UNC Basketball Possible coaches - UNC hires ex-Nuggets HC Michael Malone

[Enigma94]

Meh... people blow off steam after a gut wreonching loss. We wait a couple days, and cooler heads likely prevail. What people claim they will do in the heat of the moment vs what they actually do are often very different.

As for doing a quiet, behind the scenes planning/ evaluation process with discreet feelers going out next Feb... there are ways to do a confidential search where you don't have a dead man walking scenario. I can't tell you the number of nondisclosure agreements I've been forced to sign by recruiters before they tell me the name of the company they are recruiting for. It happens 10,000 times a day in the business world without the person currently in the role knowing.

I think it's naive to believe you could keep a UNC basketball head coaching job search under wraps during a basketball season. These agents are paid big bucks to leverage situations like this. Even if you think you could, it's pretty disrespectful to a true UNC guy to give him another year thinking he's staying in the job all while undermining him by chasing other options. You also risk ending up right back where you were at the end of this season - a mediocre record, but not a total disaster, leading to more division in the fanbase and donor pool. If you don't have the right guy I'd say 99% of the time it's best to just go ahead and move on.

I also think people should just be patient with this process. We've been begging for a true search to find the right guy by vetting all the options and now that we do that people are flipping out over how long it takes when it's only been a couple of weeks. It's possible we end up with a dud, but I'd recommend just holding off until the process is completed, or at least until we get past the portal opening, before worrying about that.

 

[CeruleanBlueHeel]

Finding and hiring a great young up and coming basketball mind shouldn't be as difficult as they're making it to be. It's no wonder we ended up with Belicheck and about to do something similar to our our foundational heritage.

 

[Gmonet]

I have two concerns with both Byington and McCollum... first, young up and coming coaches sometimes go on to do great things... and sometimes wind up one hit wonders who fizzle off and become mediocre coaches. Too early to tell on both.

McCollum is certainly not a 'One-hit wonder'. His resume is fantastic. I don't think UNC will get him, as he appears to be a hardcore Midwesterner and it would be his fourth job in four years. Actually, I think he is at Iowa for the duration. But he would be a slam-dunk hire and do great things wherever he goes.

 

[4thgenheel]

And making/announcing the call on a dime over a single gut-wrenching event is a recipe for disaster.

this framing is off.

he wasn't fired over a single gut-wrenching event.

 

[4thgenheel]

Meh... people blow off steam after a gut wreonching loss. We wait a couple days, and cooler heads likely prevail. What people claim they will do in the heat of the moment vs what they actually do are often very different.

As for doing a quiet, behind the scenes planning/ evaluation process with discreet feelers going out next Feb... there are ways to do a confidential search where you don't have a dead man walking scenario. I can't tell you the number of nondisclosure agreements I've been forced to sign by recruiters before they tell me the name of the company they are recruiting for. It happens 10,000 times a day in the business world without the person currently in the role knowing.

no disrespect, but the notion that what you experienced is remotely comparable to the scope, scale and interest level in a UNC basketball coaching search is a bit ridiculous.

 

[4thgenheel]

pushing out HD on essentially a whim.

 

[Bigs23]

Brands still matter, even if they don't matter as much as they used to.

Arizona and MIchigan are top 10-15 programs, they are traditionally very good programs in CBB. It was always going to be hard to poach their coaches if they decided they wanted to keep them. But in order to fend off Carolina, Arizona just had to promise it's coach a very significant raise, a very significant increase in NIL, and create a unique arrangement where the basketball coach now reports directly to the university president rather than the AD. How many schools do you think could push a fairly high level program into doing all of that to retain their coach? Not many.

We'll have to see who we end up with at the end of the search, but there's nothing to suggest that "brands don't really matter anymore".

What's more important? Brand or budget?

 

[rodoheel]

Sure. And if we make the wrong change now, we could be signing up for another 3 to 5 years of mediocrity, after which the program would be equally or even more undesirable to potential coach hires.

In my experience with hiring and firing CEOs, and I've seen A LOT of it in the odd niche which my career falls, making the wrong hire is almost always far worse than taking the extra time to make the right one. And making/announcing the call on a dime over a single gut-wrenching event is a recipe for disaster.

I understand your logic here, I just don't think it holds when considering a college basketball coach vs CEO of a company. In the college coach context - especially the current landscape where you essentially have to re-recruit a new team every year - the downside of keeping an underperforming coach is higher than keeping around an "OK" CEO. There isn't a group of other executives around who can keep things running at an acceptable level if the CEO is just "fine." We were staring down the barrel of another wasted year. We couldn't just keep Hubert around as a lame duck while we did a year-long coaching search. And even after we did that coaching search and took our time we would still have the very real possibility of "signing up for another 3 to 5 years of mediocrity" after that.

Neither your preferred approach nor mine is necessarily the "right" or "wrong" choice. I just think you are overrating the extent we could have improved our chances of a more "sure-thing" coaching hire by waiting a year and underrating the extent to which another year under Hubert could have been a disaster.

 

[rodoheel]

has a program ever done a planned coaching transition with a dead-man-walking coach rather than one who is retiring or leaving of their own accord?

i can't think of that ever happening and can't really see how it would be better - toxicity city. and sounds like it was impossible for UNC to do something like that here anyway as the boosters simply weren't going to fund NIL.

Bingo. There is a reason a situation like that would be virtually unprecedented.

 

[SnoopRob]

What's more important? Brand or budget?

They're highly correlated...the biggest brands largely have the biggest budgets. Carolina has the resources it has because of long-term basketball success and investment in the program. I'm certain there are a few outliers where previously ignored schools suddenly get large budgets and where "brand" schools skimp on their budgets, but the reality is the two go together in most cases.

 

[rodoheel]

To me, the right change is merely taking a full season to plan a transition. We would have been better served to wait one season to make the change. We can't control who is available, but we can control how much effort and care we put into planning the change.

That is far more unfair to Hubert than the way we treated him at the end of this season (they definitely botched the handling of those few days when the season ended). "Hey buddy, we have no faith in you as a coach and no one is going to give you any NIL to work with, but you go out there and coach for a season while you and the players know we're out there looking for your replacement the whole time." I don't think I've ever heard of a school doing anything like that.

 

[duluoz]

this framing is off.

he wasn't fired over a single gut-wrenching event.

Yeah, ultimately he was. Because with the 19 point collapse, he loses his job. Without the 19 point collapse, he doesn’t and is back next season. Period.

Your point is that it was cumulative but the outcome hinged on that one single event, which was a very emotional one for all involved, and clouded the air. That’s his point.

 

[NYCBlueBlood]

this framing is off.

he wasn't fired over a single gut-wrenching event.

Of course he wasn't fired over one event. But the decision 100% was changed/ made in reaction to one event.

 

[4thgenheel]

Yeah, ultimately he was. Because with the 19 point collapse, he loses his job. Without the 19 point collapse, he doesn’t and is back next season. Period.

Your point is that it was cumulative but the outcome hinged on that one single event, which was a very emotional one for all involved, and clouded the air. That’s his point.

sure. it was the catalyst.

but saying he was "fired over a single gut wrenching event" just isn't correct. he was fired due to 5 years of mediocrity culminating in a collapse that was impossible to ignore. the ACCT didn't help, either.

 

[SnoopRob]

I mean, we offered him more money, and he still turned us down. I think it’s pretty clear that the brand didn’t move the needle for Lloyd (or May).

There’s a correlation between brand and $$$. But when you control for money, not sure you’d see any relevant difference in the power of the Carolina brand or that of the Arizona brand. It’s going to be more about money, family situation, NIL, etc. As others have pointed out, there is a reason that as of last year, Carolina, dook and Kentucky all had former players as head coaches.

That's because you're comparing a top 3-5 brand with a top 10-15 brand, the difference is simply not that great that it overcomes the inertia of not having to move and having a program that is rolling along well.

It's never been a situation where "Brand #3" could easily take "Brand #4's" coach, the gaps between the brands were never that wide. If your argument is that the advantages of having a better brand has narrowed from 20 years ago, I'd agree with you, but I don't think those advantages are completely gone.

I imagine that if we start looking at coaches where the schools' respective brand isn't top 15 like Arizona/Michigan, the advantage will show up in a much greater way.

 

[Icky Mettle]

Certainly a lack of faith in UNC's track record for hiring new coaches plays a role in my anxiety over pushing out HD on essentially a whim.

Funny enough, UNC’s most disastrous hire over the past 40 years may have been what looked like its most impressive hire at the time it occurred. That was Butch Davis. Roy Williams was obviously an impressive hire— and our best hire by a long shot over the last 40 years (second best ever after Dean)— but there was nothing suprising about UNC basketball landing an elite coach in 2003, particularly one with deep UNC ties.

UNC football, on the other hand, had been a disaster before hiring Butch Davis and never been an historically good program. So that football program landing a coach with Butch Davis’s resume was a really big deal. But he never really took the program to new heights and his lack of oversight led to NCAA violations and investigations that not only torpedoed the football program, but triggered investigations into other programs at UNC, including our prized basketball program. And of course that garnered heavy media attention where the basketball program was dragged through the mud, which negatively impacted recruiting.

 

[mpaer]

Funny enough, UNC’s most disastrous hire over the past 40 years may have been what looked like its most impressive hire at the time it occurred. That was Butch Davis. Roy Williams was obviously an impressive hire— and our best hire by a long shot over the last 40 years (second best ever after Dean)— but there was nothing suprising about UNC basketball landing an elite coach in 2003, particularly one with deep UNC ties.

UNC football, on the other hand, had been a disaster before hiring Butch Davis and never been an historically good program. So that football program landing a coach with Butch Davis’s resume was a really big deal. But he never really took the program to new heights and his lack of oversight led to NCAA violations and investigations that not only torpedoed the football program, but triggered investigations into other programs at UNC, including our prized basketball program. And of course that garnered heavy media attention where the basketball program was dragged through the mud, which negatively impacted recruiting.

Oh he brought on about 7 years of hell

 

[NYCBlueBlood]

no disrespect, but the notion that what you experienced is remotely comparable to the scope, scale and interest level in a UNC basketball coaching search is a bit ridiculous.

Your POV on the scope and scale of UNC's basketball coaching job is highly influenced by your passion for the team. For the last 25 years I've been working for $20B+ MNCs. This search is not as big or complicated as you think. Nor is it any more fraught with competitors who will use the search against you.

 

[SnoopRob]

This echos a lot of my feelings. But when you say "I told you so," you're talking to fans who wanted HD gone no matter what happened next. So even if it turns out to be an utter disaster, they still got what they wanted.

[snip]

I know you said it's waaaay too early, but you really can't assess how successful the transition is until happens and then look back at the whole picture retrospectively. The timing is still at a point where it would be very reasonable to be making the new hire. We just don't know yet if this process is a success or not. I'm very skeptical, but I'll wait to see how it all turns out in the end.

The first part of your post is utter and absolute bullshit. Very few fans, and none that I know on here, wanted HD gone if we didn't believe that the program couldn't significantly upgrade the HC position afterward.

Your second part is correct in that we won't have any idea how successful the transition will turn out to be until a new coach is announced. Hopefully that won't be too far into the future.

 

[duluoz]

sure. it was the catalyst.

but saying he was "fired over a single gut wrenching event" just isn't correct. he was fired due to 5 years of mediocrity culminating in a collapse that was impossible to ignore. the ACCT didn't help, either.

His point was the emotion in the moment, and the need to defuse the volatility that comes from that. It’s clear emotion played a role because of the dramatic fashion of the loss.