quote:
Whether pierce is a great hire or not remains to be seen.
Its sports so you never know for sure how things will work out.
Two years ago Aggie fans were (rightfully) skeptical of retaining Billy Kennedy for basketball while Auburn hired Bruce Pearl. Pearl had a great resume and Kennedy had struggled significantly his first 3 seasons in College Station. Rather than firing Kennedy at the end of that third season, A&M instead gave him the chance to make some replacements on his assistant coaching staff to try to right the ship (replacing Cyprien and John Reese with Rick Stansbury and Rahim).
Since then, the past two seasons Texas A&M has gone 24-12 in the SEC conference (the second most wins in conference play the past 2 seasons. Only Kentucky had more), and went to an NIT and then was SEC conference co-champs and went to an NCAA Sweet Sixteen.
Auburn meanwhile went 9-27 in the SEC the last two seasons, finishing 13th (next to last) in the conference both seasons. Pearl is a good coach and may certainly eventually work things out, but you really never know for sure.
BTW, sometimes I get the vibes from posters that seems like they feel Texas A&M is somehow nicer, more patient, has lower expectations, etc. than the majority of its peer schools. I guess because Aggie head coaches are not getting fired as fast and frequently as the message boards prefer. But IMO there does seem to be signs of real pressure on Aggie coaches. The past few seasons both Sumlin and Billy Kennedy for example whacked several coaches on their respective staffs (Snyder, Spavital, Christenson, Cyprien, Reese, etc.) to try to fix issues and ultimately save their own jobs. It isn't like our sports programs underperform and then there are no signs of any repercussions. Also the 'Fire the assistant coaches' card can only be played so many times by a head coach before ultimately his head is next to roll.