(03-23-2021 11:31 AM)J.B. Wrote:  3. Other than Coen, he's the only current CAA coach to have won a championship. He's one of 3 coaching hires in 2016. He's the only one of the three to have won a championship. JMU's coach who was hired that year didn't even make it to year 5. Pat Skerry has been at Towson for 10 years and hasn't won, despite having a brand new arena and the CAA tournament in their backyard for two years.

Interesting stuff - I hadn't been following things that closely.

Winner's circle:
Spiker - Coaching (.407 record)
Ross - Fired (.418 record)
Brady - Fired (.525 record)
Cohen - Coaching (.531 record)
Grant - Poached (.588 record)
Mihalich - Retired (.605 record)
Keatts - Poached (.720 record)

I'm not sure what the takeaway is other than it's easy to give a middling coach like Skerry 10 years and not come away with anything. I don't want our program to end up like that.
Right now our standards are lower than Delaware's. How does that make you feel?

(03-23-2021 12:07 PM)relaxing Wrote:  

(03-23-2021 11:31 AM)J.B. Wrote:  3. Other than Coen, he's the only current CAA coach to have won a championship. He's one of 3 coaching hires in 2016. He's the only one of the three to have won a championship. JMU's coach who was hired that year didn't even make it to year 5. Pat Skerry has been at Towson for 10 years and hasn't won, despite having a brand new arena and the CAA tournament in their backyard for two years.

Interesting stuff - I hadn't been following things that closely.

Winner's circle:
Spiker - Coaching (.407 record)
Ross - Fired (.418 record)
Brady - Fired (.525 record)
Cohen - Coaching (.531 record)
Grant - Poached (.588 record)
Mihalich - Retired (.605 record)
Keatts - Poached (.720 record)

I'm not sure what the takeaway is other than it's easy to give a middling coach like Skerry 10 years and not come away with anything. I don't want our program to end up like that.
Right now our standards are lower than Delaware's. How does that make you feel?

How are our standards low? I don't see that at all. Did you read my other points in my email, especially referring to what he had to work with? Every coach was hired with a different scenario to work with, but you're showing a meaningless comparison it like it's apples to apples. Drexel's basketball goal is to win a championship, which they did with their new coach in year 5, not to have the best winning percentage in a meaningless comparison that meets your agenda. Do you think that Drexel should bring in a new head coach ever year or two after they have a losing record? Because that is exactly what you're suggesting they should have done, and you know for a fact that wouldn't work. Drexel would not have won a championship if they did what you are suggesting they should have done. The actual winning percentage is completely meaningless. The year to year improvement is what we should be focusing on.

(03-23-2021 08:32 AM)relaxing Wrote:  I don't want to come across as a hater. I'm sure he's a nice guy. But I wasn't enthusiastic about the hire, due to his W-L record at Army, and I haven't seen anything to change my mind. I give him credit for having his team prepared and taking down 2 higher seeds in the tournament. But then he also has to own .321 in the CAA and .448 lifetime record. And people think that deserves and extension and a ticket to the power conferences? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills

Of course this year is a fluke. You have one winning year, and it happens to be the pandemic year when every program is thrown into disarray? And you want to count that year over all the others? Get outta town. Apparently he was skillful in managing the team in the face of the pandemic, great. He is quite clearly not a master in recruiting or gameday X's and O's. It's too easy to say we would've won the games that didn't get played. Way too easy, given that history tells us otherwise.

I'm not a "winning is everything" type. Character matters too. But people said Bruiser was a good ambassador for the program too, and he managed to win a little.

actually this year wasn't a fluke. we were picked to finish 3rd in the conference so we only outperformed by 2 spots...or making the title game vs the semis. part of why we outperformed is our recruiting...which i think is turning a corner. bell in particular is the type of player spiker needs to start bringing into the program.

what did bruiser win? he beat some crappy power 5 teams in down years. city schools in down years too. he never made the ncaa tournament and has a hand in burning down indiana and kentucky. i'm wondering if some of this is acting out because you thought we should keep bruiser around...and now you're worried you were on the wrong side of that call.

otherwise i don't see the point in bringing this whole thing down...especially when you're not even paying attention as you admitted. it's nice to have you on board and hope other people hop on too. it's ok to do that. i probably got carried away with extension talk...but i'm enjoying this as much as i can. can't apologize for that.

What I don't get in this conversation is bringing up Bruiser as if he was a standard that Spiker hasn't met yet. Bruiser took over a program coming off of five straight .500+ performances in the America East, and had a lot of decent years, but never managed to reach the Big Dance, failed to adjust to a changing college team, and let the program completely bottom out before the end of his tenure. Also, while an assistant coach only has so much influence, being at Indiana and Kentucky since 2017 with no NCAA tournament appearances in that span? Not great, Bob.

Sure, maybe it took a while for Spiker to get the program to recover. But it had nothing when he started, and in five years, he's managed to make it to a stage that Bruiser never could. Sure it was a little flukey, but every championship run requires a bit of luck. It's fair to say that if Drexel had a full conference schedule, they wouldn't have been the sixth seed, because they never got to play UNCW, Towson, or Elon during the year. And it's not like this was an unsustainable team full of seniors, there are clear pieces and a plan going forward. Even if Drexel gets hit with some transfers out, the cupboard is stocked enough that the program should keep going (and Spiker's shown some skill with transfers the other way around too).

I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that Spiker's a lock to become the next coaching wunderkind. But, can he meet reasonable standards for Drexel basketball on a consistent annual basis? Yeah, that's well within the realm of possibility.

(03-23-2021 12:47 PM)J.B. Wrote:  

(03-23-2021 12:07 PM)relaxing Wrote:  

(03-23-2021 11:31 AM)J.B. Wrote:  3. Other than Coen, he's the only current CAA coach to have won a championship. He's one of 3 coaching hires in 2016. He's the only one of the three to have won a championship. JMU's coach who was hired that year didn't even make it to year 5. Pat Skerry has been at Towson for 10 years and hasn't won, despite having a brand new arena and the CAA tournament in their backyard for two years.

Interesting stuff - I hadn't been following things that closely.

Winner's circle:
Spiker - Coaching (.407 record)
Ross - Fired (.418 record)
Brady - Fired (.525 record)
Cohen - Coaching (.531 record)
Grant - Poached (.588 record)
Mihalich - Retired (.605 record)
Keatts - Poached (.720 record)

I'm not sure what the takeaway is other than it's easy to give a middling coach like Skerry 10 years and not come away with anything. I don't want our program to end up like that.
Right now our standards are lower than Delaware's. How does that make you feel?

How are our standards low? I don't see that at all. Did you read my other points in my email, especially referring to what he had to work with? Every coach was hired with a different scenario to work with, but you're showing a meaningless comparison it like it's apples to apples. Drexel's basketball goal is to win a championship, which they did with their new coach in year 5, not to have the best winning percentage in a meaningless comparison that meets your agenda. Do you think that Drexel should bring in a new head coach ever year or two after they have a losing record? Because that is exactly what you're suggesting they should have done, and you know for a fact that wouldn't work. Drexel would not have won a championship if they did what you are suggesting they should have done. The actual winning percentage is completely meaningless. The year to year improvement is what we should be focusing on.

Monte won a championship and won more games and still got the hook. People here seem to be content with less.
Dunno why you think win% is meaningless. I like to see my team win games.
I can’t define when the time to change coaches is. Spiker definitely bought himself some time with the NCAA appearance. I hope he keeps it up.

Alright you guys. Sorry I brought up the “B” word, geez It was his time to go and I said so at the time. If anything I feel burned we hung onto him as long as we did. Extending him in the middle of that NIT run was a mistake in retrospect.

So now beating the city teams is no big deal huh? Sour grapes. I don’t believe you. Those wins were a huge point of pride for everyone.

Who said beating the city teams is no big deal? Spiker is 3-8 against City 6 teams, and 3-5 after his first year. That includes some close losses against Temple that we had no business being close in given the talent on the teams at the time. It's not like City games are some massive black mark against Spiker's record.

He isn't getting poached. I think some of the poor record can be assigned to trying to do a fast rebuild with transfers that kind of blew up in his face. His last three recruiting classes have brought in Cam, Mate, TJ, Xavier, Lamar and Amari. A couple of better system transfers in James and Zach helped solidify things too. We came into this year as the highest ranked team in the conference according to KenPom and finally broke out of the 245-250 range we had been stuck in for six seasons. We didn't have any Covid issues on our end for the entire season, which demonstrates to me that the players have bought into the culture he and the staff are trying to establish. An extension is a little tricky with Zillmer heading out the door, but I think it'd be an extremely bad look for a school in Drexel's position to not reward a coach that took them to The Dance for the first time in a quarter century. I believe I've seen it mentioned elsewhere that he has two years left on the current extension, so I'd say tacking on another two years seems fair so as to not hinder immediate future recruiting while providing a not overly extreme length should this prove to have been a fluke.

(03-23-2021 05:03 PM)DrachenFire Wrote:  He isn't getting poached. I think some of the poor record can be assigned to trying to do a fast rebuild with transfers that kind of blew up in his face. His last three recruiting classes have brought in Cam, Mate, TJ, Xavier, Lamar and Amari. A couple of better system transfers in James and Zach helped solidify things too. We came into this year as the highest ranked team in the conference according to KenPom and finally broke out of the 245-250 range we had been stuck in for six seasons. We didn't have any Covid issues on our end for the entire season, which demonstrates to me that the players have bought into the culture he and the staff are trying to establish. An extension is a little tricky with Zillmer heading out the door, but I think it'd be an extremely bad look for a school in Drexel's position to not reward a coach that took them to The Dance for the first time in a quarter century. I believe I've seen it mentioned elsewhere that he has two years left on the current extension, so I'd say tacking on another two years seems fair so as to not hinder immediate future recruiting while providing a not overly extreme length should this prove to have been a fluke.

Thank you. I think you said it as well as anybody could, so I'm not going to try to argue my point any further.

(03-23-2021 04:48 PM)jcohen42 Wrote:  Who said beating the city teams is no big deal? Spiker is 3-8 against City 6 teams, and 3-5 after his first year. That includes some close losses against Temple that we had no business being close in given the talent on the teams at the time. It's not like City games are some massive black mark against Spiker's record.

No disrespect, as I have a master's from Drexel, and want to see Spiker and the program do well, but I don't see this as something super important to worry about it.

(03-24-2021 04:00 PM)JHG722 Wrote:  

(03-23-2021 04:48 PM)jcohen42 Wrote:  Who said beating the city teams is no big deal? Spiker is 3-8 against City 6 teams, and 3-5 after his first year. That includes some close losses against Temple that we had no business being close in given the talent on the teams at the time. It's not like City games are some massive black mark against Spiker's record.

No disrespect, as I have a master's from Drexel, and want to see Spiker and the program do well, but I don't see this as something super important to worry about it.

I generally agree, I was just responding to relaxing's post bringing up city games.