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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jan 2008

    Why does DBR ignore reality on ACC coaches

    For inexplicable reasons, DBR seems to have certain whipping boys (and correspondingly, certain anointed ones) among the ACC basketball coaches:

    1) They are always making excuses for Sidney Lowe, who has never won, let alone been any good, anywhere he has coached... they are always talking about "he doesn't have much talent, but he has a few good pieces, and when he gets a true ACC-caliber squad, they should be very good"... yeah, right... how many years has he been there now, and how long is it going to take to get that talent-- and who is supposed to be responsible for getting the talent in the door anyway?

    2) DBR is always running down the current coaches at BC, FSU, and Miami despite the fact that Leonard Hamilton built Miami (a basketball wasteland then) into an NCAA-tourney regular when they were in the Big East, did a creditable job at Ok. State, and has done wonderfully well at FSU-- just as his predecessor Pat Kennedy did a great job there, but could never get a fair assessment, let alone a decent compliment, from DBR... but just let Steve Robinson (for some unknown reason, another of DBR's anointed ones) show a faint glimmer of maybe recovering FSU's past basketball success-- but never getting anything worth talking about actually accomplished, and DBR was ready and waiting with Lowe-like compliments about what a "comer" Robinson was, even though his entire tenure was an abysmal failure.

    Similarly, Al Skinner has done an excellent job at BC, but somehow, DBR has been deluded into the belief that BC has experienced a "steady decline" since they joined the ACC-- something not supported by DBR's own data on BC's W/L record-- is it just that BC plays Duke hard-nosed and tough every time Duke sees them? Somehow, DBR is as deluded as Jim Sumner, in saying that Virginia is going to be a tougher game for Duke today than BC would have been-- Hello? Did either of you even watch the two games that Duke played against these two teams this year-- did you even notice which team battled Duke hard for the majority of the game, and which team was out of it from the opening tip? I expect Duke to literally bury Virginia again today-- but not according to Jim Sumner and DBR ('cause they love Tony Bennett and his dad, as much as they love Scott Drew and his dad).

    And Frank Haith has done an excellent job in restoring Miami's competitiveness, lost in the period after Hamilton left... but once again, DBR can barely see a single good thing about him, despite his team battling Duke hard (and beating them last year) in nearly every matchup, and Haith making Miami into a viable post-season tournament team. If Steve Robinson or Sidney Lowe had done half of what Haith or Hamilton did at Miami, you wouldn't be able to get DBR to stop singing their praises today.

    3) Plenty of guys have had success in this league but DBR was blind to it-- they completely failed to acknowledge anything that Cliff Ellis and Rick Barnes accomplished at Clemson, and the same with with Kennedy at FSU, but let Oliver Pernell do essentially no more than Barnes or Ellis at Clemson, and suddenly Pernell is the second coming; similarly, Steve Robinson had an unlimited honeymoon with the DBR, despite year after year of disappointing results until he was fired (and has hardly resurfaced as a big success anywhere else). DBR loves Pernell the way they loved John Thompson (both of them), and is completely blind to all of the huge faults of Thompson senior-- I would have been embarassed to claim Georgetown as my alma mater, with the kind of player and team representation that the first Thompson put on the floor, when he was at Georgetown-- I still would be embarassed to have once had that antagonistic bunch of non-scholars and dirty players as representatives of my university-- every bit as much as I would have been embarassed to claim the 1980's-- 2000's Miami Hurricane football players as representatives of my university... but DBR could find a way to forgive the John Thompsons' and the John Cheney's of the world, despite their excursions over the line of decency, while Cliff Ellis, Pat Kennedy, and Rick Barnes are irredeemable, apparently-- is there a double standard at work in DBR's assessment of coaches-- I think so.

    4) This doesn't even touch on DBR's admittedly biased assessment of Quin Snyder's coaching career, and their lack of candor about the bulk of Coach K's proteges' success in coaching (or lack thereof). You don't hear a lot from DBR this year about Oklahoma and Jeff Capel-- because there is not much good to say. You also don't hear much about some of the other guys (Henderson, Dawkins, O'Toole, etc.) because there is not much to say-- but you did hear a lot about Harvard and Amaker early-- and not much lately. Brey is doing OK-- but Brey isn't doing anything that Seth Greenberg hasn't done at Va. Tech-- and Greenberg is lucky if/when he can catch a small break from DBR, in their assessment of him.

  2. #2

    Haith

    "And Frank Haith has done an excellent job in restoring Miami's competitiveness"

    I think you are confusing him with Randy Shannon.

    In order to tell them apart, remember that Shannon is the one with the intense glare, and Haith is the one with the perpetually confused look on his face.

  3. #3
    I don't think there's any pretense that DBR's thoughts on coaches are anything other than editorials. There's no question the owners of the site have favorites and.. uh... non-favorites, but all they're doing is expressing opinions. Reasonable people can diagree with most head coaching assessments.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Inman, SC & Fort Myers, FL
    Anything more complex than second grade arithmetic will always be influenced by some point of view -- even "hard" science. That doesn't cause me a problem, and from the spirited debates on DBR I don't think it stifles discussion here.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    North Raleigh
    Reality?

    I only want them to be just good enuff to give our victories over them *some* occasional meaning. I dont want them to be good enuff to actually beat us...

    If they are not Duke, they are fodder.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by miramar View Post
    "And Frank Haith has done an excellent job in restoring Miami's competitiveness"

    I think you are confusing him with Randy Shannon.

    In order to tell them apart, remember that Shannon is the one with the intense glare, and Haith is the one with the perpetually confused look on his face.
    Frank Haith has done a very good job at Miami - 2 years ago he was one point from making the Sweet 16 - Sidney, Purnell have never even won an NCAA tourney game ---- One thing that tells me who the quality guys are is how their teams perform at the end of a really tough season - You have never seen Frank Haith's team quit on him ----

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Jan 2009
    Location
    Halifax, Nova Scotia
    Thanks Mudge for your point of view and thoughts on the coaches in the conference. I don't have a problem with your point of view and certainly don't have a problem with the editorials from DBR and definitely welcome any and all contributions from Jim. You of course are welcome to different impressions and points of view from them, but is it possible that you have favorites and coaches that you don't like as well?

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Washington, North Carolina

    Dissent

    Quote Originally Posted by wilko View Post
    Reality?

    I only want them to be just good enuff to give our victories over them *some* occasional meaning. I dont want them to be good enuff to actually beat us...

    If they are not Duke, they are fodder.
    I dissent. This is nice in theory, but my observation is that the better the conference is, the better prepared its members are for the NCAAs.

  9. #9
    I also have no idea why Virginia will be tougher for Duke than BC would. Boston College is better by about every measure out there (RPI, conference standings, etc), and most of those barely include the fact that UVA is without their best player. I'm not guaranteeing a blowout or even a victory, but I'd MUCH rather face UVA than BC - there's a reason they finished the regular season on a 9 game losing streak.

    And you neglected to mention the best part of the article - the implication that Greenberg wouldn't be a decent guy if he chose to accept another job.

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Steamboat Springs, CO

    Wink FWIW -- Not Much, I Suppose

    The "dogs that didn't bark" in your screed were Paul Hewitt and Dino Gaudio, whom you did not mention and who, I believe, have been the most frequent target of criticism on the Home Page. Can we presume you agree with DBR on those two?

    "DBR is as deluded as Jim Sumner?" I assume you mean that the two were building up today's opponent (which DBR always does), not that Sumner is delusional. In fact, Jim Sumner (whom I don't know) comes across as so calm and rational that I'm not sure I trust him any more.

    WRT to El Sid, he has been unimpressive as a coach, to say the least, but he has some talent coming in next year. State will certainly give him a year or two more to see if he can take State to the top half of the ACC.

    sagegrouse

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    North Raleigh
    Quote Originally Posted by Johnboy View Post
    I dissent. This is nice in theory, but my observation is that the better the conference is, the better prepared its members are for the NCAAs.
    I agree to a point.
    However, whether we are the only ranked team in the league, or if ALL the league teams are ranked... We should always be the whipped cream and cherry on top of the ACC sundae.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by JimSumner
    Virginia may not have much chance against Duke in Friday’s quarterfinal matchup but they have a better chance than Boston College.
    Virginia has a better chance to beat Duke today because they play Duke, while BC's season is over. Jim's article was written after Thursday's games.

  13. #13
    I didn't find anything in DBR's brief overview of the conference coaching landscape that outrageous. I thought the focus was on Wake and Gtech, where the difficulties seem obvious. If the OP's perspective is drastically different, then what coaching changes does the OP foresee in the ACC before next season? DBR has indicated their views, what are yours?

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Schwarz View Post
    Virginia has a better chance to beat Duke today because they play Duke, while BC's season is over. Jim's article was written after Thursday's games.
    Ohhhhhhh. If that's the interpretation, then yeah that makes a lot more sense.

    Though I'd still like to say their chances are about equal.

  15. #15
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    North Florida & Bozeman, Montana

    Thumbs up Pat Kennedy

    Pat Kennedy was a very fine coach at FSU and the Noles finished 2nd to the national champion (Duke,then UNC) in the conference regular season in each of first two years (1991-92 and 1992-93) FSU was in the ACC.
    Three nights before FSU's first ACC game (vs. UNC at the Hell in 1991) Pat, over a hamburger, showed me on a napkin the plays his team would run to rout UNC.
    FSU decisively defeated UNC and Dean had no answer for those plays. I was at that game . The crowd was stunned.

    FSU advanced to the Sweet 16 the first year and to the Elite 8 the second year in the ACC, a season that saw FSU set a school record for wins (25).
    Kennedy was ACC COY in the first year--while Coach K did a great job that year (and could have won that award), Kennedy did a tremendous job and obviously convinced the ACC writers of that fact.

    Cliff Ellis, BTW, won ACC COY in 1987 and 1990.

    Kennedy left FSU because he was a poor administrator and had been warned repeatedly by the AD to correct that deficiency.He didn't.
    But he was a fine coach who was not only intelligent at Xs and Os, but also a brilliant in-game tactician.
    Pat also had the good judgment to form a close relationship with K and he despised Dean Smith, whom he considered among the most arrogant people he had ever known.

    Coaching is tough.However, when coaches have a good deal of talent and still have mediocre records, their coaching should be scrutinized. We have been spoiled in the ACC by K and Smith--they are hard to emulate.

    As far as Leonard Hamilton, FSU fans like him but realize that his teams will not be offensive powerhouses, but ,rather, plodding, successful defensive teams (like the Duke women the last 3 years). He was ACC COY last year, yet some fans think he should be replaced. While he has been a little better than a .500 coach in his career, his teams play hard.That goes a long way with me.That is why I admired Miami's play yesterday---that is the least a well-coached team should do.

    Best regards--Blueprofessor

  16. #16
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Quote Originally Posted by tele View Post
    I didn't find anything in DBR's brief overview of the conference coaching landscape that outrageous. I thought the focus was on Wake and Gtech, where the difficulties seem obvious. If the OP's perspective is drastically different, then what coaching changes does the OP foresee in the ACC before next season? DBR has indicated their views, what are yours?
    I am referencing a plethora of misguided DBR editorials on coaching quality in the ACC--DBR has increased its decibel level on this in recent years, but as you can tell by my references to Pat Kennedy, Cliff Ellis, and Steve Robinson, I have been taking note of DBR's relative coaching assessment cluelessness for nigh on 12-13 years now.

    As for my views on the league's coaches, I would say that Bennett may well turn out to be excellent-- it is far too early to predict anything yet (though early returns were surprisingly good-- but has Bennett done anything approaching what Hewitt has done at Siena and his early years at Tech, when he took them to the national championship game, something Bennett can only dream about at this stage-- and yet Hewitt is firmly entrenched in DBR's doghouse right now.) Bennett obviously is going nowhere, yet, of course.

    I don't think Hewitt is going anywhere, because he has relatively good, talented, competitive teams, he was National Coach of the year 5 years ago, he beat Duke and Carolina a total of 4 times this year, and he is probably going to the NCAA tournament this year, at a school that, other than a modest stint under Cremins (who couldn't sustain that), has no tradition of excellence in basketball, and thus no reason to expect more-- and the politically incorrect fact is that Hewitt is a highly polished and reasonably accomplished minority coach in a city that is minority dominated-- it will look very bad for the AD, if he fires him, so the AD would have to be ready to take some serious heat, if he is going to do that.

    I think Gaudio is in trouble-- Wake has a much better basketball tradition than Tech, and although at first Gaudio seemed to improve Wake over Prosser (who could never teach his teams, either at X or Wake, to play anything other than feckless, helter-skelter, offense and defense, much like his predecessor/mentor at X, Pete Gillen), and Gaudio maintained recruiting at a high level, there is no ignoring the year-end collapses that have now become a hallmark of Prosser/Gaudio-coached teams. Gaudio will probably be gone.

    Lowe will get another year, and if next year is like this year, he will likely be gone-- if slightly better, he probably gets another year, because of his State pedigree.

    Pernell is neither impressing me, nor failing-- he's doing exactly what has been done countless times before at Clemson-- they still do all the same things right (and wrong) that they always have, with exactly the same kind of players.

    Skinner is a very good coach-- the only question is whether he will continue to get the quality of recruits that he needs to return to previous levels of success... I don't think he's going anywhere this year, but he probably can't afford to do this again next year, especially with nearly all of his players back.

    R. Williams is being ridiculously (and unfairly) crucified by DBR right now-- but at least I understand that one-- UNC is the hated rival, and he has far surpassed Coach K over the last 5 year period, so when he gets his comeuppance, as one might hope he would (as a Duke fan), of course DBR is going to want to rub it in, however unfounded their accusations might be... remember, this is the same DBR that wanted to refer to the Smith interregnum at UNC, after Doherty blew up the store, and now is confronted with a UNC with 5 national championships under 3 different head coaches, while Duke is still stuck on 3 from one coach, with no signs of any proteges of Coach K ever approaching the level of success that Williams has produced for Smith.

    Greenberg is very, very good-- and might even be great, if he goes to St. Johns. Don't know where his heart lies, but I doubt that he has "put down roots in Blacksburg" as DBR alleges-- I think he stays at least another year.

    Hamilton is far, far better than DBR gives him credit for, and is going nowhere. Same for Haith. Williams is more likely to go than those two-- because he has to put up with that dolt D. Yow as AD... and he's gonna stay, of course.

  17. #17
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Quote Originally Posted by blueprofessor View Post
    Pat Kennedy was a very fine coach at FSU and the Noles finished 2nd to the national champion (Duke,then UNC) in the conference regular season in each of first two years (1991-92 and 1992-93) FSU was in the ACC.
    Three nights before FSU's first ACC game (vs. UNC at the Hell in 1991) Pat, over a hamburger, showed me on a napkin the plays his team would run to rout UNC.
    FSU decisively defeated UNC and Dean had no answer for those plays. I was at that game . The crowd was stunned.

    FSU advanced to the Sweet 16 the first year and to the Elite 8 the second year in the ACC, a season that saw FSU set a school record for wins (25).
    Kennedy was ACC COY in the first year--while Coach K did a great job that year (and could have won that award), Kennedy did a tremendous job and obviously convinced the ACC writers of that fact.

    Cliff Ellis, BTW, won ACC COY in 1987 and 1990.

    Kennedy left FSU because he was a poor administrator and had been warned repeatedly by the AD to correct that deficiency.He didn't.
    But he was a fine coach who was not only intelligent at Xs and Os, but also a brilliant in-game tactician.
    Pat also had the good judgment to form a close relationship with K and he despised Dean Smith, whom he considered among the most arrogant people he had ever known.

    Coaching is tough.However, when coaches have a good deal of talent and still have mediocre records, their coaching should be scrutinized. We have been spoiled in the ACC by K and Smith--they are hard to emulate.

    As far as Leonard Hamilton, FSU fans like him but realize that his teams will not be offensive powerhouses, but ,rather, plodding, successful defensive teams (like the Duke women the last 3 years). He was ACC COY last year, yet some fans think he should be replaced. While he has been a little better than a .500 coach in his career, his teams play hard.That goes a long way with me.That is why I admired Miami's play yesterday---that is the least a well-coached team should do.

    Best regards--Blueprofessor
    All good stuff, BlueP-- couldn't agree more with virtually all of your comments.

  18. #18
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    Feb 2008
    Location
    Charlotte, North Carolina
    Quote Originally Posted by Mudge View Post
    Lowe will get another year, and if next year is like this year, he will likely be gone-- if slightly better, he probably gets another year, because of his State pedigree.
    Lowe will get another year or more largely because he's bringing in the most highly regarded recruiting class State has had in recent memory next year. If State stinks out loud, then, yes, I agree, he's probably in trouble. If they show improvement over this year, then he'll get another year or more because of the quality of talent he's bringing in more than his State pedigree.

  19. #19
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    Feb 2007
    Quote Originally Posted by Mudge View Post
    For inexplicable reasons, DBR seems to have certain whipping boys (and correspondingly, certain anointed ones) among the ACC basketball coaches:

    1) They are always making excuses for Sidney Lowe, who has never won, let alone been any good, anywhere he has coached... they are always talking about "he doesn't have much talent, but he has a few good pieces, and when he gets a true ACC-caliber squad, they should be very good"... yeah, right... how many years has he been there now, and how long is it going to take to get that talent-- and who is supposed to be responsible for getting the talent in the door anyway?

    2) DBR is always running down the current coaches at BC, FSU, and Miami despite the fact that Leonard Hamilton built Miami (a basketball wasteland then) into an NCAA-tourney regular when they were in the Big East, did a creditable job at Ok. State, and has done wonderfully well at FSU-- just as his predecessor Pat Kennedy did a great job there, but could never get a fair assessment, let alone a decent compliment, from DBR... but just let Steve Robinson (for some unknown reason, another of DBR's anointed ones) show a faint glimmer of maybe recovering FSU's past basketball success-- but never getting anything worth talking about actually accomplished, and DBR was ready and waiting with Lowe-like compliments about what a "comer" Robinson was, even though his entire tenure was an abysmal failure.

    Similarly, Al Skinner has done an excellent job at BC, but somehow, DBR has been deluded into the belief that BC has experienced a "steady decline" since they joined the ACC-- something not supported by DBR's own data on BC's W/L record-- is it just that BC plays Duke hard-nosed and tough every time Duke sees them? Somehow, DBR is as deluded as Jim Sumner, in saying that Virginia is going to be a tougher game for Duke today than BC would have been-- Hello? Did either of you even watch the two games that Duke played against these two teams this year-- did you even notice which team battled Duke hard for the majority of the game, and which team was out of it from the opening tip? I expect Duke to literally bury Virginia again today-- but not according to Jim Sumner and DBR ('cause they love Tony Bennett and his dad, as much as they love Scott Drew and his dad).

    And Frank Haith has done an excellent job in restoring Miami's competitiveness, lost in the period after Hamilton left... but once again, DBR can barely see a single good thing about him, despite his team battling Duke hard (and beating them last year) in nearly every matchup, and Haith making Miami into a viable post-season tournament team. If Steve Robinson or Sidney Lowe had done half of what Haith or Hamilton did at Miami, you wouldn't be able to get DBR to stop singing their praises today.

    3) Plenty of guys have had success in this league but DBR was blind to it-- they completely failed to acknowledge anything that Cliff Ellis and Rick Barnes accomplished at Clemson, and the same with with Kennedy at FSU, but let Oliver Pernell do essentially no more than Barnes or Ellis at Clemson, and suddenly Pernell is the second coming; similarly, Steve Robinson had an unlimited honeymoon with the DBR, despite year after year of disappointing results until he was fired (and has hardly resurfaced as a big success anywhere else). DBR loves Pernell the way they loved John Thompson (both of them), and is completely blind to all of the huge faults of Thompson senior-- I would have been embarassed to claim Georgetown as my alma mater, with the kind of player and team representation that the first Thompson put on the floor, when he was at Georgetown-- I still would be embarassed to have once had that antagonistic bunch of non-scholars and dirty players as representatives of my university-- every bit as much as I would have been embarassed to claim the 1980's-- 2000's Miami Hurricane football players as representatives of my university... but DBR could find a way to forgive the John Thompsons' and the John Cheney's of the world, despite their excursions over the line of decency, while Cliff Ellis, Pat Kennedy, and Rick Barnes are irredeemable, apparently-- is there a double standard at work in DBR's assessment of coaches-- I think so.

    4) This doesn't even touch on DBR's admittedly biased assessment of Quin Snyder's coaching career, and their lack of candor about the bulk of Coach K's proteges' success in coaching (or lack thereof). You don't hear a lot from DBR this year about Oklahoma and Jeff Capel-- because there is not much good to say. You also don't hear much about some of the other guys (Henderson, Dawkins, O'Toole, etc.) because there is not much to say-- but you did hear a lot about Harvard and Amaker early-- and not much lately. Brey is doing OK-- but Brey isn't doing anything that Seth Greenberg hasn't done at Va. Tech-- and Greenberg is lucky if/when he can catch a small break from DBR, in their assessment of him.

    Geez. Lotta time on your hands? This clutters cyberspace

    So, start your own site?

  20. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by Johnboy View Post
    I dissent. This is nice in theory, but my observation is that the better the conference is, the better prepared its members are for the NCAAs.
    florida....back to back titles...

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