Rashon Clark comments on McDermott (In honor of his Birthday)
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Tim Floyd slowed it down and won...Gregg was a my way or the highway kinda guy. Having been recruited by him at Wayne State I can tell you his system only fits good ol boys like Gary Thompson. Being a Morgan supporter is hard when a certain sector (high dollar donors) want him ran out the door because he couldn't pander to their egos. Don't get me started on the fans and 'columnists'who would write about Wayne letting the "inmates run the asylum". That crowd can go eat a honey wagon full of poo. If their favorite golfer was streaky they'd pander the hell out of them.
But it's odd, because if you follow him and his team now, seems to be VERY team orientated, loved by players, etc. Overall, just a different style/fit at Creighton and not at ISU. He is a good coach...but it is coaching. As a friend reminded me, remember Diante would be looking at the sideline all the time because he was coaching from the sideline..with CFH, the coaching is more during time outs, small adjustments and letting the players flow.
McD is a great person/man. it just didn't work out here and he's found success elsewhere and was part of the flow of things happening to get CFH. It happens.
I disagree. We would have 3-4 solid starters, but after that there wasn't much. When you are playing guys like Bryan Peterson, Sean Haluska, etc. for 25+ minutes a game and starting, you have an issue with talent and depth. His last team was easily the most talented though.
Lol, sure he didn't.
Mike Taylor - second round pick
Wes Johnson - #3 pick
Craig Brackins - first round pick
Diante Garrett - FA, second year NBA now
Justin Hamilton - second rounder
Jiri Hubalek - Euro Pro
Rashon Clark - Israel pro
Lucca Staiger - German pro
His last team was
Starters:
Garrett
Staiger
Gilstrap
Brackins
Hamilton
Bench:
Scott Christopherson
Jamie Vanderbeken
Laron Dendy
Chris Colvin
Explain to me how a team with 3 future NBA players and a bench with 3 4 star players plus a 6-11 3 point shooter is not solid talent. IMO, Fred takes that team to at least the sweet 16.
His last team definitely should have made the tourney. That season was a huge fail. Also, spread over 4 years, Hoiberg has more than 8 playing pro basketball somewhere.
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I think the bigger issue was Pollard. McDermott had been around long enough to know his style of basketball. He played slow, grind-it-out, defensive focused basketball at UNI, and there wasn't any reason to think he'd change that. We were, of course, coming from Wayne Morgan who could not be any different in his approach. We had one coach micro-managing every movement on the floor, and we had a former coach whose philosophy appeared to be roll the balls out and let the boys play. Not necessarily saying one approach is better than the other, but it wasn't hard to forecast a disaster when you take a bunch of players brought into run-and-gun, changed systems and mixed them with the Ross Marsden, Jiri and Brian Peterson's of the World. To me, it would be like Fred leaving and hiring Bob Huggins and expecting our current roster of versatile, athletic, shooters to be play defensive minded, grind-it-out basketball.
In all, it was just a very poorly thought out plan.
In all, it was just a very poorly thought out plan.
What is he doing now? I thought he'd find somewhere to coach because I thought he had such passion for the game and his style of play matches the style of play that all power conferences use today except the Big 10.
Loved him him to death. Freak athlete.
Loved him him to death. Freak athlete.
I think his biggest problem was that he wasn't willing or able to adapt his system to fit his players. He was hell bent on playing MVC style half court basketball with a team full of athletes. Effing terrible.
Dendy, Scotty, JVB are all playing pro ball at some level as well. Talent was not his issue outside of maybe his first season. His issues were coaching and player relations.
GMac surprisingly had a ton of talent brought in. He just criminally underutilized it and his teams had negative chemistry. When your star players jump ship left and right you know there is something wrong with the way they are being coached. I get tingly thinking about what Fred could do with guys like Brackins and Wes Johnson.
He also was unable to put a full team on the floor. He had star players but couldn't get anything out of his role players, even though some of them were talented.
The simplest example of the difference between GMac and CFH is to look at the difference in Diante Garrets game IN ONE SEASON of Hoiball with limited talent around him.
Reading his comments, my first thought was that someone should give this man a clipboard.
Made up stats are the best. Duke 1994-95, started the year ranked 8th in the country and finished 13-18 with no postseason play.
I remember very clearly the day McD was hired. He was hired in the middle of a Boy's State Basketball tournament that I was working at. A Hawk fan that worked at the tourney as well came up to me and asked what I thought of the hire. I hadn't checked a newspaper or anything that morning, because Boy's State can be a marathon, and I was working 40 hours at a real job at the same time, so I hadn't heard. When he told me McD had been hired, my first words were "oh god, please be joking..."
I'd hated McD since that weird little point guard at UNI tried to shoulder-jack Stinson on the freethow line, and McD congratulated him for it. I thought he was a jerk, and I didn't think his style of play would translate to Iowa State. I hated that he turned the most prolific scorer in the history of the state of Iowa into a dude who almost never shot.
This cyclone fan, at the very least, didn't think it looked like a good hire.
It will be interesting to see how this changes now that his son is no longer on the team. Maybe Doug was able to bridge the gap between players and coaches given his relationship with both groups.
Which to me means he was in over his head and didn't understand how to coach at a Big 12 school.
No whining, just pointing out the facts as to why WM was head and shoulders above GMac as an ISU coach. And even Morgan's last team very likely would have been in the NIT had JP lobbied for it, but he was too busy looking under rocks to try to come up with a reason to can Morgan. And I can just as easily speculate that had Morgan not been canned we would have continued with winning seasons and post season wins instead of probably the worst 5 years in ISU basketball history under GMac. And who knows, maybe after that WM would have wanted to retire and Fred gets hired anyway.
This whole McDermott thing has been beaten to death, so I hate to keep the debate alive, but I don't know how anyone can fault Pollard for making the decision he did.
Hiring coaches who had achieved quick success at "mid-majors", especially when they had some connection to the school hiring them, was the en vogue method at the time. Guys like Thad Matta, Matt Painter, and Billy Gillispie at A&M come to mind. Beyond them, you've got Mick Cronin, Mike Anderson, Mark Turgeon, Bruce Pearl, Doc Sadler, Todd "the Lick" Lickliter, John Pelphrey, and so on. Promoting successful mid-major coaches was the thing to do.
In retrospect, it was a little speculative as only one of those coaches above yielded immediate and sustained success at their "major" school (Thad Matta). Gillispie, Pearl, Sadler, Pelphrey, and Lick are no longer at major schools (sorry Auburn, you don't count). The jury's still out on Mike Anderson (he's had as many disappointing seasons as he's had good ones). Matt Painter and Mark Turgeon will likely be coaching on the hot seat this year. And though Mick Cronin has Cincinnati humming right now, it took him five years to make the tournament (his record was virtually identical to McDermott's after four years).
I think this has a lot to do with why mid-major coaches are a lot more content to stay where they're at, or are at least more selective about moving up. But using the line of thinking that was dominant 8-12 years ago, McDermott seemed like a home run hire.
Hiring coaches who had achieved quick success at "mid-majors", especially when they had some connection to the school hiring them, was the en vogue method at the time. Guys like Thad Matta, Matt Painter, and Billy Gillispie at A&M come to mind. Beyond them, you've got Mick Cronin, Mike Anderson, Mark Turgeon, Bruce Pearl, Doc Sadler, Todd "the Lick" Lickliter, John Pelphrey, and so on. Promoting successful mid-major coaches was the thing to do.
In retrospect, it was a little speculative as only one of those coaches above yielded immediate and sustained success at their "major" school (Thad Matta). Gillispie, Pearl, Sadler, Pelphrey, and Lick are no longer at major schools (sorry Auburn, you don't count). The jury's still out on Mike Anderson (he's had as many disappointing seasons as he's had good ones). Matt Painter and Mark Turgeon will likely be coaching on the hot seat this year. And though Mick Cronin has Cincinnati humming right now, it took him five years to make the tournament (his record was virtually identical to McDermott's after four years).
I think this has a lot to do with why mid-major coaches are a lot more content to stay where they're at, or are at least more selective about moving up. But using the line of thinking that was dominant 8-12 years ago, McDermott seemed like a home run hire.
