If you don't want to admit he was headed to being fired and knew it, taking a job which was especially a major step down at the time, you're just acting in bad faith.
Official Announcement of TJ as the New Iowa State Mens BBall Coach
- Thread starter werdnamanhill
- Start date
Not a McDermott supporter here, just arguing that prohm was a bigger embarrassment and thus a worse coach.
Sure, he had more successes than McDermott but he also owns the worst failures in cyclone history. As a retired varsity head coach, it was plain to see he was in over his head within season one and I posted as such here and was flamed for it.
It is laughable you bring up being unable to afford McDermott's potential firing as we were in a categorically worse situation with prohm and yet he was such a disaster that we went through with it.
McDermott was being paid $900k/yr and his buyout would have been $2.5M. We got hoiberg without having to pay a buyout. So had Greg been fired and we stuck with fred, his buyout was 2.78x his annual salary.
Prohm's buyout was $5.3M plus we had to send another $3.4M to UNLV to get Otz. So $8.7M to install a new coach. Steve was paid $2.4M his final year. So his buyout was 3.63x his annual salary. So, the buyout was more expensive. AND THEN it occurred the same year we had to finance $25M in debt to cover covid losses.
He was so bad we couldn't afford not to fire him.
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He wasn't being fired that year. He had just been approved to hire a new assistant, Nick Nurse, to improve his staff and player development
100% agree on the Rashad Vaughn thing. That was beginning of the end for him with high school recruiting. Have a reliable insider account of that and it’s not pretty. Understand Fred’s frustration, but also think he should have known what happens when you start chasing top 10 guys.
Keeping him/giving him a chance didn't bother me, but the contract extension after the 2019 season was insane and ended up costing us a lot of money when it did come time to part ways.
I completely agree on the contract extension at that point. Too early to make that commitment. Still think we were (and are still) far from the kind of program that was going to fire him at that time though.
In retrospect yes a expensive mistake though there was really concern that some southern schools had targeted Prohm (cough Alabama) and Jamie was justified in offering it. Then national media and most on CF were fine with it at the time too.
To bring it back to the original OP. The firing limited the possible search candidates that were realistic when Jamie had his search last spring and made TJ an obvious candidate to replace CSP. To be clear, I think it happens regardless but the admiration may have pushed back more if ISU wasn't also on the hook for the remainder of CSP contract. We saw that happen when Fred left. (Full circle conspiracy.)
HaHa. Do we really want to get into the Trickey (maybe Nance also) era?
You are correct, the rosters were not ordinary. And with that is the biggest issue I have.
And that is because of those rosters too many operated under the premise that had Fred stayed or TJ been made coach things would have been so much better.
We do know how much worse this season would have been under Prohm instead of TJ. And we will never know for certain how much better those other teams would have been under another Coach not named Prohm. Chances are they would have been better. Those players coached themselves. Prohm was clueless.
Yes my sample size is just one game because that is what I responded to.....what happened in the tourney and how people reacted. The with Fred "March happens".....with Steve "totally unacceptable".
You want to change subjects and talk about seasons, okay. Fred's last season with Naz he was 12-6 in conference. The next year without Naz Prohm went 10-8. And let's not forget McKay checked out halfway through the season when Steve made him go to class.
You think a healthy Naz and a focused McKay would be good for 2 more wins? I think there is a chance, don't you?
With a healthy Naz and a focused McKay how far in the NCAA might they have gone with that Iona/Little Rock draw? Would everyone be going "meh" had they made the elite eight?
See, I don't understand why people keep trying to trash Prohm's good years. He is gone thanks to his last two seasons. It's okay to admit he did some good things and those were good years.
Would have won more games last year than clueless Prohm. Coach of the Worst team in Iowa State’s history.
Is that what carvers wears when she feeds cookies to crash victims??After reading the last few pages
The financial state of the athletic department at that time isn't comparable to what it was when Prohm was fired. Also anyone could see McDermott was in over his head after 1 season.
