Finding and getting elite shooters willing to reduce possessions, guard, and keep shooting % high is harder to do unless they are one and done. Like Jason Edwards. Elite shooters is what the big boys want and elite shooters want the green light to take any shots they want. Shooters come at a premium these days.
But getting good players from lower tier teams to buy into playing defensive minded basketball to win games is definitely possible as we have seen. Or seniors that want to win at any cost that can't reach the high majors or have spent time on the bench at high majors.
We have a proven formula that a new coach can follow to keep us from becoming Charlotte next year.
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 agree with @NorthTexasWeLove. We’ve had a niche and have been successful with it. We won’t be able to go toe to toe with Memphis in recruiting battles, so we need to be creative. I love the defense first mentality…I almost take pride in how we play. GMG!
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