I know this is not a popular opinion, but Fearne does seem to get the most out of this team. They just do not have the talent he thought or maybe knew. We may have missed out on several recruits and ended up with this group. We are slow, cannot play defense, and may be the worst shooting team I have ever seen. We miss layups ever game, but that is part of the game. People do not like the pace of the game, but I think we played faster last year with more talent, but no bench guys. This year we have no talent so he has to try to stay in the games.
He did much better with the group last year than Sanchez would have, but disappointed like everyone this year. He is not getting fired for at least 2 years so the hope is he gets some good guys in portal this year. He knows what he needs, but not sure if we can make it happen. We have a better class of freshman and if Bradford stays that give us a backcourt is he learns to shoot.
We didnāt win a conference tournament game. That team was wildly inconsistent. We had several huge come from behind wins - thatās something you canāt do consistently, we just got lucky.
Last season was fun. The energy was much improved, first sellout in a long time.
Even with all that, we should have still performed a national coaching search and picked the best candidate. If that candidate was Fearne, fine, but we should have waited until the end of the season to see how he finished - which was not very well.
Another often echoed rumor āFearne was going to get hired awayā just like āSchools were after Sanchezā thatās never substantiated in any way. Hallways whispers and shadowy figures.
Fearne was never going to get hired away before the end of the season, and I highly doubt anyone would have been knocking on his door after a first round conference tourney exit. Definitely not anyone who was going to pay as much or more than we do. As a fanbase, we live in a place of fear and innuendo.
He may have not been hired away, but he did just lead us to the best record in years with a team of basically 7 players. I think Folkes and Reiber were the only bench players that played. I may be missing one, but we had no bench and got tired at the end of the games. If we had done a national search and not hired Fearne and had a bad yr this year the fans would have gone crazy that we had the best coach.
Whats sad is that another strong season like last year we will probably see a disappointing finish again. If we have good players for a strong season most likely we will have guys finish the season more interested in their next destination and NIL than finishing the season strong.
I agree with 100% of this except for the luck part. No such thing but yeah, hill trying to sell the idea that anybody else was going to hire fearne is an insulting statement. We could have gotten a number of quality, sitting head coaches to interview. Hill really schruted this one
There is no way we can wait that long to get rid of him. He has failed at raising money, which translates to NIL. The stadium expansion is a letdown for the amount of money being spent. Albin should be independent of Mike
Technically the NIL collective had specific rules around how involved the AD was supposed to be. Hard to pin that on Mike up to this point with him not allowed to be too involved by ncaa rules. With it coming in house it will 100% be on him. I know on his part and others in the AD they want to keep NIL money separate so as to not appear to be paying players with student fees. Which is 100% the right call. I know the plan is to use conference payout money to fund player payments.
The stadium expansion is inline with other state building projects based on price per sq ft. The majority of the cost is the tower, which really should have been built from the start, so while it may not look like much from an expanded stadium pov the most expense part will be complete.
With all of that said Mike has not brought in significant new sponsors or donors outside of Smokey (who was already an established donor, just not to athletics) and itās not like the evergreen fund raising has been amazing. His answer for fund raising has simply been raise donor levels and ticket prices. While donor levels went unchanged by Judy for years and was time the increases the ticket price increases have been ridiculous considering the product - especially basketball.
Iāve said from the get go hiring coaches is the least of my concerns with Mike. Albin is probably his last shot to get one right. The money side is what really creates concerns. Great ADs are able to raise money to get to the winning. Not wait for the wins to raise money. Lack of money makes everything harder and we are not at the average aac budget, which is where we need to be.
Typically unless a team is within the NET top 50 any hope of an at large bid is pretty slim.
Of course, I am aware that #278 is totally unacceptable. Especially when Stonehill - a bit larger than Davidson and founded 2 years after UNCC - has overtaken us.
Honestly, I was of this belief last year. Now Iām not so sure we didnāt just win because of talent. Look at what Igor and Dishon are doing on top 5 teams. Talent ultimately trumps everything else. We donāt have anything close to an Igor or Dishon on this team, and we donāt have anyone with the mentality of Patterson.
Almost immediately after we signed Fearne, we took a shit. His record since then has beenā¦not great.
We play soft, we rebound like shit, and we just stand around on offense. We shoot far too many threes for a team that doesnāt have good 3 point shooters.
We need a new system that is more plug and play than something that requires years to get comfortable in. Every assistant we have comes from backgrounds running our garbage systems. Fearne needs to clean house and bring in new blood. As a former professional coach, Iām sure heās capable of running more than one type of system.
I know Fearne isnāt going anywhere after this year, but if we go into next season with the same coaching staff, I officially give up on him. I used to know everyone on our coaching staffs and generally what their roles were. Without looking it up, I had no idea who our assistants are or what they do. I do know they all come from Priceton/Packline backgrounds though.
See a lot of people (including myself) sometimes posting opinions here and then deleting them. This is one of those times I usually might.
The thing is, I want to like Fearne. He seems like the kind of no BS coach with some actual HC experience that we should have hired years ago.
But Iām not going to lie - my head has turned more often lately to thoughts like @Niner_National expressed above. Itās frustrating. I want to like Fearne, but itās not working.
The simple fact of the matter is that it is excruciating to watch us play this season, knowing how each game is going to unfold, bad performance after bad performanceā¦ especially considering what we could have been.
My thoughts on Fearne this year is we look more and more like Ron is still coaching. What happened to the āTag Upā rebounding that we heard so much about?
We should have never given Fearne the job before last season ended. There should have been a national search after the season and of course Fearne should have been a part of that after the season we had. If he was the best candidate after that search, then Iām ok with it. But to just give him the job mid-season is biting us in the ass again. Weāre stuck with this for at least another year.
I think that harkens back to the urgency dilemma - which never made much sense to me outside of trying to keep the team together, which of course we didnāt do. Iām fact it seemed like they had already moved on mentally before the season ended.
In hindsight and probably at the time, I agree with what you said about the national search.
Mike just got a five year extension. We arenāt buying out biff, Fearne, and hill. If we had the money to do that we wouldnāt be paying both of our revenue sports coaches under a million a year.
ECU WBB 72
Davidson 76