AggieTFA06 said:

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PatAg said:

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AggieTFA06 said:

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LawHall88 said:

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AggieTFA06 said:

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I am guaranteeing you that Kennedy will never get to the elite 8 as head coach at TAMU, and I'm basing that off of his past record and performance.

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Which means he will have as many Elite 8s as Mark Turgeon, Billy Gillispie, and Shelby Metcalf combined.

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Exactly. Kennedy isn't better than those coaches.

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You can talent your way into the elite 8, lot of coaches have done that in the past. I'm far from a Kennedy supporter, just pointing it out.

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I thought we were supposed to talent our way into the NIT last year.

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Bad coaching can overcome good talent. If you took my other comment as being in support of Kennedy, let me clear it up. He's garbage and I would fire him today if I could. But I don't go to his church, so I don't have any say

Can we all just get along and agree that A&M deserves better coaches in BOTH sports?

GE said:

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Maroon Dawn said:

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Can we all just get along and agree that A&M deserves better coaches in BOTH sports?

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Remind me what we have done to deserve a better coach in basketball? Anyone too much better would be poached.

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exactly! why don't you compare BK's salary with the rest of the NCAA D1 basketball coaches and you'll see how much we have devoted to this program.

Preaching to the choir

I've long said that the ONLY way we overcome our complete lack of program achievement and non-basketball fandom to get a proven MBB HC here is to open up the checkbook

Maroon Dawn said:

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Preaching to the choir

I've long said that the ONLY way we overcome our complete lack of program achievement and non-basketball fandom to get a proven MBB HC here is to open up the checkbook

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As opposed to...?

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.

That we deserve better coaches but in both sports we're either too cheap or let the big money alums hire their golf buddies so we're stuck being a massive waste of potential as always

Billy Kennedy was hired by Bill Byrne, not some BMA golfing buddies. If anything it just goes to show the danger of putting a lot of extra caveats other than just being a "winner" in your coaching search. IMO Kennedy got extra points with Byrne because Byrne wanted someone who wouldn't leave for better jobs like his previous two hires had done, so just that little bit of compromising in the search can limit the quality of the pool of potential hires. Especially so when such a factor causes you to get a certain amount of tunnel vision, as would always be the case with that kind of caveat. The only people who would possibly view A&M as a dream job are alums, coaches who've been here before, coaches at sticking point of their career with ties to the state, etc. So right away you eliminate a ton of young coaches, coaches with ties to major pograms (like Turgeon), etc.

I'm not sure we've hired anyone who was anyone's golf buddy...

Maybe cheap, but I don't think necessarily think that's true either. We're paying Kennedy a whole lot more than we probably have to be, same with Sumlin.

We're probably fairly cheap on the hiring front in basketball, but I'm not sure what choice we really have. I'm not sure the pool of coaches we could have gotten in 2011 would be any different even if there was another million dollars per year available to spend. No established coach is coming here unless we just pay some sort of extravagant price which doesn't seem very responsible either.

We've rehashed this before on here, but it's hard to fault Byrne for going after a guy like Kennedy after being burned twice by BCG and Turgeon.

Like, if we had a new AD doing the search with the same resources and everything it could have gone a completely different way. But it's easy, if you put yourself in Byrne's shoes, to see why he made the decision he did.

I agree, I dont blame him, especially if he liked Kennedy anyway. It's not ever going to be a cut and dried analytical decision, like candidate A gets 95 points and beats out candidate B's 92 or whatever with these things. My point is just that if a mistake was made in the hiring search when we hired Kennedy, thats where it was.

I know a lot of people blame Kennedy's church group or whatever for his continued retention. But frankly, thats much more easily explained by a combination of Kennedy's inconsistency (ie sometimes he looks good), fan apathy, and athletic director apathy post Byrne than it is some conspiracy of clowns making sure we keep him. Fan apathy being the big one, there simply isn't a lot of pressure on the AD to win in basketball unless that AD puts it on themselves like Byrne did for almost every sport.

GE said:

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Maroon Dawn said:

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Can we all just get along and agree that A&M deserves better coaches in BOTH sports?

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Remind me what we have done to deserve a better coach in basketball? Anyone too much better would be poached.

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Just stop the B.A.S.


Anyway, our primary targets: Buzz and Michael White have already taken key positions and are on an upward trajectory. Yeah, I'd really like to see what they'd do with this year's talent. Pearl, Howland, Barnes are in place with potential. Look what Martin accomplished last year.

So...our gettables are gone-able.

Thus hopefully Jimmie's and Joe's > X's and O's.


Having said that, if we miss out on the NCAAs this year (again), BK should be fired. I have us as a Sweet 16 level team.

Kennedy was a pretty cheap hire when it was made. He was making lowest or next to lowest salary in the SEC his first few years. He got a good size raise though after the Sweet Sixteen season.

Texas A&M was clearly a 'destination job' for Kennedy. Unlike BCG or Turgeon. Whether that actually played any factor in Byrne's decision, who knows. Kennedy also accepted a bit less initially to allow more budget to lure Cyprien (who was a 'splash' assistant coach hire at the time).

If I recall, Byrne actually first made a play for a huge splash hire in Jeff Van Gundy, but when Van Gundy declined, ultimately went with Kennedy. Had Van Gundy accepted, I'm sure he would have gotten a much bigger initial contract than Kennedy got.

In terms of Kennedy lasting that long, I think it is mostly Kennedy himself having a knack for doing good at the exact right time to avoid the chopping block.

Yeah, people talk like there's an underground religious cabal plotting to keep Kennedy around against the tidal wave of public outcry.

I go back to this, if we'd have had a real AD, we maybe could have fired Kennedy after the 2015 season. But I'm reasonably sure that Hyman wasn't going to fire anyone if he didn't absolutely have to because of a scandal or something.

After Woodward, the 2016 season got him at least the 2017 season (if nothing else his 2016 contract basically guaranteed that), and this season we're probably going to be really good again. If we at least make the NCAA's this year, there's no way he's getting fired. Even if that isn't living up to some of our expectations, I just can't see how we could ever justify firing a coach that makes the NCAA's unless we have some sort of secret agreement with a hell of a coach.

The secret all-powerful church group and all that stuff is just noise. Given the resources our program has, 2015 was really the only chance we had to make a move, with the AD situation at that time we didn't, and now it is what it is.

If we live up to expectations this year, then good maybe we're on some solid footing. If we don't, then I'll guess we'll see where Woodward stands on this sort of thing.

Byrne contacted Van Gundy, but I doubt there was any serious negotiation. I just think it was an exploratory convo that got out in the open because Van Gundy himself was willing to be open about it (ie he didnt have a job that it getting out that he was talking to A&M would threaten) I think money would have been a serious hindrance, and I also think money was a serious hindrance to seriously courting Buzz Williams and I'm sure that conversation took place as well.

At the time Mike Sherman was making under $2 million and was only about to receive his final contract extension to $2.2 (?) or something like that. Most serious hires, and especially Van Gundy, Pastner, or Williams, would have required A&M to suddenly spend significantly more on basketball coaches than football coaches.

They definitely talked to Buzz, but the numbers on him were crazy that year. But that's where it also goes back to timing. One year later Buzz was on the market and willing to take a pay cut.

People liked the Rick Barnes hire at Tennessee, but he wasn't a "gettable" coach in 2011, neither was Howland. Pearl was but he came with a lot of baggage and in case anyone has noticed he's not exactly lighting the world on fire at Auburn.