I think this article outlines the need for a split very well...SHU has limited fiances etc so it is going to be very hard for them to compete with schools that put millions of dollars into bball like Uconn, UL etc
Jackson
Hall's future in air
Saturday, June 25, 2005
By ADRIAN WOJNAROWSKI
Seton Hall history has shown that losing has long bred power struggles over the basketball coach's fate, forever an athletic director fighting to stay the course with his man.
Larry Keating won with P.J. Carlesimo, but lost with George Blaney. Jeff Fogelson could've spared himself the terse press release out of the president's office Friday, but he insisted on standing out on the lonely island of Louis Orr.
Now, Fogelson is gone, and those Seton Hall boosters and trustees are in hot pursuit of Orr.
Yes, there were health issues with Fogelson, but ultimately his choice to hire Orr had been compounded by his stubbornness to stay with him. In the end, Orr had been told that he would no longer report to the athletic director's office, but instead to Sister Paula Buley in the president's office.
If you've got to baby-sit your basketball coach this way, what's the point anymore? This Sept. 30 resignation date for Fogelson is ridiculous. If they want to keep him in a ceremonial position between now and then, that's fine.
Seton Hall doesn't need to drag this out for months, because it has lost too much time getting itself fit for the monster Big East Conference that's on the way. This is the bottom line: The best man for the job is a member of the powerful Division I Men's Basketball Committee and has been responsible for rebuilding godforsaken Eastern basketball programs at George Mason and St. Bonaventure.
According to Big East sources, George Mason's Tom O'Connor wants a shot at Seton Hall. Monsignor Robert Sheeran discussed the job with O'Connor, a Union City native, seven years ago, but this time, he's willing to make the move. If so, this is the easiest choice Seton Hall officials have made on campus. They should go hard, get O'Connor hired by the middle of July and give him a chance to make the inevitable move on Orr this year, instead of next year.
Seton Hall doesn't need to hire an unproven associate AD without O'Connor's presence, his political clout in the NCAA, and most of all, his track record of turning losing basketball programs into winners with smart coaching hires.
This isn't much for Seton Hall, except the biggest decision this school has made about men's basketball since it listened to Dave Gavitt and joined the Big East Conference in 1979.
If you wanted to give Orr the benefit of the doubt in the past, forget it now. He has turned into a lost cause. The more he refuses to address his shortcomings, the more he guarantees his doom on this job.
All the way until Friday's announcement, Fogelson was still haggling with Orr over who would replace top assistant Brian Nash on his coaching staff. Stubbornly loyal to his uninspiring cast of characters, especially his old high school coach, George Jackson, Orr has shown reckless regard for his future.
And that of the program's too. Once Orr is gone, he'll have set the program back years recruiting. Fogelson did everything he could to save Orr's job this spring, but his hand-picked coach did little to help him. Fogelson supplied Orr with some outside candidates to interview for Nash's job, but Orr never followed through with much enthusiasm, sources said.
Orr has met with people, but still has hired no one. Orr has said to people that he doesn't know how he could look his own staff members in the eyes, and tell them he's loyal unless he promotes Jackson into Nash's key spot. Guess what? That's Orr's problem. If you're Seton Hall, you aren't paying him to be loyal to his boys. You're paying him to be loyal to the program and get a recruiter who can get him players from within the state.
With the summer evaluation period a week away, Seton Hall is stuck in a standoff between Orr and the administration, a monumental waste of time and energy. If there's one program in the Big East that needs to be pushing hard 24 hours a day to overcome its limited resources and facilities to sell recruits, it's Seton Hall.
And let's face it: Do you think Jim Boeheim and Jim Calhoun and Rick Pitino ever need to be told whom they need on their staff? For goodness sakes, this is the Big East. Either you understand the dynamics and you win, or you get pounded.
Finally, Gary Waters has learned this lesson, if not four years too late at Rutgers. While this soap opera has been going on at Seton Hall, Rutgers' Fred Hill, has been swashbuckling across the state, getting Rutgers into doors that had been closed to it with the clueless coaching staff who had coordinated its recruiting in the past.
Chances are, signing-day success will come for Rutgers with the deep crop of freshman and sophomores in the state. Hill has been winning them over. Listen, Seton Hall and Rutgers will be terrible next season. They'll both miss the Big East tournament. Yet, Rutgers has some hope now. Hill has been hellacious repairing too many years of neglect and incompetence on Waters' staff.
While Seton Hall is still scratching its head in South Orange, the best underclass high school players in the state will be working with Hill at his three-day skills camp at the Nets' practice facility in East Rutherford. It's an ingenious idea, solidifying Hill even deeper with the young kids in the state - especially St. Benedict Prep's superb sophomore Corey Stokes.
Orr is stubborn. He doesn't listen. That's the biggest problem that people have with Orr. Sometimes, he's like talking to a wall. According to a common friend, Fogelson even enlisted acting Governor Codey to give Orr a pep talk this spring. Codey a big Seton Hall supporter, declined, wondering, "What am I going to tell him?"
If you want to believe that Orr deserves another season because he won an NCAA tournament game and was chosen Big East Coach of the Year two years ago, you're missing the point now. It isn't a tough call to see the spiral this program is headed toward, and understand that with Louisville, Marquette, DePaul and Cincinnati coming into the Hall's life, it may never recover again. If you were to take a poll of Big East coaches and ask them whether they would want to keep Orr, or let a Tom O'Connor go get, say, Bobby Gonzalez at Manhattan, believe me, they would choose to keep Orr.
Orr is a threat to nobody now, and that's scary for Seton Hall. The Pirates need someone to make other schools uncomfortable, and that hasn't happened with Orr.
And that starts with an athletic director who understands the challenges of hiring a coach for a disadvantaged school. It's an art, and O'Connor has done it well. What's more, he's got the kind of charisma it takes to sell those within his school about the need to spend money to make it in college sports.
O'Connor could be a popular choice with Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese, who would love to add a conference athletic director who's just beginning his term as a member of the powerful NCAA Men's Basketball Committee.
With the league expanding to 16 teams, the biggest issue facing the conference is making sure that the selection committee will invite nine teams to the tournament if, indeed, it deserves nine. And it never hurts to have a Big East AD in the room to make sure the case is made for its schools.
If Seton Hall's going to do the old dance of bringing a bunch of associate ADs into campus for interviews, it's going to get what it deserves: an unproven candidate with no track record. This is the Big East. Seton Hall needs to act like it's a member, like it's a player again.
Jeff Fogelson is gone, and Louis Orr has punched his ticket too.
If Seton Hall wants to compete in a big-time conference, it's time it stops acting like a mom-and-pop operation. Amateur hour needs to be over there. Seton Hall needs to stop getting looked past in this conference, and start again to make people uncomfortable.
E-mail: wojnarowski@northjersey.com
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