(05-22-2019 11:08 AM)Tribe2011 Wrote:  I think where people on this board disagree is whether firing Shaver was a bad move because of the timing and the fact that we likely can't get a better coach here, or whether it was objectively evil because Shaver deserved a lifetime contract regardless of results and he should be kept even if we COULD get a better coach.

I would agree / not disagree with everything you posted, except "or whether ...".

None of us has said that Tony deserved a lifetime contract. What he did deserve, and what JL got, was to go out on his own terms (with a little push perhaps).

What he, and we, did deserve, was for Tony to be the coach in March, 2020, and perhaps March 2022 (if last year's freshmen class had held together but the new portal rules really screw it up).

What he, and we, did deserve was to see Jon take over for program continuity sake (really BIG deal if you ask me).

What he, and we, didn't deserve was for Tony and his staff to be unceremoniously dismissed in the manner that this occurred. It is a stain ... and shame on William and Mary.

Finally, I don't want any MBB coach at W&M to have any pressure to make the Dance. That is ridiculous at a school that demands academic rigor, while not funding, nor promoting, the program in a Dance-level manner.

If the school is going to prioritize making the Dance, then commit to making the Dance, academically and financially.

Tony's "failures" as a coach was more due to the school's failure as a supporting institution, and I've seen nothing since the hiring of Dane to indicate to me that anything has changed.

Bottom line, this is an administrative issue, not a coaching issue, and the wrong guy got blamed here.

Another thing.

Administrators come and go.

Coaches like Tony are gems, and should be cherished.

This whole thing is half-a**ed backwards.

(05-22-2019 11:08 AM)Tribe2011 Wrote:  

(05-22-2019 10:07 AM)Marshall Wythe Wrote:  I know this thread has veered far away from my original post, but I actually kind of like it.

I think we finally teased out some important conversation about Shaver's true coaching ability. I am happy to see the critical analysis, and I have learned a lot from it. In particular, I truly appreciated the comments by Tribewins on the loss to Delaware in the CAA tourney. I think there are some very fair criticisms of Coach Shaver's coaching ability.

With that said, assuming (for the sake of argument) that we'd never get better with Shaver at the helm, I think AD Huge made 2 big mistakes.

1 - The Timing - Considering the fact that most of us believed next year was our best chance at an NCAA bid, she would have been much better served to let Shaver have that one year. If a lot of players walked away before the season, or if he came up far short again, I think many more of us would understand the need to try something new. Instead, she now owns the loss of our best chance at NCAA bid, the loss of incredible talent, the creation of a rebuilding status that may last for years, and an irate fanbase.

2 - The Market - With no new infusion of cash for salary and facilities, I don't understand how on Earth she thought we were going to get an upgrade at the coaching spot. Had she waited a year, she could also have started a fundraising initiative to get us the facilities (or at least show we were trying) that would be needed to help recruit a better coach. Instead, we are left with a guy who seems very nice and capable but offers nothing on his resume that gives us any real optimism for the coming years. We can only hope that he overachieves.

So, even if you do think Shaver had plateaued as a coach, and the Tribe needed to try something new, I think you can still hold plenty of enmity in your heart for how Huge mishandled the situation and turned it into an absolute debacle.

I think this post above is probably the best summary of the situation. Basically A) Shaver is a good coach for WM and great person who did impressive work rejuvenating the program and deserves his plaudits as a key part of our program, B) he had some shortcomings (in addition to a hell of a lot of strengths) as a coach and 16 years to make the tourney that at least made moving on at some point arguably justifiable, C) despite Shaver failing to get over the hump, it's highly uncertain to unlikely whether we will be able to get a coach as good as him in the near future, and will in large part depend on us getting lucky, D) firing Shaver at this moment made no sense for basketball OR political reasons. I personally think we would have been 3rd or so on paper in conference with Pierce and maybe Milon still leaving if Shaver stayed, but even letting Shaver coach through end of Knight tenure would have gotten way more fan buy in even if last season was a failure (and ideally it wouldn't have been).

I think where people on this board disagree is whether firing Shaver was a bad move because of the timing and the fact that we likely can't get a better coach here, or whether it was objectively evil because Shaver deserved a lifetime contract regardless of results and he should be kept even if we COULD get a better coach.

Whether he should be fired or not should be determined based on whether we can get a better coach. It’s not something that should be viewed as a hypothetical. Contract obligation, impact to current roster, and replacements options should determine his job status. The strattling of the fence by saying ‘he deserves to be fired based on his substitution patterns’ is nonsense when other, much more impactful information is so readily available.

It seems many folks on here are personally hurt by his substitution patterns. I imagine their children’s rec ball teams are run optimally. College basketball is a recruiting game first and foremost and Tony crushed it in that category.

Of course, some Tribe fans feel as follows:

https://gheorghe77.blogspot.com/search/l...20Wrenball

(05-22-2019 01:14 PM)nj alum Wrote:  Of course, some Tribe fans feel as follows:

https://gheorghe77.blogspot.com/search/l...20Wrenball

Thanks NJ. I plan to follow this blog. I didn't write it, but it echoes extremely well my position on the whole mess.

You’re welcome!

His posts over the last few weeks nail it, don’t they?

(05-22-2019 11:39 AM)nj alum Wrote:  

(05-22-2019 11:08 AM)Tribe2011 Wrote:  I think where people on this board disagree is whether firing Shaver was a bad move because of the timing and the fact that we likely can't get a better coach here, or whether it was objectively evil because Shaver deserved a lifetime contract regardless of results and he should be kept even if we COULD get a better coach.

I would agree / not disagree with everything you posted, except "or whether ...".

None of us has said that Tony deserved a lifetime contract. What he did deserve, and what JL got, was to go out on his own terms (with a little push perhaps).

What he, and we, did deserve, was for Tony to be the coach in March, 2020, and perhaps March 2022 (if last year's freshmen class had held together but the new portal rules really screw it up).

What he, and we, did deserve was to see Jon take over for program continuity sake (really BIG deal if you ask me).

What he, and we, didn't deserve was for Tony and his staff to be unceremoniously dismissed in the manner that this occurred. It is a stain ... and shame on William and Mary.

Finally, I don't want any MBB coach at W&M to have any pressure to make the Dance. That is ridiculous at a school that demands academic rigor, while not funding, nor promoting, the program in a Dance-level manner.

If the school is going to prioritize making the Dance, then commit to making the Dance, academically and financially.

Tony's "failures" as a coach was more due to the school's failure as a supporting institution, and I've seen nothing since the hiring of Dane to indicate to me that anything has changed.

Bottom line, this is an administrative issue, not a coaching issue, and the wrong guy got blamed here.

Right. No one, and I mean NO ONE, ever claimed the "or whether" option. Anyone with a basic understanding of where W&M MBB is at the moment agrees with option one.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

(05-22-2019 09:49 AM)Kaplankrazies Wrote:  To all the folks saying Shaver should be fired but also Huge should be blamed for botching the hiring process, I think these things are much more market driven than that. We were never going to hire away highly successful mid-major head coaches or JT3 as this board speculated. This is not an attractive job and we weren’t able to pay above and beyond market rate as a direct result of the Shaver firing. To try to frame each transaction as separate and unrelated is divorced from reality.

If the case is being made that the best we could ever hope for is a great recruiter who's an average at best game coach and a great guy that finished first in the conference once in 16 years, then what are we doing here? The problem with the firing was not being prepared for life after Shaver. The decision to fire Shaver based on his record is defensible, but the disaster we now have came from the complete lack of preparation for what's next.

What are we doing here?

The same thing W&M coaches and athletes have been doing for decades ... over-achieving .... competing .... shoe string budgets ... below market salaries.

Moving from conference to conference, trying to find the right fit.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the AD’s point of view on the big picture stuff mirrors my own .... the devil is in the details, and the firing of Tony Shaver is a pretty big detail.

(05-22-2019 09:06 PM)nj alum Wrote:  Moving from conference to conference, trying to find the right fit.

????

We have been in the CAA (since its inception in 1985) and in its predecessor, the ECAC South, since we left the Southern Conference in the late '70s. We were members of the Southern Conference since at least the '40s. So I would say that we have been pretty stable conference mates for a long, long time. Definitely not "moving from conference to conference". If you want a picture of that, look at VCU, ODU, or Tech (before they joined the ACC).

I lived and worked in the New Haven area and followed Ivy League sports for years so I am somewhat familiar with this subject/issue.

The Ivy League was created to deemphasize big-time sports, particularly football and basketball. [There was a time when the Ivy Schools were frequently in the top 10 / 25 in the nation in football - almost like W&M in the late 1940s]

The schools in the Ivy League were mostly smaller and with very high academic standards. A key element of the Ivy League Charter was that Athletic Scholarships were no longer permitted in any sports. The purpose of this was to insure fairness amongst the Ivy schools and to maintain very high academic standards. Post season play was banned to provide the proper emphasis on academics.

When the Ivy League was formed ALL of the schools were all-male and there were independent all-female "sister schools" under a different name but associated with and geographically near to each Ivy school. In the 1960s and 70s the Ivys all became co-ed.

The Ivys offered a superior education and reputation for graduates and over the years acquired substantial endowments as a result of donations from financially successful graduates. The current Endowment at Yale is almost $30 Billion [contrast with the current W&M Endowment of about $800 Million].

Yale and other wealthy Ivys have been under social and political pressure to spend their endowments. As a result, Yale announced and adopted a policy that would provide a free Yale education to anyone who was admitted whose parents earned less than $xxx per year [if you could gain admittance to Yale and prove financial need you could attend Yale for free]. We have seen from the recent college admissions scandal how easy it is for a coach at Yale to ensure admission for a "student-athlete".

Yale still does not award "Athletic Scholarships" but 99% of the athletes attend Yale for free based upon a "Needs-Based" scholar ship.

Note that there is no limitation on the number of so-called needs-based scholarships granted nor is there any requirement that a recruited athlete actually participate in a given sport [if he/she drops off a team they can retain the needs-based scholarship].

As we know, W&M is limited to 12 Athletic Scholarships for Men's Basketball while the Yale Coach can admit/grant an unlimited number of needs-based scholarship athletes to work with and build a team with.

Tony Shaver was very successful at Hampden-Sydney [a high academic/no sports scholarship school], and, I submit, at W&M, [a high academic/severely limited resources athletic scholarship school]. Given the opportunity Tony would have dominated Ivy League Basketball the way Hampden-Sydney dominated in its conference when Tony was the coach. IMHO

(05-24-2019 10:21 AM)62Indian Wrote:  I lived and worked in the New Haven area and followed Ivy League sports for years so I am somewhat familiar with this subject/issue.

The Ivy League was created to deemphasize big-time sports, particularly football and basketball. [There was a time when the Ivy Schools were frequently in the top 10 / 25 in the nation in football - almost like W&M in the late 1940s]

The schools in the Ivy League were mostly smaller and with very high academic standards. A key element of the Ivy League Charter was that Athletic Scholarships were no longer permitted in any sports. The purpose of this was to insure fairness amongst the Ivy schools and to maintain very high academic standards. Post season play was banned to provide the proper emphasis on academics.

When the Ivy League was formed ALL of the schools were all-male and there were independent all-female "sister schools" under a different name but associated with and geographically near to each Ivy school. In the 1960s and 70s the Ivys all became co-ed.

The Ivys offered a superior education and reputation for graduates and over the years acquired substantial endowments as a result of donations from financially successful graduates. The current Endowment at Yale is almost $30 Billion [contrast with the current W&M Endowment of about $800 Million].

Yale and other wealthy Ivys have been under social and political pressure to spend their endowments. As a result, Yale announced and adopted a policy that would provide a free Yale education to anyone who was admitted whose parents earned less than $xxx per year [if you could gain admittance to Yale and prove financial need you could attend Yale for free]. We have seen from the recent college admissions scandal how easy it is for a coach at Yale to ensure admission for a "student-athlete".

Yale still does not award "Athletic Scholarships" but 99% of the athletes attend Yale for free based upon a "Needs-Based" scholar ship.

Note that there is no limitation on the number of so-called needs-based scholarships granted nor is there any requirement that a recruited athlete actually participate in a given sport [if he/she drops off a team they can retain the needs-based scholarship].

As we know, W&M is limited to 12 Athletic Scholarships for Men's Basketball while the Yale Coach can admit/grant an unlimited number of needs-based scholarship athletes to work with and build a team with.

Tony Shaver was very successful at Hampden-Sydney [a high academic/no sports scholarship school], and, I submit, at W&M, [a high academic/severely limited resources athletic scholarship school]. Given the opportunity Tony would have dominated Ivy League Basketball the way Hampden-Sydney dominated in its conference when Tony was the coach. IMHO

It would have greatly depended on the school. Penn and Princeton were the only schools that emphasized basketball success for a very long time. They put more resources into their programs. Yale and Harvard have now also jumped on that bandwagon. If you're at Brown or Dartmouth or Columbia chances are you're not going to be very good, regardless of how good of a coach you are. They don't commit resources to the programs. It's the same story regardless of which conference a school is in. If you're not providing resources that are near the top of the conference, you likely won't be at the top of the conference. Harvard is the perfect case study for this. They weren't very good for a long time. Then they hired Amaker and committed to providing the resources necessary to have a successful basketball program. And "resources" included the ability to recruit/admit some players that Harvard would not have previously admitted.

(05-21-2019 03:16 PM)Tribewins Wrote:  Anyone that didn’t think we got our butts outcoached during the tourney loss to Delaware is either in denial or doesn’t know basketball. 1st half we were rolling. 2nd half a disaster, that’s about in game adjustments. Delaware took away all of our back door cuts and sagged on Nate. How? By literally daring our PGs to shoot from outside. Outside of Matt, They stopped guarding the perimeter! Like playing 4 on 5 inside of 15 feet! Kinda hard for Nate to operate down low or Justin to slash or hit the floaters he hit in the 1st half.

The counter to that defense is putting subbing Paul in for our PGs as another shooter. Remember we run a positionless 5 out motion offense (or 4 out with Nate posting), so we don’t need a true PG in. A lineup of Chase/Justin/Matt/Paul/Nate would have been a great counter move! It didn’t happen. In fact Paul Rowley only played 10 minutes in his final game at W&M——very sad and to borrow a term others coined on this board, malpractice, but This time by the coach.

Well, to get back to the game of basketball.

Zorch already addressed one major problem with this suggestion: Rowley essentially gave up on his 3-point shot his senior year.

I am surprised no one mentioned another issue here. Delaware was 10-15 on threes in the second half. Putting Rowley in for, say, Loewe would have allowed even more uncontested threes.

Finally, do we think that the Tribe ever even practiced with a lineup with a one guard lineup? We spent all season freaking out over Knight’s foul problems and our lack of depth underneath. I am sure that is where Rowley practiced.

A tournament game is a difficult time to be learning by doing with a new lineup.