Alan Major was an attempt to replicate what VCU had done in hiring Shaka Smart through the Nike-sponsored Villa 7 consortium that put ADs and rising assistants in touch with each other.
Mark Price was something of an attempt at Jeff Mullins 2.0 - an out of the box hire - although the former did have experience as an NBA assistant etc.
Of course, hiring an NBA assistant is now a thing, especially during the past couple of cycles.
Healy was a decent hire that didn’t work out for us. I still he can become a solid coach. I thought Lambert was a solid hire and he did what he was hired to do. Last year was rough though. Sanchez looked good on paper, buuuut….
The rest weren’t very good but I think Albin is going to be really good for us.
My fav was when we called Thad Matta about Major he laughed.
As for Price - hiring great players to be coaches rarely works.
Lambert was alaways a bad hire. Nice guy but not a HC.
Yep. The recent spate of NBA hires seem to be valuing accomplished assistants, not prowess as a player.
Brad was a great guy with G5 experience - but for a program just getting started under an AD staff that had no clue what was involved in running football we really needed an experienced HC.
We should be hiring experienced and successful HCs from programs below us in every revenue sport from now on.
Totally agree - the only time we should take an assistant is a Melvin/Bobby situation.
As far as football, I don’t think Lambert was that bad of a hire. His job was to get the program up and running and he did that. Healey brought enthusiasm and energy but probably wasn’t ready for leading a program through tough times especially Covid. Poggi, well he was a huge mistake. He tried to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes in believing he could bring a lot of money in and do what he did in high school. Too much like Tepper. Needs to stay in his lane
Men’s basketball- is there a program that has gone down as far as ours? I really don’t think any decent players or coaches would want to come here unless something changes drastically.
I totally agree. It makes it somewhat impressive that we landed cross. Hope we can put our nil to good use this offseason
You can pay less if you have a good eye for coaching talent that can win. Mike Hill does not. The problem is, he still thinks he does.
Most coaches are going to want something close to league average at min. Paying well below market rate makes it a challenge period regardless of your eye.
He can have all talent eye he wants but if our comp package is so unattractive that people pull out that’s a different issue.
I know if I’m a successful lower level coach and Charlotte offers me a job at half the league average, given the program track record I’d decline.
You want me to take over a program that hasn’t seen any recent success, has questionable fiscal support, pay me half the league average and possibly ruin my chances at a P5 gig??? Or I can wait for another mid major to pay me a competitive wage or I can keep winning where I am at and make a lower level P4 move.
Nope.
IMO the only reason we got Albin is his age. He’s not going to chase or get a P4 job.
I am not saying you’re wrong, but you have to admit other AD’s from much smaller programs have done well at getting paid big coaching buyouts after their coaches won big. Whereas Mike Hill has paid out severances. That’s a big swing and miss full of salary lost that couldn’t be paid to the next hire.
Absolutely that’s been successful at other programs who are likely paying at market rates for coaches.
We can’t be playing in the top G5 leagues paying big south MAC or sun belt salaries and expect coaches to jump at the opportunity.
Look at what happened with Houston. More money changes the dynamic.
Lambert was a good hire when we were preparing for FCS.
Lambert was a bad hire when it was announced we were going to play FBS football. Way over his head. We needed a coach that knew how to build a winning FBS program.
Yep, perhaps if we had known that our FCS phase would be considerably shorter than originally anticipated, then a different hire would have been made.
A veteran FCS coach would have been better than Lambert. That’s no knock on Brad. He might have been a good HC if he also wasn’t starting a program from scratch.
If you want someone to start a program from scratch you either go with experience or extreme tenacity. Brad had neither. He was a safe pick for Judy. He’d stay in his lane and make no waves.
If our AD had football experience Brad maybe would have been ok. The issue was we had an AD that didn’t know what she was doing, with associate ADs that didnt know what they were doin with a first time HC learning his job along the way.
The biggest issue with Brad though was he didnt have the right personality. I liked him but we needed a better salesperson leading up to the first season. Between he and Judy we had two aww shux its just lil ole Charlotte championing our return to football.
Imagine if you wanted to open a brand new restaurant in a trendy area of Charlotte and all the people involved had no experience running a successful restaurant. Phil and Judy were reluctant to even start football then they hired an easy going lifelong assistant coach to be the head man.
College football is brutally competitive and three of the main characters starting the program seemed satisfied just dressing a team out over establishing a winning program. It would be like a new restaurant’s selling point as “we serve edible food”.