Time for a new coach

[69MG]

FM said in the presser that they're not paying him to finish 8th in the MAC and that he needs to recruit bigger guards.

If there is one area that I have a real problem with Frank, it's his lack of understanding what types of players to recruit, assuming he can get them.

Last year he recruiting a bunch of tall, skinny guys who were athletic, but not basketball players and no shooters. This year he recruited shooters, mostly small and nobody on the team could play defense. Now he wants bigger guards. Can they shoot or play defense or both? He also better think about recruiting guys to replace Leo and DHS. Maybe it's just my frustration coming out, but his recruiting strategy is all over the place.

[DanaDingle3]

It is strange that pretty good MAC teams can recruit guys who can dribble, pass, shoot, and play D, but we recruit guys who can only do one, or some, of those things, with a bigger budget. Some of it is probably adapting to the changing NIL landscape, including the modestly growing UMass budget. He has a year in the MAC under his belt and a bigger budget. Anything less than being on the cusp of the NCAA tournament next year will be a failure by Frank to cap off a failed tenure at UMass. I think he'll turn it around. We'll see.

[Jack]

Frank Martin is signed through 2029 I believe, just beat a ranked undefeated Redhawks team and made the MAC semis in our first MAC season... Therefore it's not time for a new HC. Kind of a silly thread.

[Juice Stand]

...his recruiting strategy is all over the place.

Good point, 69. This sort of reminds me of the Matt McCall era, who seemed a little in over his head, and changed his recruiting strategy constantly. It didn't seem like there was any continuity or particular vision on what he wanted his teams to be. I expect more from Frank Martin as an experienced coach who's strength is relationship building and recruiting. Maybe he's so used to the P5 level where guys can excel in multiple areas, whereas at the UMass/MAC level you tend to have more specialists? (A shooter that can't defend, an assist man that can't shoot, a big man with touch around the rim but can't defend without fouling, etc.) I don't know, just throwing out ideas.

[Juice Stand]

The exodus is rampant across the board...

In general yes, but there are teams that actually retain their players. The top two in the MAC, Miami and Akron both retained 9 players from last year to this year. I also randomly looked up Ohio because they were top of mind, and they returned 7 this year. Taking another random team, Bowling Green (honestly, these were random pulls aside from Akron and Miami), and they returned 7. I think we returned 3 rotation players (DHS, Ndjigue, Damjanac) and a walk-on, Rollie.

We were told that we had conference-leading NIL. If not the top of the MAC, certainly among the top. With the resources we have, we should be able to retain players on par with most of the conference. When you lose players like Jaylen Curry to Oklahoma St or Matt Cross to SMU, I get it. We can't match the big boys. But when you lose Keon Thompson to Stephen F Austin and he continues his upward trajectory, or Lewis Walker to NC A&T and he's a 19 pt 5 reb player from the word go, I just don't understand how that happens. Frank's style depends on continuity, even if the players are somewhat flawed. Telling players to go away, or redshirting and letting them walk to a lower conference is detrimental to the Frank Martin system.

Even though it won't happen, I hope everybody that is eligible stays for another year. That's how programs are built. Even if they're flawed (they all are), the continuity and leadership is more important than going out and getting replacements that are similarly flawed, and we have the recruiting staff and NIL budget to do it (supposedly). That's the only way that the Frank Martin system works.

[massprof]

Juice is exactly right. The route to success for us has to be recruit good young players then retain and develop them.

[massprof]

And BTW, sulking is NOT OK. When your team is struggling, you coach them up, you don’t sulk.

[NilesGold]

FM said in the presser that they're not paying him to finish 8th in the MAC and that he needs to recruit bigger guards.

If there is one area that I have a real problem with Frank, it's his lack of understanding what types of players to recruit, assuming he can get them.

Last year he recruiting a bunch of tall, skinny guys who were athletic, but not basketball players and no shooters. This year he recruited shooters, mostly small and nobody on the team could play defense. Now he wants bigger guards. Can they shoot or play defense or both? He also better think about recruiting guys to replace Leo and DHS. Maybe it's just my frustration coming out, but his recruiting strategy is all over the place.

It’s whack-a-mole… whatever he thinks is lacking he tries to go out and get that even if they have other flaws.

[Juice Stand]

^Yup. He didn't like how Josh Cohen rebounded and protected the rim (even though was an A10 1st teamer), so he went out and got Daniel Rivera who could rebound and block shots, but did literally nothing else and had the worst BB IQ I've ever seen. Then he realized that sometimes the ball actually needs to go in the hole, so he went out and recruited a bunch of shooters that aren't particularly good defenders. Now he's bemoaning our guard size, so we'll see what he does about it next season. A guy that just finished his 19th season as a NCAA D1 head coach should have a better idea of how to build a roster top-to-bottom by now, right?

[Juice Stand]

Pulled over from the Toledo game thread:

I’m fine with Frank getting another year but I want Bamford canned tomorrow. He cannot hire Franks replacement a year from now and I don’t want him overseeing the program heading into another football season.

I'll mostly agree with this. As fed up as I am with Frank's antics, his poor coaching, lack of accountability, etc. I'm going to remind myself that Ryan Bamford is utterly incapable of making a quality hire in football or men's basketball. If Frank is here for one more year, I can grit my teeth and bear it. We need Bamford out so that when Frank's time does end, we have new leadership to make the replacement hire.

So you think coach H is not a quality hire? Jury is out obviously, but he could very well be Rutgers next head coach in a few years..

My pick during the coaching search was Coach H, so I was happy with the pick, but I'm not a college football insider, AD, or search firm. My endorsement means nothing. Last season was a trainwreck. It wasn't just poor play, there were also multiple coaching moments late in games that cost them wins (Buffalo) or changed the game from a close winnable one to a blowout (Western Mich), and probably more.

The jury is still out on Joe. I'll give him a mulligan in year one. Bamford does not get the same leeway. Do we really need to go back over his track record of failure for football and men's basketball?