Dane Pound

Damn.

Well over 25% of all college basketball players are now in the transfer portal. I wonder if the NCAA should just starting assuming everyone is transferring and create a "staying portal for those guys who elect to stay at the same school."

For the record, I did approach some of the coaches about this but it was quite a while ago. It was when Bob Ford was coaching. He read the board and then declined, which to be perfectly honest, I understood. With Zoom meetings and twitter, I kind of think the need for a chat with board members has kind of passed. I suspect most people follow the coaches on twitter and some likely interact with them. I'm not sure how much more would be gained from a live chat, maybe that's just me. Over the last few years I've wondered if message boards themselves are becoming obsolete. Many of the fans stay in contact through one or more of the other forms of social media.

I don't have a problem with it either. The only time it can look/be skeevy is some college coaches hire high school coaches to "deliver" a recruit they used to coach in high school to their school. Some of the FBS football schools hire a bunch of "special assistants" who are high school coaches, to bring recruits from their old high schools with them. BTW, I never meant to imply that's it's going on here. Just answering the question.

That was the Scott Beeten era. I'm not sure we want to take too many examples from that!

I haven't seen much evidence of that. I think if Will Brown had brought in a player from D2 Lock Haven (Cerruti), some people would have gone crazy - maybe I'm wrong. There wasn't much reaction here. Not knocking Cerruti or Newman. It seems like Newman was brought in so Champion would stay in Albany.

I don't take hiring a recruit's high school coach as a step in the right direction. Hopefully that's not why it was done but I guess we'll see.

I thought the defense played well enough to win in the last couple of games. The receiving corp is a mess. There was dropoff from last year, and then the injuries. Can really hope they get some experience in the spring and improve for next fall. Curious if Mofor will play again the fall. I'm surprised we don't have another back to rotate in once in a while. He did a lot of work today.

Joey Carino - Mr. Excitement!

Had we played a full conference season I thought Kelly would have been an easy all-conference pick. Top 10 in scoring and really efficient. Not surprised he's leaving. From the outside, Kelly and Horton seemed like they were recruited together since they were teammates at Pratt CC and we had also been recruiting Latik Murphy, also from Pratt.

Agree with this. I suspect Woj getting ousted at Marquette it might take the shine off the hire but but I doubt many people pay that close attention. The transition from assistant to head coach can be tough. If you look at Brett Nelson who was the associate Head Coach at Marquette under Woj before Killings. He had a reputation as an ace recruiter and and X and O guy when he got his first head coaching job at Holy Cross. He's gone 8-40 so far at HC. Hopefully we've done better.

Tony Bennett and Virginia fall to Jeff Boals and Ohio. Tony Bennett must have nightmares about seeing AE coaches in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

I have no doubt Killings knew and agree it was a smart move for him to get out while he still had leverage. I guess I wonder if Albany knew Woj was out. Earlier this week the look was that Albany was getting a hot young assistant from Marquette. Later this week would have been a different look - that we're getting an assistant coach from a staff that was fired. Killings is the same guy either way and is now the Albany coach. Only the optics changed. BTW. The difference between angry fans at one bid conferences and big time conferences like Marquette. Angry fans at one bid conferences write mad tweets or blog posts. Marquette fans have three separate blogs and all three blog writers got together to write a manifesto on why Woj should go - http://www.crackedsidewalks.com/2021/03/why-is-steve-wojciechowski-still.html

Just fired Head Coach Steve Wojciechowski

I was wondering the same thing. Is it just because Tibbs is from Vermont or is there something else?

5th place team jettisons head coach and hires assistant coach from a 9th place team in another conference. How excited are we supposed to be?

Not to defend the Loudonville school but the MAAC seeding was idiotic. The AE seeded by winning percentage and the MAAC did the opposite and seeded by total conference wins. Iona was 6-3 in conference and was second in the conference in win percentage but because they had so many games cancelled, they didn't have many conference wins so they were seeded 9th.

I'm curious why you think this is true about the top 3. Not trying to be a weisenheimer, I really am curious. It's one of the things I always wonder about in recruiting and I realize guys make decisions about where they'll play for a variety of reasons. The coach is probably one of the main ones but I guess I wonder if you were a recruit now with offers from say: Albany, Stony Brook, UML, UMBC, Hartford and Vermont. If you took off the purple and gold glasses, who would you pick and why? I'd say for tradition, Vermont is the top of the conference. Facilities I'd say Bing, SBU and UMBC are probably better. Not sure what the other factors would be.

Gotta get my cheap shots in now just in case we have to look up at them in the standings in the future.

I'd have to imagine Rizzuto would see what happens with Brown and/or Iati. If they land somewhere else it might be a good destination for him.

I wasn't complaining about those guys. Well, most of those guys.

I reserve the right to invoke the former coach when the names being thrown around are uninspiring retread coaches with losing records. That's all I'm saying (well, not really.) People who wanted a change are getting their way. I also reserve the right to come in here with a flame-thrower if we go to hell or Binghamton. Names from Goodman: Desmond Oliver (Tennessee) Kyle Neptune (Villanova) Dwayne Killings (Marquette) Antoni Wyche (Siena)

You're doing better than me because there are a lot of posts here I don't understand. From the language of last week's press release, it sounded like they were hiring a search firm. This week, that doesn't seem to be the case. I never thought they fired Brown to save money. Others may have, I don't know. I'm sure there will be a lot of names thrown around here in the coming weeks. If one of those names had nearly 20 years of D1 coaching experience, a positive career winning percentage, multiple NCAA tournament appearances and ran a clean program I wonder if they'd go to the top of the list?

At least one of the three SUNY schools in the AE weren't in the America East semi finals was... wait for it.... keep waiting.... 2008

Firing a coach while the university is having financial problems probably doesn't put you in a great position in terms of offering more pay to a new coach. That might have been something he should have thought about last week. Firing a coach who was popular in the community and who many alumni/fans wanted to keep probably pissed off and alienated some of your donors. That might have been something he should have thought about last week. It's a fairly open secret that our AD is looking for another job. The game is, the same search firms that place ADs also place coaches. So, by firing the basketball coach, you get to hire the search firm that might place you in AD job. That might make the search firm happy and they might recommend you for the AD job you really want. I'm actually glad someone might have stepped in and said no to the search firm racket. It seems like it would be tough to hire a guy with previous D1 coaching experience because: 1. if they've been winning, they're probably going to go higher than us to something that pays more. 2. If they're a retread former head coach like say Geno Ford at Stony Brook or Cliff Warren who coached for 9 years and has a below 500 career winning percentage, someone might ask why you fired a guy who has a career winning percentage and 5 NCAA tournament apperances for someone with a losing record.