MeanGreenZen

It is better for Ross if his assistants move up to get their own head coaching jobs. Makes being one of his assistants more desirable. Great coaches are fighting over getting a job on Scott Drew’s staff.

These are just estimates from some random dude in Washington state. Not official NCAA filings.

I’ve had a chance to be around the team a few times and I noticed that Ross always ate with Herl. To me, that meant that Ross confided in Herl and also valued his opinion. That’s just another indicator to me that Herl might be the right guy to keep the momentum going.

Jared has a high-level background in basketball and is 2-for-2 on basketball hires. Plus, he is still buddy/buddy with Thin Wren, who might be the best in the country at hiring basketball coaches. I’m sure Thin Wren gave Jared a list of coaching names to investigate too. Plus, if I was Jared, I might pay our new head coach way less than Grant/Ross and use the savings for men’s basketball NIL. I mean will that coach’s life be much different making $400K a year than it would be making $800K a year? That much money towards NIL at our level can make a HUGE impact on the quality of players that the new coach lands.

I am beginning to strongly support the idea of giving this job to Jase Herl, if he is committed to retaining the slow-pace of play, defensive identity that we have won with the last 8 years. Reasons: Hurl has obviously been Hodge’s No. 1 assistant the last two seasons and is the most active of the staff during games. He was also the primary recruiter for us on Jason Edwards, and a future Dallas Maverick that he coached at one of his prior coaching stops transferred over to another school to join Herl again, which indicates that he can identify and acquire talent. He’s also spent his entire career learning to do more with less at our level of basketball or lower. Like Hodge, Herl is a former assistant of defensive guru Larry Eustachy, who Ross gives a lot of credit for his superior knowledge of X’s & O’s. Herl also spent five seasons on the staff at Missouri State, another school that leaned on its defense to be successful. Like Hodge and McCasland, Herl was a successful junior college head coach for several seasons. And that skill set really transfers to our current NIL and transfer portal situation. Herl was also 1-5 as interim HC at Colorado State, but that was a disaster season for that program where Eustachy was fired for abusing players and the team’s first interim was also removed. I’m not holding that against Herl, who was also only 30 years old at the time. Overall, this is an opportunity to keep a good thing going with a coach who knows how to win here, understands the challenges of our institution and can recruit. Let’s sign him up and reschedule the faculty appreciation lunch for the next few years.

I mean, we played several important games in Fort Worth last week and the crowds weren’t impressive.

More work if the teams are winning. Might have to reschedule faculty luncheons. Nah…

I don’t hate it

I would rather win the NIT before he is gone.

Plus the transfer portal really only affects Lorient and Floyd. And they already know they are going to the Smoky Mountains anyway.

Almost every college basketball player in the NCAA is planning on transferring anyway. And I bet an even higher % of players in the NIT are planning on it. I don’t think the transfer portal will be a distraction at all. Winning the NIT is a HUGE opportunity for our players and Ross. I think they will be present.

One trend I am noticing in college basketball: whatever teams are spending on their head coach, they are also committing to spending the same amount on their players via NIL. Hope we are planning to do that too.

I am really sad about losing Ross. I am also really excited about the next coach. Successful programs at our level have to replace good players and coaches. The results have been pretty good the last 8 years. Sure does make it interesting.

Keep playing football but maybe at D2 or D3 level. We can’t win a D1 national championship in football so what is the point?

I have been very critical of Mosley this week, but he has proven to be WAY better at hiring basketball coaches than he has been at reserving university venues.