What a difference a year can make.
- Thread starter Mississippi Clone
- Start date
Prohm coached last year like he wanted to get fired. He was probably in trouble anyway, but he made sure.
I know he's an easy target right now, and in large part he brought that onto himself, but I have to imagine he's just as happy and proud as us fans, and probably even more so for players like George, Tre, and Jaden, as well as the coaches and support staff he worked with like Robinson and Micah Byers.
Don't forget that Otz was an assistant under Prohm during his first year here. I have no idea whether they became close friends or not, but if they're still at least friendly acquaintances then I have to presume he is very happy for Otz as well.
I seem to remember a Rob Gray article at some point saying they got along very well.
Or Dennis Gates!
I never understood why people were so passionate that we should have hired a random mid major coach over TJ. That is just Steve Prohm 2.0.
No, and please stop misrepresenting the situational context, unintentionally or not.
I cannot speak for other posters, but I never specifically wrote that either Gates or Smith should have been hired over TJ. I know that nuanced thinking is often frowned upon this board in favor of black or white terms of opinion with absolutely no shades of grey allowed, but there is a difference between having the desire for a real coaching search and specifically stating that you have a favorite over the other candidate(s).
This season has gotten off to a perfect start; much better than I think most of us expected in our wildest dreams. How about we all enjoy it, regardless of how we felt about the search process at the time, without one faction being insufferable about their support from the beginning?
Whether you liked the hire or not, I don’t think anyone expected validation so quickly.
I agree with the OP in that I’m just happy to care about ISU basketball again. Last year I didn’t even watch and that is depressing to think about. I’ve been a die hard for 20 years and last year is the first time in those 20 years I truly didn’t even know if ISU played the night before.
A bit defensive are we? Not sure why you took this so personally, but thanks for the long lecture that has little to do with my post.
TJ was a great hire here because he understands how to get it done here and loves Iowa State. That’s what makes him the man here, and it shows! It’s like night and day.
In your celebration of the work TJ is doing, you thought resorting to a fallacy about last spring was best? He called you out on it, no big deal. Steve loved Iowa St. Getting it done here isn’t some complicated or unique recipe.
We don’t know how others would be doing. We do know evaluating options is the best way to hire a coach. Maybe someone else brings in equal transfers, plus doesn’t retain three clear misfits/malcontents that leave us shorthanded right before the season. Instead they add even more talent, and we’re a top-10 squad.
And it's snapped me right back into fanhood...They say the opposite of love isn't hate, it's apathy. Well I was there. And now I'm loving this team.
I was probably one of the most vocal dissenters on here about the TJ hiring process. I was in no way a fan, and I will stick by my line of thinking that the process was bad, even if the results are, as of now, way beyond anything we could have hoped from any coach. Could not be happier with the way things have worked out.
But results-based decision making and analysis is so antithetical to what we have rightly celebrated about Campbell as a coach, that you cannot control the results(output) and you have to trust that a process(input) that doesn't cut corners and relies on as solid of a foundation as possible is the right way to do things. I do not, and never will, believe that the hiring process for any coaching vacancy at the highest level of collegiate athletics should only have one candidate barring it being shoe-in Hall of Famer or a head-coach-in-waiting promotion to keep continuity at a powerhouse.
Would Smith or Gates or Turgeon or hell, Dana Altman even, have close to the record TJ has to start out? Basically 100% sure that they would not. TJ is absolutely killing it. Doesn't mean that there weren't and still aren't any legitimate gripes about the way things played out.
I was OG TJ so I’m going to beat anyone over the head with that I can. I’m not that right, that often.
Pollard has conducted three high profile public searches with all the bells and whistles. Those produced McDermott, Chizik and Prohm.
I’m okay with trusting Jamie’s judgment, and TJ was the best candidate in terms of fit and understanding of ISU.
I think the rub with a lot of people was that it’s known JP and TJ are friends, which I can understand that aspect not sitting right with people. But taking that out of the equation, we would have been happy to hire any coach with TJ’s resume.
I will concede that I could have done without Pollard’s awkward videos that he put out. Cringe.
TJ was qualified in 2015. Prez and boosters interfered with JP doing his job.
Yeah I mean the track record of full-on coaching searches has not been great from Pollard with FB and MBB. You're absolutely right and I do think there is certainly a huge place for gut feeling or whatever anyone wants to call it. JP has certainly shown to have some great gut feelings apparently, Hoiberg, CMC, and what we've seen from TJ so far is pretty hard to argue against.
Coaching searches are inherently about as small sample size events as you can find. You'll never be able to know how a different decision would have played out in that situation. Basically my entire line of reasoning is that you only get the one shot to run the "experiment" per se and you want to do everything possible to ensure you aren't missing a great fit by jumping on the first good one you find. TJ is showing himself to be a great fit for sure, though.
That’s the sad part. We threw away all the momentum and all the goodwill over an arbitrary qualification. You don’t need a current head coach. You need the right fit. Steve F’ing Prohm was as far from that as could be.
