He's well known as a player and an announcer besides just a coach. I think he has a good basketball mind. That gives him more ways to connect with players. I think that it's no small thing that he has a connection with the former players that would be hard to replace with a new coach and , quite likely, a new staff. I'd be hesitant to change quite yet in the best of time, although I do expect considerably better next year. I especially am hesitant to change when the whole landscape of the game is changing. I think that's entirely too much at once, since we don't know where the game is headed.
dook Biorhythms, Round Two, 6:30 Start in The Dean E. Smith Center (Now With Blood)
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SnoopRob
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It's hard to say, as titles take a bit of luck as well as talent and coaching. I think it's safe to say that '98 was certainly on the short list of teams that year for whom a title was a realistic expectation. I guess I'd say that Coach Smith left a potential title on the table by retiring.
But you're going to have to clarify to me what that question has to do with anything that was being discussed before you asked it.
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You need to look at the bigger picture to get some context. I always think Gut’s recruiting (as well as his coaching) gets an unfairly bad rap. He really had only two years of full recruiting classes. He became head coach in the October before the 1997-98 season, so there wasn’t much for him to do in terms of recruiting the 1998 HS class at that point. Capel and Lang had already committed. He did then help reel in Ronald Curry, a consensus top 10 recruit (I say helped reel in because Carl Torbush was recruiting him for football as well, but as I understand it, it was the prospect of playing on the basketball team that really excited Curry at the time.)
In 1999, he landed consensus top 5 recruit Joseph Forte, consensus top 15 recruit Jason Parker, runner-up Indiana Mr. Basketball Jonathan Holmes (Gut was looking for a backup PG to play behind Cota and Curry), and Will Johnson, who came to UNC as a Morehead scholar. Unbeknownst to Gut at the time, Vasco Evtimov would not return for his junior year, Ronald Curry would miss the 2000 season with an Achilles injury from football, and Jason Parker would not make the grades to make it onto campus. Needless to say, a recruiting class that consists of a top 5 recruit and top 15 recruit is going to be considered a good recruiting class. Also keep in mind that Gut added Julius Peppers to the basketball team, so Peppers was also part of that class.
When Parker didn’t make the grades, Gut told him to spend a year at Fork Union, and then he could come to UNC the following year. So Gut fully expected Parker— a top 15 recruit from the 1999 recruiting class— to be part of his 2000 recruiting class.
In addition to Parker, the 2000 recruiting class consisted of consensus top 25 recruit Brian Morrison, consensus top 35 recruit Adam Boone, and McDonald’s All-American Neil Fingleton. Unfortunately, Parker did not make it past UNC admissions (even though he qualified under NCAA rules), so he did not end up being part of that freshman class.
If you look at all that, Gut really wasn’t a bad recruiter, but it’s also not like two full years of recruiting is enough to make a truly informed judgment of one’s recruiting ability.
Frankly, Dean Smith’s last three recruiting classes were a bit subpar by the standard he had set. Those recruiting classes were as follows:
1996: Vasco Evtimov, Ed Cota, Michael Brooker, Terrence Newby (Makhtar N’Diaye also transferred from Michigan after the 1995 season, so he would join UNC along with this freshman class in 1996-97 with two years of eligibility left.)
1997: Brendan Haywood, Max Owens, Brian Bersticker, Orlando Melendez
1998: Jason Capel, Kris Lang (As stated above, Curry committed while Gut was coach.) (To be fair, Capel was top 10 and Lang was top 25, so it looked like the makings of a strong recruiting class, and looked like a really good class when Curry was added it to it.)
As for Gut’s coaching, with the exception of the NCAAT first round exit vs. Weber State, Gut did a great job with that 1999 team after losing Jamison, Carter, Williams, and N’Diaye (85% of the scoring for the previous season’s team), and with Evtimov missing 18 games due to the NCAA ruling him ineligible for those games and Capel missing 8 games due to health issues, not to mention Curry missing the first 8 games due to football. Despite all that was lost from the previous season and missing a starter and 2 rotational players for large chunks of the season, he coached that team to final ranking of 13 and a third place ACC finish (when Duke and Maryland both had great teams). He also coached the team to a win over a great Maryland team in the ACCT semifinals.
2000 was a really rough year prior to the NCAAT with the team on the bubble. But imagine what he could have accomplished had the team ended up being what Gut thought he would have after the 1999 season. The team he expected to coach in 2000 was a team that would have consisted of Jason Parker, Evtimov, and Curry, none of whom made it onto the 2000 roster. Curry would have provided the team with a much better backup to Cota than what was available (Newby and Holmes). And Evtimov had potential. In 1999, he averaged 5 rpg in just 11 mpg. That’s 17.6 rebounds per 40 minutes with a decent sample size. He was the highest rated recruit Dean Smith landed in 1996. On top of all that, Brian Bersticker, who appeared to be an integral part of the rotation early on, averaging about 11 mpg, got injured and missed almost the entirety of the season (he played in only 5 games).
Bigs23
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Nothing.
Just throwing it out there.
Dean was assuredly a better HC than Gut, but would that have made a difference in ‘98? As you said, there’s no way to know. Dean didn’t win titles with some powerhouse teams of his own.
stankeylegjones
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There are other former players who are more well known, with good basketball minds, and still friends with lots of former players, if that’s what you want in a coach for UNC. I do agree that the landscape of the game is changing, it always has been and will, and that requires someone who can stay in front of the changes. By all accounts, HD/staff are not doing that.
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Nah, you never know what’s going to happen. Winning national championships is hard. Dean coached plenty of extremely talented teams that didn’t win national championships, some which didn’t even reach a Final Four. He won only two NCAAT titles in his 36 years of being a head coach. And don’t get me wrong, two is really good. Only a handful of coaches have one two NCAAT titles. But it just goes to show how hard it is to win them. It’s quite possible that Dean may not have even reached the Final Four had he stuck around to coach in 1998. Again, you never know.
Bigs23
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As an aside it’s always been strange that basketball doesn’t have the same obsessive focus on speed/agility/burst metrics that football does. Everyone knows it’s important to be fast laterally and straight line, including first step and open floor speed. But you don’t see the same emphasis on measurement that you do in football.
Jason Capel was remarkably slow afoot for a top recruit and that’s mostly what was exposed at the college level.
Jason Capel was remarkably slow afoot for a top recruit and that’s mostly what was exposed at the college level.
SnoopRob
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While not quite to the same extent, I think you do see much more of that focus on measurables at the NBA level than you do at the NCAA level.
I wonder if the difference is that in the NFL, and even CFB, you have so many more positions and so many more potential players to consider and a much larger team to build vis-a-vis the NBA and CBB? In basketball, it's conceivable to observe a lot of top players each year in depth and get a real feel for them & their skill set, whereas with football you have to consider so many potential players at so many potential positions that things that are more easily quantifiable (i.e. metrics) may very well be considered more important simply because those metrics so easy to compile on the much larger number of players you need to consider.
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Yeah, he definitely was a little slow and lacked athleticism for a small forward. I remember in the very early days of reading message boards, while Capel was still in high school, reading fans’ reports after they watched him play in high school games. What they would say is that he wasn’t great at any one thing, but he was good at almost everything. They said he wouldn’t deliver many exciting highlights but would display good fundamentals and a high basketball IQ. I seem to remember comparisons to a less athletic Grant Hill.
I also remember trash talking between fans of different teams on those early message boards, and Tar Heels fans telling Duke fans, “We got the good Capel.” Later on, Duke fans would tell us that we got the Capel Curse. I do subscribe to that belief.
Mulberry Heel
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Whether we make the NCAA tourney this year or not, I think Hubert definitely is going to get another year, although if we don't make the tourney then his seat is going to be very hot and there will be plenty of national sports media stories going into next season about how he's on the hot seat, so there will definitely be pressure to do better. And there should be, because this year has overall been a dud, plain and simple. If he doesn't do much better next season then he should and will be gone, imo. I do feel that if he does get fired then it will likely be the end of the UNC McGuire/Smith/Guthridge/Williams coaching tree but that may be inevitable. At any rate I think he's going to get another year no matter what, and if there's not major improvement next season he's almost certainly gone at the end of the year.
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Yeah, I think the PTB are going to give him a chance to see what he can do with a lot more NIL money than he had to work with a year ago. Failing to make the NCAAT next season will result in termination. Perhaps a mediocre season with 9 or more losses and failure to make it out of the first weekend of the NCAAT will also result in termination unless he lands a monster HS recruiting class. I’m talking a 1990-, 1993-, 2002-, 2006-caliber recruiting class.
HintonJamesHeel
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8 seed miracle run
Miss tournament
1 seed and out in Sweet Sixteen
Miss tournament
Hubert is a Heel through and through but that’s simply not even close to good enough. He’s being paid millions a year.
Miss tournament
1 seed and out in Sweet Sixteen
Miss tournament
Hubert is a Heel through and through but that’s simply not even close to good enough. He’s being paid millions a year.
Mulberry Heel
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That is true but what I posted and think is that it won't matter, he's going to get another year no matter what. If he doesn't do a lot better next year he will and should be gone. People can complain and say he should be fired now and they may be right, but it's just not going to happen, imo.
Bigs23
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These are different times.
He gets another year because of who he is and no 8-20 or player mutinies.
If the Heels flame out next season I can see Hubert “stepping down”.
Another subpar season also gives the school better cover than axing him now.
Bigs23
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FOR DISCUSSION OF ALL THINGS COLLEGE HOOPS (OTHER THAN UNC BASKETBALL)
Season starts Monday, November 4 (day before Election Day)
Season starts Monday, November 4 (day before Election Day)
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1. Most coaching hires go badly. I would say that a significant majority of coaching tenures end by firing and/or forced resignations.
2. Decisions about coaches are one of the few areas in which public pressure and input plays a considerable role in who gets fired, and when, and re-hired.
It's almost as if these two observations are telling us that maybe it's a bad idea to rely on armchair experts to make decisions. Not just in sports.
2. Decisions about coaches are one of the few areas in which public pressure and input plays a considerable role in who gets fired, and when, and re-hired.
It's almost as if these two observations are telling us that maybe it's a bad idea to rely on armchair experts to make decisions. Not just in sports.
I think this is pretty much spot-on. For all the people who want him out because “something needs to change,” that’s emotional and incredibly short-sighted and underestimating how rocky a landscape it is currently, in all ways. Continuity at the top of the program has value in a landscape like that, especially with the GM move which signals that something is in fact changing. And I would like to see a staff shakeup. Obviously we don’t have a view into practices, but too many paunchy middle aged bald (mostly white) guys on that sideline who rarely look engaged. Lebo is the only guy who seems consistently active and in their faces. Paige appears to have potential. The rest dont seem to be the kind of vibrant young staff that helps to inspire or seal recruits or current players (since they can easily bail and head into the portal now).
But blindly trying to pluck some other head coach who’s also trying to navigate all these sea changes and maybe has been better or (likely) just luckier than HD… and inserting him into a program with massive tradition and expectations unlike most in college sports… that’s way more of a crapshoot than allowing HD (and his GM, etc.) to develop and adapt. Just because Nate Oates made some noise at Buffalo and has done well at Alabama, that means he’d be a clear improvement? And why would he even want to leave a program that he elevated, in what has become the best conference in the country and flush with resources? Wes has been middling at Cinci, for those who’d prefer to keep the lineage. So, who then? Have you thought it all the way through? Going through a coaching search where nobody wants to come? Because that’s highly possible and things can get a whole lot worse than “being on the bubble or missing the tourney this often is not up to par…” Especially when balanced against K’s scalp x2 and a Bacot sprained ankle away from another title, and an ACC champion and #1 seed that unfortunately got bounced in the Sweet 16.
They can get a *whole* lot worse than that. This ain’t half as bad as many of you claim. You’re comparing against standards of an idealized and romanticized world that no longer exists. And that’s not the right lens for this. Especially since it’s been signaled that it’s a work in progress, and changes are being made.
SnoopRob
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My biggest concern is what standard he has to meet next year to retain his job going forward.
I sincerely doubt it will be publicly announced and I don't expect there to be an agreed upon standard within the fan base.
Mulberry Heel
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I don't disagree with that, and it may well prove to be a real mess. Personally I would say it will take more than just making the NCAA tourney - we need to finish in the Top 2 or 3 of the ACC, win 25 or more games, and consistently be ranked in at least the Top 20 (preferably Top 10) for most of the year, especially in the last half of the season. And making at least the Sweet Sixteen in the NCAA tournament would certainly be a plus. Losing double-digit games again and just squeaking into the NCAA tourney shouldn't cut it, although I worry that might be enough for the powers that be.