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Huggins - What's the Appeal?


Box and Won

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Box,

Huggins is a saleman plain and simple. No one talks about how nice of guy he is or what a great family man he is but that is not to suggest that he doesn't have these qualities either. Huggins is just very good at what he does. I think Huggins success supports the claim that it is possibble to hire a coach who can sell your University and convince players to come to your school. Remeber his is Manhatten Kansas. No Cardinals,Rams, Blues, Landing, Central West End. Same thing with Gillespie at Texas AM. He has gone into Texas and sold his Texas A&M University. He has competed and won players that were destined for U of Texas. Texas AM will be ranked in the Top 25 this year. That's right Texas AM Top 25!!!! Pearl did it at Southern Indiana and Wisconsin/Milwaukee and now he is doing it Tennesse. With the right hire it is possible.

This also illustrates the claim for the "stay the course" blue juice drinkers who provide excuse after excuse of lack of facilities,academics to difficult,no winning tradition and no past history of NCAA appearances is nonsense. Huggins only proves with the right guy at the helm you can sell any University.

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I have to agree somewhat with Hardball. A lot of recruiting is how the player perceives his spending 4 years with the guy sitting in his living room. Now you may have to stretch to emphasize SLU's strengths versus a BCS school but other guys do it. I'm beginning to wonder if UB isn't one of those guys, "who couldn't sell a piece of a** on a troop ship."

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so you think the facilities of kansas state and texas a&m are worse than the billikens?

you think the academic situation (they are no where near as handicapped on the juco transfer rules) is just as easy to recruit at k state and texas a&m to recruits that are not academically motivated?

i do think that you and bruce pearl would be a great match. you really deserve each other.

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I'm starting to think you may be on to something.

Heck, even Duquesne's new coach seems to have pulled off a minor miracle with the players he's brought in. I realize that his team has yet to play a game, but I'm interested to see how his first few years compare to Soderberg's, since the Duquesne situation was much worse than SLU's when Brad took over.

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I just read on the A-10 board that Pullen never even visited Kansas State. Can you believe that? A guy over there had a good point...who the hell makes a decision like that? Seriously. Dayton and SLU have been recruiting the hell out of that guy for months. Huggy comes in, offers a scholly, and he shows up sight unseen. Pullen wanted to go to the highest profile school/coach he could find. Or maybe there are shady deals going on. Either way, as i think Brianstl said, sometimes it just doesn't matter what you do, different kids have different priorities.

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who did Gillespie get at A&M that was destined for UT. I'm not saying you are wrong ... just curious.

No one said it can't be done ... though I will say it is probably different in a BCS school than the A10. Name all the coaches you can in non BCS conferences that have taken a team like ours to the top 50 and kept them there in the last 20 years. Now name the coaches who have not. I guarantee you ... the have not's outweigh the have's by at least 20-1 ... probably nearer to 100-1.

Nice change from Kool-Aid to Blue Juice.

Official Billikens.com sponsor of H Waldman

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Yeah, we should have hired Bruce Pearl after Romar. Another guy using the program as a step up and then leaving. Does anybody think that Pearl created a consitent top 50 program UMW before he left.

SIU learned it's lesson on this. They lost Weber and Painter. Then they hired the guy that would stick around for a while. THe worst thing that can happen to you on the recruiting trail is when players don't believe the coach is going to be there for his four year run. Ask Tulsa fans how much fun it is to lose a coach every five years. The guys that Hardball always talks about are guys that wouldn't have stuck around. They don't want to build a program at SLU, they just wan't to do what ever it takes to have one really good year. Then they move on to the bigger school in the bigger conference. They don't care about the players or the program the leave behind.

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pearl is scum. see the illini in the early 90's with his cooked up scheme to get the illini on probation when he lost recruiting battles to illinois.

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Box,

The possibilities are limitless if SLU could just have some Vision. I get goose bumps with the possibility of hiring any one of these three coaches in the article below. The article was written before Seton Hall hired Gonzalez. But could you possibble imagine if we had hired the little old coach from Manhatten with the 2008 class coming out. It would be all she wrote. And don't let the blue juice drinkers claim these coaches never would have come to the Midwest. Look at their resumes they tell a complete different story. Coaches like Gellispie,Pearl,Gonzales Cronin and Hill are out there SLU just has to look for them.

Does anyone really think we would be talking about lack of fall signings with Gonzalez,Cronin or Hill. These guys are hungry and expect results. What a novel approach to recruiting.

Seton Hall needs to get a hook in the jaws of Gonzalez

March 27, 2006

By Gregg Doyel

CBS SportsLine.com Senior Writer

Tell Gregg your opinion!

The Big East has never been a place for tuna. For years it was roamed by prehistoric beasts like John Thompson, Lou Carnesecca and Rollie Massimino, and while there's still the occasional living, breathing Hall of Famer like Jim Calhoun or Jim Boeheim, it has evolved into a place for another kind of predator.

Manhattan coach Bobby Gonzalez could recruit the New York area with the best of them. (AP) The Big East is now a place for sharks.

In recruiting parlance, a shark is the new-age recruiting monster. Men like Big John and Louie, Rollie and even Jim Calhoun, they're not sharks. They're formidable in their own way, of course, but a shark is someone younger, someone quicker, someone who gets it done through hustle and effort, contacts and ambition. A shark is someone who succeeds because, simply put, he refuses to fail.

Cincinnati got itself a shark last week when it hired Mick Cronin from Murray State.

Rutgers got itself a shark Monday when it formally promoted associate head coach Fred Hill.

Seton Hall had better get itself a shark. Otherwise? Extinction.

Manhattan coach Bobby Gonzalez is a shark. Throw Gonzalez, Hill and Mick Cronin into the same room, and it would be ugly. They're three little guys, but they're brawlers. Poke you in the eye. Kick you in the shin. To get a player they're going to schmooze that kid's high school coach and his AAU coach and his mother, girlfriend and priest. To win a game, they're going to study film until dawn, make their assistant coaches miserable with what-if scenarios and put their players through enough hell in practice that winning the game, whatever game it might be, is the only alternative.

They're sharks, these guys. Sharks. Cincinnati got one. Rutgers got one. Seton Hall? Get one, or get out of the Big East.

Nothing has come easy for this bunch. Gritty Oklahoma coach Kelvin Sampson once obliterated an entire class of rising young silver-spoon coaches -- Quin Snyder, for example -- by saying, "Some guys were born on third base and think they hit a triple."

Hill, Cronin and Gonzalez weren't even born in the ballpark.

Hill's first job was at Division III Montclair State. Then he went to Lehigh and Rider. He worked at Maine for three years before getting his first big break ... at Fairleigh Dickinson. Then came Seton Hall, Villanova, Rutgers, and now, finally, a head coaching position. Along the way he recruited much of the last Seton Hall team to reach the Sweet 16, and much of the current Villanova team that reached the Elite Eight.

Cronin went from coaching a high school junior varsity team in Cincinnati to breaking down film for ex-UC coach Bob Huggins to the last assistant's spot to the first. Then he went to Louisville as an assistant, then to Murray State, and now here he is in the Big East. Along the way he recruited much of the last Cincinnati team to be ranked No. 1 nationally, and much of the Louisville team that reached the 2005 Final Four. And he led Murray State into the 2006 NCAA Tournament, where it nearly beat North Carolina in the first round.

Gonzalez? He was an assistant coach at two high schools in New York City, then an AAU coach. He was an assistant at a junior college, then at Binghamton before becoming Pete Gillen's assistant at Xavier. He followed Gillen to Providence and Virginia before getting the Manhattan job in 1999. Without Gonzalez to get him players, Gillen's career shriveled. At Manhattan, Gonzalez has showed he can coach as well as recruit, leading the Jaspers to repeated 20-victory regular seasons capped by big wins in the postseason, most recently beating fifth-seeded Florida in the 2004 NCAA Tournament and host Maryland in the 2006 NIT.

There's a point to this. Coaches like Hill and Cronin, and a coach like Gonzalez, have worked too hard to fail -- now or ever. They are driven by something most of us don't have, which is a good thing. What kind of society has too many sharks? The food chain would crumble.

Around the Big East, forces are aligning themselves against Gonzalez.

St. John's doesn't want him in the league because (A) at Seton Hall, Gonzalez would recruit New York better than the current St. John's staff and (B) because St. John's passed him over three years ago. If he goes to Seton Hall and looks good, St. John's looks bad.

Rutgers doesn't want Gonzalez to get the job, because other than Pittsburgh assistant Barry Rohrssen, Rutgers isn't worried about anyone else on the Seton Hall wish list. Gonzalez vs. Fred Hill in the New York metropolitan area? Game on, fellas. Game on.

Villanova doesn't want Gonzalez to get the job. Villanova coach Jay Wright is pushing for his former assistant, Hofstra coach Tom Pecora, which would give Wright former assistants at Rutgers and Seton Hall. A nice position to be in, if you're Jay Wright.

Seton Hall? Be smart, Seton Hall. You've got one chance to get this hire right, but only one. And you're swimming with sharks.

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"Texas A&M: Aggies coach Billy Gillespie did an impressive job this season, earning a spot in the NCAA tournament with a bunch of unheralded players in College Station. Texas A&M returns almost all of its key players — guard Acie Law and big man Joseph Jones are the big two — and they also have a large in-state recruiting class that includes forward Bryan Davis."

Bryan Davis 6'8" 225 lbs had offers from Texas AM, UCONN, Kansas, GTech and Texas. He was also rated in the Top 100.

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B you could not be more incorrect. Your head in the sand approach is the thinking stigma that has SLU in the position we're in. SLU has a great story to tell and one many up and cumming D1 coaches would love to tell. Has Altman left Creighton? Why not? Is St. Louis at least as good as Omaha? Is St. Louis U. at least as good as Creighton? So you theory that the coach will always leave is a great example of never taking a chance in life but rather working the "whoa is me" philosophy. Do you realize if you have a good program and the coach leaves you will have a better opportunity for quality replacements? What kind of coaching pool do you think Creighton will have to choose from if Altman every decides to leave? There are very few jobs in D1 that coaches would not move on from. Do you think Gillespie would leave Texas AM for Florida? Self left Illinois for Kansas. Sampson left Oklahoma for Indiana. Were these University's afraid of hiring a quality coach because they might leave? Of course not.

Continue to be afraid of coaches leaving and thinking small and SLU will continue in mediocrity.

Compare BS's first four years to Bruce Pearls four years at UWM.

In his four years at UWM, the Panthers won a pair of Horizon League regular season titles (2004 and 2005) and two Horizon League Tournament championships (2003 and 2005). They advanced to Division I postseason play for the first time in school history, making two NCAA Tournament appearances (2003 and 2005) and receiving an NIT bid (2004).

In 2005, Pearl led the Panthers to the most successful season in school history. In addition to winning regular season and conference tournament titles, UWM set a school record with 26 wins and made its first-ever appearance in the Sweet 16 with NCAA Tournament wins over Alabama and Boston College.

Its been five going on six years and we haven't even sniffed a NCAA bid. Get a clue.

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Okay. That's all well and good. If, after the end of the 2007-08 season, the arrow is pointing down (as Triangle andToo used to say), you can say, "I told you so." However, if (or when, in my optimistic opinion), after the end of the 2007-08 season, the Bills have been to consecutive post-season tournaments and Kramer Soderberg and company have signed, make sure you come back and swallow your helping of crow, saying, "I didn't realize Brad Soderberg had an effective, long-range development plan."

For my part, if, in March 2008, the program is treading water or worse, then I will join those saying that hiring Soderberg was a mistake.

Until then, though, those who think that a new coach can come in next year or the year after and successfully recruit Suggs, Brandenburg, Thompson, Griffey, et al (remove Kramer Soderberg from the equation, since he'll certainly follow his dad) or successfully recruit national-level players are drinking their own kool-aid. What "name" shark coach is SLU going to be able to hire who will stay at SLU without rending it asunder when he leaves after a couple of years?

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go check the records, nothing specific was ever proven. deon later said he told pearl that he had a blazer because he was sick of pearl harrassing him.

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Altman hasn't left Creighton and won't because of the way he was run out of K-State. If the Bills hired a coach that had Altman's record at K-State you would rip the decision like there is no tomorrow. Why don't you take a look at Altman's record in his first four years at CU. Here is the link: http://www.gocreighton.com/items_of_intere...s.asp?BiosID=68

Now you can have a clue when you compare Brad to Altman. You would have been trying to run him out of town just like you are trying to run Brad out of town.

Gillespie was trying to get the Mizzou job. During the NCAA, he got himself on every radio station in the state that would put him on talk about himself. MU would not consider a current head coach within the conference. So yeah, he would leave A&M for Florida in a heart beat. Just like he left UTEP.

Sampson left before he got ran out of town, for a job that seemed only one other headcoach wanted. That coach is Alford. He is on the hot seat himself in Iowa. There must be some big time problems behind the scenes at IU.

Self left the Illini for one of the top for jobs in the country. Almost any coach would have trouble turning KU down.

For everyone of those guys that don't stay you have those that will. But those guys you have to give a chance to build a program. For the Altmans, the Cheneys, and the Martellis of this world it didn't happen over night.

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