re: Official Aggy Board Basketball Thunderdome Thread

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But looking at the board this morning and seeing 5 of the top 6 threads on the front page about Kennedy highly annoyed me

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Yeah I can understand that

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Now that Ray has been fired at MSU, Kennedy is the lowest paid coach in the SEC. He would be the lowest paid coach in the Big 12. I think there are like two P5 coaches now making less than him. We definitely went cheap as we've always done. And, no, our assistants are not particularly well compensated

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I'll agree that the hire was a cheap hire. But even then we are still overpaying BK. This entire situation feels like we bought a small truck in order to spend less than buying a full-size truck, but we still got screwed during negotiations by the dealership...Does that analogy make sense?

A large majority of Shelby's tenure was when the tournament field was 25-50 teams. He didn't have the luxury of coaching in the era where 68 teams got invited. Not exactly the best comparison

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Does that analogy make sense?

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not really. This is what you get when you go cheap. Most of y'all don't attempt to understand the business side of an athletic department. We have no history or tradition, subpar facilities, and an amazingly fickle fanbase. And no one gives money to our hoops program. The bottom line is we don't support hoops in any way.

And y'alls arguments that if we would just hire the right coach we'd support it belies our history. We didn't support it when Shelby was around or Kermit or Barone or Watkins. We didn't support it when BCG or Turge were here and we went to the tourney 6 years in a row. No coach that has decent options would choose A&M because even with success we don't support the program.

This is the cold hard truth that y'all choose to ignore in your rants

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So you and Houston Summit are saying that after the '87 appearance (when there were 64 teams) if John David "I made a comment that I didn't think John David was all that bright. And I thought I was being generous." Crow had not fired Metcalf during the 89-90 season, that you'd have fired him after the next year. Got it.

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I have read this 5 times and I have no idea WTF you are trying to say

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I have read this 5 times and I have no idea WTF you are trying to say

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Sixth time is a charm.

Nothing profound. You and Fire_Everybody_CGSC make a kinda sorta good point. But Metcalf in his last 4 years (before being fired for reasons that had nothing to do with performance) had a first round loss in the first year followed by 3 years of being left out. A&M probably would not have made the tournament the next year if he had not been fired. But that's OK, because CGSC would have fired that loser for us and returned A&M to its rightful place as a basketball powerhouse.

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If we don't collapse the last few games of the season,

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Season was over as soon as House went down.

He is the only guy on the team that can consistently create his own shot and also hit 3's at a good rate.

Once he went down the spacing went to hell and all teams had to do was pack the paint and assume our mediocre/poor shooters would shoot poorly.

IMO the best possible thing for the team would be if Robinson can develop enough over the summer to force his way into the starting lineup moving Caruso to SG.

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This is the cold hard truth that y'all choose to ignore in your rants

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Not me, I get it. Right now we are a Tier 3 program. Even if we overpaid someone big to come it might not work out when the big name has trouble with the lack of support. BG thrived on that lack of support for the lack of spotlight it brought. That is rare in the sport, and he didn't even realize that was his angle (or he never would have left).

My point is we were a different program when Turge left. We were coming off a streak, and even though the support still wasn't there it looked like we were more. The right coach right then could have maybe faked it until we actually became a better program. Momentum is huge in this sport.

That was our shot, the SEC level move for bball, and we cheaped out. We get Buzz and we aren't a top tier program or something, but we would have something Aggies could be proud of.

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We haven't had one since Holmes. They're usually white.

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Peyton Allen could become that guy

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I'd be OK with firing him (a lot more OK than, say, Emory Bellard or R.C. Slocum), but I don't get all the vitriol. From 14 wins to 21 is not improving? More importantly, who are you going to hire to replace him? Why would a top-notch coach go to A&M? (Somebody might want to give Mike White a call, though.)

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Sure 14 to 21 is improvement. However, we should have never had a 14 win season. We were fresh off a tourney appearence moving into a league that was arguably less difficult. But say we give him a pass on year one. Then in year 2, what do we do? 18 wins and a losing conference record, no where close to the tourney again. While this is going on our recruiting is suffering. So technically we improved, but we are no where near where we want to be. SO year 3 is the year right? Time to take the big leap forward right? We have Reese and nice transfer in Jones eligible to play. The result another 18 wins and we are no closer to the tournament. So year 4 is already more than what most Ags are willing to allow with such poor results. We luck out an get a player eligible that we likely shouldn't have. He ends up carrying the team to a pace that should get us dancing FINALLY! He goes down and we fold like a cheap tent. So after 4 years Kennedy has built zero depth, cannot beat bad SEC teams when the season is on the line (Bama, Auburn), and regardless of what minor minor improvement he's made over a level we never should have been down to (14 wins) Kennedy should not be allowed to coach year 5.

If you want to compare him to Shelby, go for it, but take into account what type of program Shelby took over and what type of success he had prior to having a dry spell, AND as you already know the tournament was smaller and thus harder to get in to.