NY Daily News: "Donahue leading candidate at Boston College"

[Pahreen]

Steve Donahue appears to be emerging as leading candidate for the Boston College job, provided he can come up with a high powered Division I recruiter. Tommy Amaker of Harvard just pulled out, leading us to believe an announcement could be forth coming.

Link

I like the idea of Donahue coaching, but with an experienced recruiter at his side. However, the Tommy Amaker reference sort of makes me doubt the credibility of the writer, since Amaker was never interviewed, and is therefore not a candidate.

[BC923]

If Donahue finds a good recruiter to come along this would be a very good hire. Donahue is a great X's and O's guy, and with the right talent coming from a good recruiter could have huge success.

[bcmurph]

Steve Donahue appears to be emerging as leading candidate for the Boston College job,...

They must have seen Eagle25's poll...

[ATLeagle]

Steve Donahue appears to be emerging as leading candidate for the Boston College job,...

They must have seen Eagle25's poll...

They are just laying the ground work for why Murphy and/or Duquette will stay on. It is not because GDF mandated it. It will be justified because "Donahue needed a top flight recruiter and we already had a great one on staff." I hope it is true and Pat is deserving.

[DuchesneEast]

We had a top recruiter on staff?

[Pahreen]

Steve Donahue appears to be emerging as leading candidate for the Boston College job,...

They must have seen Eagle25's poll...

They are just laying the ground work for why Murphy and/or Duquette will stay on. It is not because GDF mandated it. It will be justified because "Donahue needed a top flight recruiter and we already had a great one on staff." I hope it is true and Pat is deserving.

Excuse my ignorance, but is Duquette really a good recruiter?

[GreenvilleEagle]

Steve Donahue appears to be emerging as leading candidate for the Boston College job,...

They must have seen Eagle25's poll...

They are just laying the ground work for why Murphy and/or Duquette will stay on. It is not because GDF mandated it. It will be justified because "Donahue needed a top flight recruiter and we already had a great one on staff." I hope it is true and Pat is deserving.

Atl I am not sure how you come to the conclusion that Duquette is worthy? Looking at the last few recruiting classes (let's not even talk about 2009 or lack of recruits for that year) and the overall conditioning and play I think you would want to start over. I would be interested in hearing your opinion.

[BCEagles25]

We had a top recruiter on staff?

Didn't Bill Coen leave for Northeastern?

[BCEagle74]

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by Dick Weiss
April 3, 2010 5:43 PM No Comments
Donahue leading candidate at Boston College »
By Dick Weiss

Steve Donahue appears to be emerging as leading candidate for the Boston College job, provided he can come up with a high powered Division I recruiter. Tommy Amaker of Harvard just pulled out, leading us to believe an announcement could be forth coming.

Three names in the forefront for Iona job: Florida assistant Richard Pitino, Louisville assistant Steve Masiello and ESPN analyst Fran Fraschilla, who had runs at Manhattan and St. John's.

Siena assistant Mitch Buonaguro met with University president yesterday about head coaching job at that MAAC three-time championship school.

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Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/weiss/ ... z0k6SOjyav

[BCEagle74]

We had a top recruiter on staff?

I laughed so hard, my Walmart toupee flipped off.

This was a classic bomb.

GOLD!

[BCEagle74]

We had a top recruiter on staff?

Didn't Bill Coen leave for Northeastern?

BADDA BING....

Please call Chris Mack before its too late....break some Jesuits fingers and make him take off the rubber band..

[gaelfu]

Not to rain on the Donahue parade, but if this is true, I'd seriously be worried about recruiting. How does Donahue make a seamless transition from recruiting in a league where he's forbidden to offer his athletes scholarships to a league that consistently rates at worst top 4 in the country. We've all seen what the drop-off in recruiting (and that CLEARLY INCLUDES the current crop of seniors-to-be) has done to this program. Donahue may be a great coach, but unfortunately college bball results are more often than not determined on signing day (at least much more so than football).

I'd say that if we bring in Donahue, he'd absolutely need to go out and hire an assistant who has proven he can land decent talent. Without that, I think Donahue is a real risk from a recruiting perspective. BC may be forced to take a risk at this point, given how GDF has boxed us into a corner because he couldn't search his way out of a paper bag. However, I really think that with this hire we need to address the recruiting issues that have held this program back over the last 4 years or so.

Also, for the love of God, I hope we do not retain Duquette as our recruiting "ace". That's just got retard written all over it.

[chuckiedukes]

Would it not be easier to recruit players when you can offer them a free ride to a good school like BC rather than convincing them to pay their own way to play hoops in the Ivy League?

The bigger issue, if he gets the job, will be his ability to identify talented players and convince them to sign. Even our best players were "diamonds in the rough" under Skinner, who we know now had nothing to do with plucking them from obscurity. BC doesn't draw top flight recruits, even from New England, so I'm not worried about the recruiting issue in the slightest because it could hardly be worse than under Al in the post-Coen/Cooley era.

[lothar]

I think the Ivies give de facto scholarships -- that is, they not called atheltic scholarships, but the aid goes away if you stop playing -- at least that is what happened to a friend of mine at BC who had been on the Harvard bball team, then lost all of her aid when she decided to quit the team (and she transferred to BC b/c she got a scholarship offeR) Maybe it's an isolated incident, but if that happens for women's bball, surely it happens for the men's sports

[auggiebc]

assuming this Donahue rumor is true, then GDF's "National search for an Izzo-like leader" consisted of Cooley, Coen, and Donahue? 2 Micro-major coaches with hardly any head coaching experience and an IVY league coach who managed to out-recruit Harvard and Yale? That was our "national search for a successful coach"????????

Please shoot me now. Or better yet, just stab me to death with a butter knife.

[talon]

Would it not be easier to recruit players when you can offer them a free ride to a good school like BC rather than convincing them to pay their own way to play hoops in the Ivy League?

They're definitely NOT paying their own way to play hoops in the Ivy League.

[hansen]

given the other candidates, i'd be happy with this pick. id looked at his record and he steadily built a shxtty Cornell team into a sweet-16 team. add a quality ACC assistant coach to his staff to help transition with ACC recruiting and i'm happy with the signing.

the naysayers are going to point out that he's not bruce pearl but unfortunately bruce pearl is not going to walk through that door. donahue is a much better selection that the other gene cronies vying for the job...!

[Dirtywater75]

Siena assistant Mitch Buonaguro met with University president yesterday about head coaching job at that MAAC three-time championship school

Now that's a name I haven't heard in years. Buonaguro is a BC alum who played at the Heights. Has had numerous head coaching and assistant coaching jobs.

[2001Eagle]

I believe that Donahue would be a great hire for BC, and I think his experience at a leading academic institution can only help BC recruit players who will be both successful basketball players and live up to the academic standards at BC that the football team is lauded for meeting.

The hiring by a big-conference school of a youngish coach with success at an institution with selective admissions standards has a generally good track record of success. Taking into account varying degrees of what can be considered "success," I think Donahue could fall on the higher side of the spectrum encompassed by Coach K, John Thompson III, Bill Carmody and Fran Dunphy.

Coach K was at Army for 5 seasons (with only an NIT appearance) and then has become one of the winningest all time coaches. This is clearly the benchmark.

Thompson III spent 4 seasons at Princeton and hit the ground running at Georgetown. Obviously, he has the benefit of his father's connections in recruiting etc, but it is undeniable that he has been a far better coach than Esherick.

Carmody likewise spent 4 seasons at Princeton and recently has had some measure of success at Northwestern despite the school's putrid basketball history. Yes his early years at NW were poor, but he has built the program. But BC is not NW in terms of basketball prestige and I see Carmody's body of work of the clear low end of this spectrum.

Dunphy, while losing three straight in the NCAA first round, has had decent success at Temple after assisting and coaching at West Point and Penn. And while I'm sure that Temple supporters want more NCAA success, from a big picture perspective, making the tourney 3 of the 4 first season's of a coach's tenure has to be considered success on some level.

In short, I think Donahue is a similarly situated hire and can do better than Carmody and Dunphy and has a good chance of achieving the success of a measure of success similar to Thompson. And who knows? Perhaps he could be at BC for 20 years and give the program a long term identity better than that of O'Brien or Skinner, who each had limited and narrow periods of success at the Heights but left the program in the midst of a decline.

Happy Easter.

[Trilobite]

How highly have Butler's classes been regarded for the last 3 years? How highly were Northern Iowa's? How highly regarded was UNC's? How highly regarded was Ohio State's? Recruiting is hugely important, but successful recruiting is defined by 'did you get the kids you wanted?' not by 'did you get any top 50 kids who are in bed with AAU sleaze balls and shoe companies?'

[EagleDave]

How highly have Butler's classes been regarded for the last 3 years? How highly were Northern Iowa's? How highly regarded was UNC's? How highly regarded was Ohio State's? Recruiting is hugely important, but successful recruiting is defined by 'did you get the kids you wanted?' not by 'did you get any top 50 kids who are in bed with AAU sleaze balls and shoe companies?'

That's pretty narrow minded...how often do teams like Butler make the Final 4? Almost never. Butler's success this season is based around an unheralded local 3 star kid Gordon Hayward, who played weak competition in high school and thus went under-recruited. It doesn't change the fact that Brad Stevens found the kid and helped him become a future NBA player, but it still has a great deal to do with luck. Hayward could have just as easily turned out to be an above average player, but one who wasn't capable of carrying his team to the NCAA Title Game.

A good portion of BC's success in this decade is based around the same principle of bringing in under recruited players and developing them into something more. Sometimes it works (read: Troy Bell, Jared Dudley, Craig Smith, , Tyrese Rice), but you also go through periods of mis-steps.

Meanwhile the schools that are consistently competing at the top levels of college ball are the schools bringing in the McDonalds All-Americans and the schools that are in bed with the sleazy AAU coaches and Nike/Adidas/UA. It might not be fair, but it's a fact of life. More often than not, if you land 2 of the top rated players in the country you're bound to be a top tier team.

[jumboeagle]

Siena assistant Mitch Buonaguro met with University president yesterday about head coaching job at that MAAC three-time championship school

Now that's a name I haven't heard in years. Buonaguro is a BC alum who played at the Heights. Has had numerous head coaching and assistant coaching jobs.

And Mitch bombed out at Fairfield a few years ago....after he was Rollie's asst. at Nova for their championship.

[Trilobite]

I think what is narrow minded is assuming that a guy can't recruit well because he did not sign, or perhaps even recruit, the kids you think he should target. If a coach looks at a player and says to himself, "this kid can really be a stud for us." Then he tries to get him but doesn't, it is a failure of recruiting. If the coach gets the kid to sign, but he isn't much of a player (hello Josh Southern) then it is failure of evaluation. Brad Stevens at Butler has the kids he recruited. Everyone of them would have signed with Michigan State if MSU had really recruited them hard. Recruiting is hugely important, evaluation is hugely important. but assuming that recruiting is the answer is minimizing effective coaching and evaluation. Tommy Amaker is a heck of a recruiter. He could probably get recruits for BC equal to or maybe even better than he had at Seton Hall and Michigan. To me, excellent recruiting in and of itself is not nearly enough. Less than half of what the job calls for. Great recruiting means very little without great evaluation and great coaching. Identifying who to recruit goes hand in hand with the ability to sell your program and school. Then when you get them on campus, and in your program coach them up. Don't try to win by "out talenting" the opponent. Win by out playing the opponent, by playing as a team, by being relentless in all aspects of the game with intensity, effort and execution.

[BCEagle74]

Trilobite---

Your post has so many variables that it could go anywhere?

Remember you can't make chicken salad out of chicken shit.

1--When Ralph Sampson was the number 1 pick in College and the NBA ---and I said before the Internet was invented he had the heart and intensity of a crippled flea. Hence, Olajawon--- and my call if many remember that Greg Oden was a stiff and Durant was the smooth gazellle player..too bad you missed that humble genius and 30 NBA GM's and everyone here said...Oden the Stiff.

Josh Southern is a lazy weed smoking brat with a few others and Al Skinner could care less so that makes it a double disaster with a Lazy Evis who had a RONCO ETCH-A-TURNOVER plastic board as his guide and ws a lousy X and O coach too.

The worst of all worlds. A few shit kids smoking dopes and floor burners with no talent.

Recruiting is a crap shoot in every sport and even in the Pro Draft, but that is the way it is in every sport, so to your point, great coaches and tacticans can take 7 second level kids and beat 7 All Americans --50% of the time. Agree.

That is why you start with the best talent which reigns supreme so if you can coach some or have assistants like Roy Williams, you get titles.

2--Roy Williams has 7 All Americans = maybe 4 more next year ...and it took them a while to gel this year and they had a nice NIT run. Roy Williams is not the best X and O, but talent reigns supreme!!!

3-Tommy Amaker is a lousy Coach and where this great recruiter bullshit came about is a mystery. He has coached for 12 years and I posted his resume and he sucks at both. At least he tries. He is an affirmative action diversity REJECT!!!

So you are so wrong and get him the fuck away from BC, and thank God Harvard is extending him! He may be their only black coach after that NYT article a few years ago...LMAO!

4-Brad Stevens is a great coach and better human being and Butler has tradionally had a great program and recruits well and has solid x and O guys. If Butler upsets Duke, it will be a great, but the odds of it happening again are very, very slim since the MSU's Duke's and Kentucky's and UNC's will just out talent and outplay the Butlers, George Mason's 8 times out of 10--with athletic talent and numbers.

Here you are dead nuts 100% wrong on recruiting.

The new sports science and 100 cameras and internet evaluation has 100,000 eyes and yes some kids develop later, and kids are looked at at age 11 at camps so the errors are minimized so your post is BULLSHIT!

Getting the talent is the biggest part of the job >>> and you can hire and fire Coaches to instill intensity, drills, and teach relentlessness llike a Nolan Richardson or Bob Knight, but without talent, you are not gonna make it in any sport at any level without some sort of solid talent base.

If you had equal talent on both teams, yes a Coach like you mentioned will win 9-10 since Skinner was a timeout saving asshole, even Dean Smith was a mediocre Coach like Roy Williams, and Knight would eat him alive along with Stevens and Mack and others!

Same with Tuffy Smith, a bad Coach and then...Kentucky started losing and kids knew Smith was a horrible Coach and they finally found a solid Coach and the best recruiter in America in Calipari.

Nope your answer which I asked on the other thread is wrong. If Stephen DOnahue has trouble recruiting....then you can bring back the greatest talent evaluator on earth even dead!!---Red Auerbach who always said, ---You gotta have the horses...BC has neither.

[Trilobite]

So much anger... Calm down old man. Is 74 your age or the year you graduated?

No one said talent wasn't important. What I said was that because a coach doesn't have a roster full of MacDonald AA's doesn't mean he's a bad recruiter. People here on message boards question how Donahue will recruit if he gets the job. No one knows. BC will hire a guy looking to move up in the CBB universe. To make it simple, if there is a guy out there who is an established successful recruiter of elite level talent, then he is available because he hasn't done enough with that talent and he is available. (Amaker for instance) At the other end of the spectrum is the guy who has made a name for himself by winning without having superior talent. I prefer the guy who has proven he can motivate and coach at a lower level (like Stevens or Mooney would have been) and has won against superior talent, in hopes that he will be able to bring in a recruiter assistant to land the big fish. At least he has shown he can coach. Apparently you prefer a guy who can bring in the talent and hopefully he can get an assistant to coach 'em up. The danger with that scenario is when the 'can't miss' prospect does in fact fall short of expectations. Like Sampson and Oden did.

Bravo, you knew they were lacking as players before many others. Then you see why I say that evaluation is also critical. Evaluating and recruiting are two different things. I'd take a Bobby Knight over a Thad Matta (personalities aside) 9 times out of 10. A bigger concern is that Coen, Cooley and Donahue (the front runners?) Are probably not an upgrade over Skinner. At best we are facing a different type of disappointment. Instead of making the NCAA 70% of the time and losing on day one or two we may be looking at making the NCAA 40% of the time and losing in the second round or possibly the third. Is that an improvement?

[BCEagles25]

So much anger... Calm down old man. Is 74 your age or the year you graduated?

You don't seem to understand how angry Gene DeFillipo makes us.

[BCEagle74]

So much anger... Calm down old man. Is 74 your age or the year you graduated?

No one said talent wasn't important. What I said was that because a coach doesn't have a roster full of MacDonald AA's doesn't mean he's a bad recruiter. People here on message boards question how Donahue will recruit if he gets the job. No one knows. BC will hire a guy looking to move up in the CBB universe. To make it simple, if there is a guy out there who is an established successful recruiter of elite level talent, then he is available because he hasn't done enough with that talent and he is available. (Amaker for instance) At the other end of the spectrum is the guy who has made a name for himself by winning without having superior talent. I prefer the guy who has proven he can motivate and coach at a lower level (like Stevens or Mooney would have been) and has won against superior talent, in hopes that he will be able to bring in a recruiter assistant to land the big fish. At least he has shown he can coach. Apparently you prefer a guy who can bring in the talent and hopefully he can get an assistant to coach 'em up. The danger with that scenario is when the 'can't miss' prospect does in fact fall short of expectations. Like Sampson and Oden did.

Bravo, you knew they were lacking as players before many others. Then you see why I say that evaluation is also critical. Evaluating and recruiting are two different things. I'd take a Bobby Knight over a Thad Matta (personalities aside) 9 times out of 10. A bigger concern is that Coen, Cooley and Donahue (the front runners?) Are probably not an upgrade over Skinner. At best we are facing a different type of disappointment. Instead of making the NCAA 70% of the time and losing on day one or two we may be looking at making the NCAA 40% of the time and losing in the second round or possibly the third. Is that an improvement?

I am not angry..more like disgustiad to the max since the Jags ultimatum....I am just intense like your previous post. I am giving 100% effort to my BC, and I want to execute GDF if he makes a bad choice or the 3 front runners you mentioned.

Your post was perfect.

Welcome aboard, please post more often.


We are BC. We cna do way way better.
74

[Pookie84]

The danger with that scenario is when the 'can't miss' prospect does in fact fall short of expectations. Like Sampson and Oden did.

Wow, if having the college production of Ralph Sampson or Greg Oden is the downside...sign me up.