GE said:Another way of saying what you're saying is Billy Kennedy's teams failed to win the conference tournament 4 out of 5 years.free_mhayden said:GE said:At a school on the level of Centenary and Southeastern Louisiana, is success defined by NCAA tournament appearances?expresswrittenconsent said:It's hilarious. Good coaches can and will have bad years. Bad coaches can and will have good years. Billy Kennedy is a bad coach. His 2/8 (ncaa trips) here and 3/20 for his career say so. All of the excuses made for him say so. His sub 0.500 conf record after 8 yrs says so.Double Diamond said:
Comparing Bob Huggins off year to Billy Kennedy's.
No expertise is needed to correctly judge Billy Kennedys (or Bob Huggins) coaching ability.
What about a school like Murray State? When you have to win the conference tournament to make it to the NCAA tournament, can you call a season successful in which you won the regular season but got upset in the tournament?
Your 2/8 statistic and commentary on what he has done here is 100% valid and is the primary reason he shouldn't be retained after the season. It just doesn't seem like the results support that he was a "bad coach" in the context of those three previous schools. His teams won four conference championships in the 13 years before he got here, he took SE LA to their only NCAA tournament ever, and his 2010 Murray State team had the first OVC NCAAT victory since 1989.
Was he the best candidate available at the time he was hired? No.
Did his previous results indicate he was a bad coach? Also no.
Edit: i didn't choose the crying icon intentionally but it may be fitting given what happened last night.
If you can't decide whether to judge based on records or tournament appearances at the mid-major schools, it helps simply to look at what other coaches have done at that school. A couple of coaches won at 70%+ clip. Almost all (including Kennedy) won at a 60%+ clip.
Here are the last 8 Murray State head coaches dating back to 1985:
Matt McMahon (1 tournament in 3 years, currently 13-2)
Steve Prohm (1 tournament in 4 years... and working on his 3rd in 4 years at his new major conference school)
Billy Kennedy (1 tournament in 5 years)
Mick Cronin (2 tournaments in 3 years)
Tevester Anderson (2 tournaments in 5 years)
Mark Gottfried (2 tournaments in 3 years)
Scott Edgar (2 tournament in 4 years)
Steve Newton (4 tournaments in 7 years)
So dating back to 1985 all the coaches won at least 60% of their games... But only one coach made the NCAA Tournament less than 25% of the time.
Billy Kennedy was arguably one of the worst coaches at Murray State since 1985.
We can get into specifics if you would like but here is the link to the wikipedia page on Murray State.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_State_Racers_men%27s_basketball
- You'll see that starting with Newton turning it around they finished first or second in conference every year except for 1
- until Anderson who finished 1st, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, winning the conference tourney twice.
- Cronin then took over and went 2nd, 2nd, 1st and then left, winning conference tourney twice.
- Kennedy took over Cronin's team which returned just 1 of its top 6 and 2 of its top 8 players and finished 2nd, 2nd, 2nd, 1st, 1st, winning the conference tournament once.
- Prohm took over Kennedy's team which returned 3 of its top 6 and 5 of its top 8 players and finished 1st, 1st, 1st, and 1st with one conference tournament win.
Yes please get into specifics. You just spent 3000 words trying (and failing) to prove that BK wasnt the worst coach at Murray State in the last 30 yrs while admitting that he has done a bad enough job here that he unquestionably deserves to be fired. Really love where you try and claim that all he failed to do at Murray was win the conf tourney as if Hayden didnt previously spell out how every single coach not named Billy Kennedy managed to do JUST that at a MUCH higher rate. So typical of the decade of excuse making for BK here at A&M. When the guy is failing, change the metrics so you can spin something he is good at.