Best Charlotte 49ers Coaches in history

[earlyniner]

[QUOTE=Over40NINER;372088]Didn’t our appearance in the '76 NIT seal the deal on Chad Kinch? I never knew Foster recruited Kinch. If so, Kinch was a Junior in HS when Foster recruited him. Of course, back then, we did not have the internet to keep up with who was recruiting who.[/QUOTE]

kinch was headed to seton hall till the 1976 NIT final game, and that turned him around.

i don’t think you can simply ask which is the Best Coach.

rose was a master in practice and as a game coach, but he was waaay too ‘honest’ and to-the-point to be an effective recruiter. on more than one occasion he lost recruits by telling them exactly like it was. (e.g., google "Mike Glenn)

on the other hand, i remember vividly (one afternoon in the mine shaft) his asking the guys for ‘one week of their lives’. in exchange, he promised them an experience they’d never forget. they gave it to him; and he delivered!!

and…on the third hand, foster was a recruiter par excellance. he and bill moore and everett bass and joe kingery combed every back road and small town in the southeast i think. cedric and wat and the core of the 76/77 team was on board when lee arrived. (I’m probably giving way-too-much away, but i dimly recall arriving home after some wild-goose-chase foray into SC at 2:00 in the morning, foster sitting on his ‘donut’ {extreme hemoroids}…) i have no idea who we were ‘scouting’

but i do remember when he (rose) was introduced… after the ‘prepared’ remarks, the floor was opened for questions. cedric mstood up and asked what recruits he planned to bring in? rose responded, 'whoever you want, big boy.'
well. it was a hit at the time.

but those of us who loved the program and were friends of lee’s often shuddered after we’d spend a saturday of our time on campus squiring a recruit around and writing letters or whatever else we could do. during the next week we’d ask how it went, and lee would come up with a report on how the ‘exit interview’ went.

many times, even back then, it was disaster… essentially, “not enough ‘promised’”

but that’s exactly how the early slogan came to be: QUALITY WITHOUT COMPROMISE!

PROUD TO BE A NINER!!!

[Over40NINER]

Damn good post earlyniner.

kinch was headed to seton hall till the 1976 NIT final game, and that turned him around.

That is the way I had remembered Kinch's signing. It was the NIT appearance. I remember that appearance stealing the heart of not only Kinch, but anyone who watched us play, in person or on TV. Everyone was imitating "Cedric's practice free throw".

i don't think you can simply ask which is the Greatest Coach.

rose was a master in practice and as a game coach, but he was waaay too ‘honest’ and to-the-point to be an effective recruiter…
and…on the third hand, foster was a recruiter par excellance. he and bill moore and everett bass and joe kingery combed every back road and small town in the southeast i think. cedric and wat and the core of the 76/77 team was on board when lee arrived.

I’ve always thought it was the combination of Foster and Rose that got us to the Final 4. Foster put us in motion and Rose kept us going.

It’s obvious you know more about both the Foster and Rose era combined than most of us that were around then. Thanks for the synopsis.

[earlyniner]

^ of course everett came with rose. sorry 'bout that.

[gamer]

[QUOTE=Over40NINER;372088]Didn’t our appearance in the '76 NIT seal the deal on Chad Kinch? I never knew Foster recruited Kinch. If so, Kinch was a Junior in HS when Foster recruited him. Of course, back then, we did not have the internet to keep up with who was recruiting who.[/QUOTE]

I remember having read that Kinch said he would not have come had Rose not rerecruited him. Regardless of the circumstances, Kinch was most likely the best player Rose ever recruited in his career. Rose excelled at developing a team to its potential, but rarely stayed at a school longer than the previous coaches recruits.