Dayton Hired Anthony Grant

That's his Alma mater, hope he does well.

Good luck to him. Didn't work out here, but he was always a great guy. Hopefully he can get things back on track.

Good fit.

Good for him. It should be a good fit. He's a solid recruiter, decent coach, and a great person. And there is plenty of upside for Dayton. If he does well, they will actually get to keep him since its his alma mater and big programs aren't going to be going after him due to his Alabama failures. He can win a lot of games there.

Big fan of his at UF. Good luck to him.

Glad to see it. He should do well at Dayton.

Soon as I saw that on the ESPN crawl, I said aloud "that's a great fit." Cool to see the Bama fans ITT wish him well.

He looked disinterested in OKC.

quote:

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Bama is a tough place to win.

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I respectfully disagree. Alabama has been a good basketball school in the past, and when they were, they drew good crowds/support. I know because I was around back then and was part of it.
I'm confident Avery Johnson is going to bring it back to its previous status.

I really liked Grant a lot and was very sorry it didn't work at Alabama.


I always thought he was very solid coach--his teams were almost Frank Martin level nightmarish to play against on the defensive end.

At Alabama, he struggled in two areas:

1) Recruiting: He missed, year after year, on the one or two "difference making" recruits (in fairness, it was often with Bama as one of their final 2 choices).

However, couple that with his "my way or the highway" approach to players that didn't buy into team defending and his Bama teams were left with solid rosters devoid of the couple of players who can simply put a team on their back and turn a NIT season into a Sweet 16 run.

2) Promotion: Alabama has a pretty good basketball history with very solid support. However, it seems that they --along with a lot of other big football SEC schools-- really need a "character" as a head coach to sell not only recruits but fans on the trajectory of the program. Grant was not this.


Dayton will certainly be a better fit in regard to the promotion a coach needs to do since it's a basketball first school that has a rabid fan base.


Recruiting will tell the story but Grant did continually have very good rosters at VCU and seemingly left Shaka Smart with a full deck.

That likely bodes well since Dayton and VCU seem similar in their history of attracting good talent (even with a revolving door of coaches in VCU's case).