The top recruit in 2021 (and 3 others in the top 15) is still available, and she's supposed to be a once in 5- to 10-years talent. That's what wins you national championships. I wonder if the right coach would give us a shot at her. She's a 5'11" guard, Alana's a 5'11" guard...
Best of luck to Coach P. Next play for us. LGD!
Why would Coach G do that? She is only 57. I'm not suggesting that she wants to coach until she is 73+ like Coach K, but she has plenty of coaching ahead of her. She made it clear this spring that she wants to get back to coaching. It makes no sense.
If we were bringing back a former player, I would feel more confident in Harding than Beard - Harding at least has a few years of experience around a basketball team as a non-player. But to your point, there is a lot that goes into running a major college program. And that job is now a lot more complicated given all of the changes related to COVID-19. If a former player came in, they would need a top assistant with a lot of experience, preferably in women's college coaching. If only Pete Gaudet wasn't a little younger! (for those who don't know, he was an assistant women's coach after leaving Duke).
One other point - I don't know much about the business side of college sports. But today is the second day of the University's fiscal year. Might that be part of the timing? Perhaps there are some benefits for her being on the payroll into the new fiscal?
Man, if your Mom made you wear that color when you were a baby, and you're still wearing it, it's time to grow up!
Everyone knows I'm the biggest GG fan. I'd probably wet myself with glee if she comes back, whether it's a good idea or not. Just cause I love her. But.
If everything knows that's the arrangement, I don't like the racial optics of the above arrangement. I wouldn't think so, perhaps, if Goestenkors were presently (a) still in head coaching and (b ) had succeeded at Texas, where she had a losing (!) record in conference games (40-42). I certainly wouldn't fuss if she had continuously run Duke WBB since 1993 and Beard were her top asst. But in reality in 2020, GG is out of coaching, and hasn't run a program at a top 10 level or anything like it since 2006-07. Society has changed since 2007, and I'd probably have more trust in, say, Alana Beard on that count.
So what you'd have is a lame-duck situation in the second half of the contract, and the lame duck would be a sixtyish placeholder deemed necessary to make the obvious AfAm successor somehow more acceptable in year five than in year one. Because experience yada yada.
Give Beard the job and the authority, or don't. Don't make her wait behind an un-retiree--about whom you have no idea whether the un-retiree is what she was in 1998-2007 or so. Otherwise you look too timid to just give Beard the dang job.
Last edited by throatybeard; 07-02-2020 at 01:54 PM.
i think that only really is an issue if beard really is the assumed successor, which i don't think is necessarily true, and if it is, it's not necessarily viewed as such to the general public.
That said, I agree with you. there's no point to bringinging in a coach with the stated purpose of coaching for 5 years. Might as well hire the following coach now...it's not like we're a great team with a championship window closing that we want to get the most out of for a couple of years and just need a replacement coach. The fact that G was the previous coach doesn't change that logic.
I have nothing against G, but I also don't necessarily think she brings much more to the table at this point...several years after a relatively poor stint at texas, 13 years after coaching at duke, to warrant elevating her to the top of any search list. Would we be interested in her if she hadn't been a prior duke coach? Likely not...so if we actually care about the future success of this program, we shouldn't settle for that now.
Though I wouldn't mind if they replaced the murals where they photoshopped P in with the originals...
April 1
I don’t know about that. I think McCallie should have resigned the moment Duke decided in the spring of 2016 to conduct an investigation into her and the women’s basketball program.
Duke basically wasted the past four seasons with a permanently-damaged McCallie. The moment a university decides to go to the extraordinary step of investigating its own coach the writing is generally on the wall. It’s usually just a matter of time before the whole thing comes tumbling down. And now it has.
Once it became clear McCallie was not going to resign Kevin White should have fired her. I still cannot believe he didn’t. It is a permanent stain on his record that will never be erased.
How about Courtney Banghart?
(“Well, I know I’ve only been in Chapel Hill for a year, but I’ve seen enough of you cheaters. Off to better job, and I don’t even have to move!”)
In case anyone has any doubts about the value of punctuation, just think what a different thread this would be if the title were "McCallie re-signs".