UMassHoops.com

^ Thanks for sharing. We're all good over here too. Bye.

I don't know why anyone from UMass cares what Memphis thinks about Cal.. It's obvious where we all stand as the Final Four banner isn't coming down anytime soon.

I wish this game wasn't smack dab in the middle of the week but I understand they needed to make schedules fit, plus they'll probably now sell out a game that would instead only have had a couple thousand at it.

UofMTigers wrote:
lol, it seems I touched a nerve. You boys could catch Cal with a dead body, holding the murder weapon...and it would be all someone else's fault.

Put up a statue for all I care...it should be Cal holding bags of money.

Enjoy your Cal tweets, we're all good over here.

The only nerve that was touched was yours when Dana Kirk screwed you over. Since then, you've got a stick up your ass and if anything goes wrong, it's obviously the coaches fault. I guess that's partially not your fault, but it's your fault for not having figured out after 5+ years who really screwed you this time.

And I guarantee you if we decided to put up a Cal statue, you'd be the first person here trolling us. Again, the issues you deal with outside of Memphis Basketball must be real deep to spend time doing this. For someone who is all good over there, you don't act like it.

rayers wrote:To the person a couple before me, Bruiser did a hell of a job for a guy thrust into a no win position at a young age and with no head coaching experience. Marcum was impatient and really screwed up dropping Bru for Lappas. I am of the opinion that we would have done much better with Bruiser if we kept him than we did without him. He would have thrived getting us some top notch players if he had the chance. He motivated his players and had a rough group to deal with. Bassit was more a complete dick but Bru kept him from destroying the entire program, which could have happened. Bruiser doesn't deserve the hate and I can only dream about how much better we would have been for the past 17 years if he was given the chance to grow into the job.

My post was not intended to bash Bruiser (seemed like a great guy) but rather focus on moving on from Cal. When Cal left we were coming off a Final 4 and had some great momentum. I am sure many experienced and successful coaches looked at UMASS at a great potential landing spot. Cal used his influence to get Bruiser the job to his detriment. Expectations were sky high the right move was to hire someone used to the spotlight not someone just learning the ropes. When Cal took over of .500 season was seen as a great success not so much for any coach after him.

When I hear UMASS folks talk about Calipari all the time it reminds me of Ohio State people who reference Woody Hayes or the Notre Dame people who worship Ara Parseghian still . As I said in the previous post- Time to move on.

Can anyone tell me why a U of Memphis fan has 189 posts in a UMass forum..... is he suffering from No Life Syndrome (NLS)?

KahunaK wrote:

rayers wrote:To the person a couple before me, Bruiser did a hell of a job for a guy thrust into a no win position at a young age and with no head coaching experience. Marcum was impatient and really screwed up dropping Bru for Lappas. I am of the opinion that we would have done much better with Bruiser if we kept him than we did without him. He would have thrived getting us some top notch players if he had the chance. He motivated his players and had a rough group to deal with. Bassit was more a complete dick but Bru kept him from destroying the entire program, which could have happened. Bruiser doesn't deserve the hate and I can only dream about how much better we would have been for the past 17 years if he was given the chance to grow into the job.

My post was not intended to bash Bruiser (seemed like a great guy) but rather focus on moving on from Cal. When Cal left we were coming off a Final 4 and had some great momentum. I am sure many experienced and successful coaches looked at UMASS at a great potential landing spot. Cal used his influence to get Bruiser the job to his detriment. Expectations were sky high the right move was to hire someone used to the spotlight not someone just learning the ropes. When Cal took over of .500 season was seen as a great success not so much for any coach after him.

When I hear UMASS folks talk about Calipari all the time it reminds me of Ohio State people who reference Woody Hayes or the Notre Dame people who worship Ara Parseghian still . As I said in the previous post- Time to move on.

I think about the North Carolina team of the 90s, who were the powerhouse of college basketball, reloading year after year with Dean Smith at the helm. Once Dean retired, Bill Guthridge, long time assistant got the head coaching job. The very next season was a hit, making it to the Final Four but losing to Utah. But the slow decline had already ensued, and while they made another Final Four 2 years later, their regular season wins started to deteriorate, and with hiring of Matt Doerhty (sp?) afterwards, it solidified UNC's fall from the pinnacle of the NCAA mountain. Of course, with a headliner like Roy Williams, they are back in business. Makes you wonder if they got someone solid after Dean Smith retired, if they never would have relinquished their status.

Are there any cases that point to an assistant who stepped up into a head role for a solid NCAA basketball program and demonstrated sustained success after the first 1-2 years?

Mark Few, Gonzaga

Needle..... Haystack.....

SoCal wrote:Mark Few, Gonzaga

Good call - but Gonzaga wasn't exactly the most successful team prior to his arrival as the HC. They made the NCAA tournament only once as a #14 seed in 1995. The team really came into its own after 2000 as a perennial NCAA contender.

^
Not quite true, Dan Monson was the HC from 97 - 99 (2 seasons) and he got the ball rolling. In the 98-99 season they were the Cinderella team from which Monson parlayed that into a job at Minnesota. Few took over and the rest is Gonzaga History....

I would not classify that as taking over a solid program to meet the definition of that question however...

I'd say both Xavier and Dayton have had continual success even though both programs have a history of turning over coaches.

^ It's not about that, it's about the difficulty of an assistant coach taking over as HC at the same school.

^ Nope, he was never an assistant at VCU.

I'm pretty sure Xavier has a long, successful history of promoting within

^
Mack was the assistant when he took over.... so that one works.