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Holbrook question

Posted on 5/23/17 at 1:48 pm
Posted by GameCocky88
Mount Pleasant, SC
Member since Dec 2015
4837 posts
Posted on 5/23/17 at 1:48 pm
We all know he sucks and we all want him gone. That's easy. However, I have a hypothetical.

The basketball team was on a downward slope at the end of the season and rallied to heights we'd never seen in that program before. With that notion in mind, if we do miraculously make a regional, how deep into the tourney would we have to make it for you to be ok with him coming back?

At the end of the day there are no regular season trophies. We've been to a super with him so even that's not enough in my mind. I'm trying to figure out if making out to Omaha would justify his return or would some wins there also be required.
Posted by KingSlayer
Member since May 2015
2854 posts
Posted on 5/23/17 at 2:46 pm to
quote:

I'm trying to figure out if making out to Omaha would justify his return or would some wins there also be required.


I dislike Holbrook as much as anyone, and I want him gone before he drives the program even further into the ground. That said, if somehow he gets the team to Omaha, I don't see how he can be fired. I don't think he even has to win a game there, just don't be on the end of any North Carolina type scores while he's out there.
Posted by Bluefin
The Banana Stand
Member since Apr 2011
13253 posts
Posted on 5/24/17 at 9:02 am to
quote:

The basketball team was on a downward slope at the end of the season and rallied to heights we'd never seen in that program before. With that notion in mind, if we do miraculously make a regional, how deep into the tourney would we have to make it for you to be ok with him coming back?

The difference is I don't think anyone was actually serious about Frank being fired if we hadn't gone on that run. At least not anyone I knew personally. Frank would've gotten a pass given how terrible we've been historically in basketball.

Even if the baseball team were to go on a miraculous deep run, Chad will still be a serious problem. I'd be wondering where that fire was during the regular season? Why were such horrible decisions made in the late innings of many games? Why has the morale of the team appeared so low? Fighting tooth and nail to even get into the post season is a major issue, especially given the talent we have.

If we were to get hot and make it to Omaha, I wouldn't necessarily credit Chad's coaching. It would most definitely ease the mind of Tanner to keep him on one more year, but I wouldn't feel any better about it.
Posted by GameCocky88
Mount Pleasant, SC
Member since Dec 2015
4837 posts
Posted on 5/24/17 at 9:10 am to
Oh for sure. I wasn't implying that Frank was ever near the level of hot seatedness that Holbrook is at. I was trying to get a feel for if post season accomplishments would get him a pass on the regular season and if so what that would have to be.

According to Rooster and another poster from another site, the following steps have been taken.

Holbrooks extension that was supposed to go to 2019 has been reduced to 2018. They also cut his buyout by 50%. Basically that tells me that #1 if he doesn't get it done next season, he's out and #2 if they find someone they believe in before then the he may be out before then. Rooster said he'd definitely be back next season but if his contract expires then anyway IDK why a reduction of a buyout would have been necessary.
Posted by CockHolliday
Columbia, SC
Member since Dec 2012
4515 posts
Posted on 5/24/17 at 12:23 pm to
Frank Martin was dealt a steaming pile of dung and over the last few years has built a respectable overachieving program. You could see the incline over the last few seasons.

Holbrook inherited one of the best programs, if not THE best, in college baseball and has steadily gone downhill year by year with the exception of hosting the Super Regionals last year. IMO any decision to fire Holbrook isn't based on this year alone, regardless of what we do in the post-season.
Posted by ConwayGamecock
South Carolina
Member since Jan 2012
9121 posts
Posted on 5/24/17 at 6:58 pm to
After reaching the Supers (which we hosted) last season, I was more inclined to hope that Holbrook, who was a young coach in charge of his first program, was developing himself as a capable HC as much as he was developing his program. So I defended him to a degree, with a hopeful patience.

But I'm not in that place anymore. With Martin, he took over a program that under Horn was poorly coached, that scored less and allowed more scored with each passing season. Martin started with little next to nothing, and I can clearly see logic and a working philosophy in playing competitive basketball, even if often he doesn't have the talent necessary to play it at a high level, or sometimes they just fail to do so.

When Horn asked his players to play as he wanted them to, and they did, it was often sloppy and undisciplined and seemed like there were no set plays or a team understanding of how to work open, high-percentage shot opportunities. With Martin's early teams, it seemed similar, but as the seasons progressed I saw more discipline and philosophy.

After the 2013-14 season which was Martin's 2nd at USC, and the final 4-2 run the team went on after going 10-18 prior, I saw for the first time some team discipline and team-wide understanding of how they can play winning basketball that I rarely saw under Horn. The MBB team has gone 17-16, 25-9, and 26-11 since then. CFM knows how to develop a MBB program.

With Holbrook, I am sadly doubtful that he can do the job now. He is now talking about player injuries in all of his pressers, tryign to spin the season on falling apart because of it. But for most of the season - well into the SEC conference schedule - all we had was Johnson miss some time. And Tyler was a huge loss for the team for that time, but even before then, the team has been a poor team defensively, a poor team hitting at the plate, and the coaching decisions on baserunners, bunting, and pitching changes have been very poor.

The best aspect of the team during Holbrook's tenure has been the pitching, and that's Meyers' area of responsibility.

Holbrook's stubbornness to stick with team bunting without teaching it properly, to have batters swing free early in pitching counts, etc. even when those things have hurt the team's chances to win games, tells me he is just in over his head. And unlike CFM who knows what its all about, Holbrook's teams aren't getting any better or more fundamentally disciplined: they just keep doing the same bad things...
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