(03-23-2021 08:32 AM)relaxing Wrote: (03-23-2021 07:02 AM)hiroshimacarp Wrote: (03-22-2021 11:25 PM)relaxing Wrote: Earl Grant has a winning record.
are you willing to give spiker any credit at all?
i just saw your post from 3/11 a couple days ago. i've been as frustrated with this program as anyone over the last decade. i mostly keep coming here 1. as a place to vent my anxiety when it's taking too long to check somebody in or 2. to avoid cesspools like cable news sites and social media. it's not because i've enjoyed drexel basketball.
saying everything this year was a fluke and especially saying spiker should go into another profession is unfair. we should meet somewhere in the middle with jcohen's post that he still has something to prove. sadly once he proves it to us...he might be on his way out. i hope we have that problem.
and how about the coaches who were exposed this year? you make it sound like winning in a pandemic doesn't mean anything. coach k and calipari got exposed for their one and done non-sense that has been killing college basketball for years. they actually had to coach this year and maintain discipline/focus in their programs.
it didn't go well for them.
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.
Nothing you said here is incorrect. But I want to point out some things to note in Spiker's defense.
1. He took over a program in complete disarray. After Damion Lee, Bruiser was not bringing in top level talent. The only top level player they had was Terrell Allen, who transferred after Bruiser was fired. Spiker had to build a program completely from scratch. Sometime it takes 2 years to recruit players. Spiker didn't have the luxury. He brought in some guys who could help out of desperation, like Kurk Lee and Iceman and transfers like Harper and Isabell who had a lot of talent, but might not have been ideal players for this program. Take a look at the 2016-2017 roster. It was REALLY BAD.
2. He's been here for 5 years and his teams have improved 5 years in a row. If most of the team sticks around, it's likely to be 6 years next year.
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.
4. The goal of a CAA coach is to win the championship. He was the best coach out of 10 this season. He's the only coach to accomplish the ultimate goal.
5. Since he's been at Drexel, the program has had ZERO infractions and ZERO disciplinary issues. Discipline issues was an occasional problem with Bruiser.
6. While Bruiser won a lot of games, his CAA Tournament record was horrible. Spiker is 5-4 in the CAA Tournament. I think it took Bruiser 11 years to get 5 wins.