to running UNC Basketball than coaching and recruiting. He was too inexperienced to handle it, it drove him nuts, he drove everyone else nuts and it cost him his job.

I think you guys have a great hire and believe Doherty has what it takes to be one of the premier coaches in the nation. Congratulations! You can count me as a bandwagon SMU fan.

[Corso]

Welcome aboard the bandwagon, LeeDee, and thanks for the great comments about our new coach!

[crazy horse]

6 pages of comments, mostly positive, about the hire from the UNC faithful:

http://mb23.scout.com/finsidecarolinafr ... 1197.topic

Will we pick up a few UNC fans who are living in DFW? Sounds like it might be the case.

[Hidden James]

I'm not in the DFW area, but sign me up! I'm going to start bugging my local (NYC) store about an SMU jersey.

But, the downside is that NC State fans and dook* fans who didn't already like SMU (I've seen a few dook*/smu fans on your site already) now hate you. You might as well hate 'em back preemptively.

Lesson 1: Please take note of the proper spelling of dook*.

[KnuckleStang]

Anybody can recruit at North Carolina. It will be interesting to see what he can do here.

[heeliconoclast]

having watched Doherty over the years as a player at Carolina and then as an assistant at Davidson and Kansas, then head coach at ND, UNC and FAU.

His strengths:
Great with the press in terms of marketing the program and keeping it in the limelight. Freaking FAU had a program on ESPN2 for lord's sake. He knows how the media works and makes himself accessible to them and press folks appreciate that.

Terrific with students in terms of generating increased interest on campus. Did this at ND and FAU and did markedly improve crowd enthusiasm and got better seating for students at UNC. He will bring lots of enthusiasm and energy to the program.

He's a Roy Williams disciple who is a fanatic about conditioning. Like Roy, Doherty will have your players in shape.

A turn-around artist. 15 months at ND and brought in studs Ryan Humphrey and Chris Thomas along with other starters/major contributors.
First 9 months at Carolina he brought in Jawad Williams, jackie Manuel, Melvin Scott, Raymond Felton, SEan May and Rashad McCants. And also made what he has termed his biggest recruiting error. He had been recruiting borderline Top 100 player but oozing potential Emeka Okafor while at ND. He started recruiting him at Carolina and almost pulled the trigger but then decided to go for a Top 10 center or two. Missed on those and Emeka went to UConn and blew up.

One year at FAU and brought in several excellent talents by FAU standards, including a highly-regarded transfer from Providence.

Creative, extremely hard-working recruiter and excellent talent evalutor. Chief recruiter at Kansas when they brought in tons of studs who also happened to be model citizens. He would do all the leg work with the recruits, get them ready to commit and then bring them to see Roy who would "put the cherry on top." Saw an interview with drew Gooden at TSN a few years back where Gooden raved about Doherty and called him "one of the all-time great recruiters."
For example, Doherty offered Raymond Felton at UNC when Felton was ranked about #50 in the class (Felton wound up Top 5). Knows how to put together a team via recruiting. You can argue about ease of recruiting at UNC but you still have to pick and choose (Talent, academics, team player issues) and the team he left Roy Williams with was one of Carolina's best ever talent-wise, bursting with athleticism and skill.

Good with donors.


Cons:
Can be brusque and speak his mind a bit much. I do think the Carolina experience taught him some diplomatic skills. Needed to Learning to take his excellent people skills in dealing with the press and put those to work consistently in normal everyday people skills. While at UNC, he definitely was not diplomatic enough at times in dealing with a few folks associated with the program but it was a messy messy situation by all accounts. His former top aide at ND and UNC Doug Wojcik (now at Tulsa) shakes his head over how complex things got at times in the vast Carolina family. Given that he only had one year of head coaching experience, he should never been hired that early in his career at UNC, one of the top jobs in the country--as Doherty has himself said he simply was not ready to deal with all facets a Top 5 program requires, and could have used a few more years of seasoning as a head coach first.

Early in his career, he was very tough in practice and would be buddy buddy with the players off the court. If you don't do that with skill, you can create confusion with the players. I think he has matured there.

Coaches break down players and build them back up. At Carolina he showed he had not developed the latter skill sufficiently. Again, I think he has gotten better at that. He has learned to curb his temper and/or have assistants get on players when they need it.

In sum, he will transform the SMU program and roster quickly. Whether he is just a turn-around artist or someone who can build a program over decades has yet to be decided. I think it was an inspired hire on SMU's part but time will tell.

[ponyboy]

At NC, yes. That's a given. But how about FAU? He apparently recruited well there too.

[KnuckleStang]

At NC, yes. That's a given. But how about FAU? He apparently recruited well there too.

Yes, at FAU he brought in a bunch of Jucos who (I assume) could not get into SMU in a million years.

So in that sense, anybody can recruit at FAU too.