Buzz Williams made #38 on ESPN's Top 50 College Hoops Coaches.
No. 38: Buzz Williams, Virginia Tech
Virginia TechWilliams' streak of Sweet 16 appearances at Marquette finally ended in 2013-14, and so did his tenure: In March, Williams was lured to Virginia Tech to help new AD Whit Babcock salvage the now-disastrous decision to fire Seth Greenberg (who, full disclosure, now works at ESPN) and hire greenhorn James Johnson. Williams will have a football pocketbook and near total autonomy in Blacksburg, Virginia, and you better believe the Hokies will get better fast.
However, Myron Medcalf thinks that is too low:
Buzz Williams (No. 38) - Marquette entered last season as the favorite to win the championship in the (new) Big East's first season. The Golden Eagles fell short of those expectations when they finished sixth and missed the NCAA tourney last year. Not the best regular season for Williams, who left to fill Virginia Tech's opening a few weeks ago. But Marquette was coming off a shared Big East title in a much tougher version of the conference. Virginia TechThe Golden Eagles split that 2012-13 crown with a Louisville team that won the national championship that year and a Georgetown team that looked like a Final Four squad before Dunk City ruined those plans in the opening round. Marquette made five consecutive NCAA tourney appearances (2009-2013) under Williams. That run included two Sweet 16 appearances and an Elite Eight run in 2013. Nothing against Tad Boyle (No. 34) and Tim Miles (No. 32) - both good coaches - but they can't match that. Seems too low for Williams.
Edit: because gifs are fun.
Comments
When it comes to ranking ESPN is the worst. In the eyes of Hokie fans, Buzz is the # 1 coach.
They must not have "whitnessed" the past 3 months in Blacksburg VA
#SWAG...baby!
Ummm... How quickly we forget... There were legitimate reasons for firing Seth. Its not like we suddenly went in the shitter once we fired him... we were already there. DFS was already transferring away, and it was becoming less and less likely we were going to land Montrezl (he just needed a reason to decommit). The disaster wasn't in firing Seth, the disaster was that it took place in early May instead of late March, when our season ended, at which point, the only direction we could turn was to a completely green James Johnson with zero head coaching experience.
E$PN has an agenda. Cover and praise the teams /colleges with the most following/revenue. Nothing new, but they have gotten worse. I just watch ESPN for live games and 30for30.
...and Mike & Mike. I love them.
Without that firing we would not have Buzz. But it is still early to judge how this will turn out.
Agreed... One giant step backwards which will end up resulting in a hop skip and jump forward.
That said, it still doesn't excuse the program from the idiocy displayed in March to May, 2011.
Not to rain on another one of your rants, but how is what you said different from what the ESPN article said? It doesn't elaborate on the details, but the outcome is the same in that it states "it was a disaster to fire Greenberg and ultimately hire inexperienced James Johnson."
Also, Harrell had already signed an LOI with Tech actually. Maybe he would have rather gone somewhere else, but maybe he would have wanted to stay if the coaching situation hadn't become toxic. Either way, he was a signed commit to the Hokies prior to Greenberg's firing, not a verbal who changed his mind.
Because ESPN worded it specifically to imply that firing Greenberg, their employee, was the disaster move. They explicitly stated that firing Greenberg was disastrous. If they simply stated that the disaster was of the late hiring of the inexperienced Johnson, then fine, I have complete agreement with that, or if they stated that the late or delayed firing was the disaster, then I have no complaints, but they didn't. They went out of their way to imply that the simple firing of Greenberg was the disaster (or at least half of it) when that couldn't have been further from the case. The hiring of Johnson was the disaster, NOT the firing of Greenberg.
As for Harrell, in the weeks leading up to Greenberg's dismissal, while the assistants were busy bailing on the program, there were STRONG rumors that he was looking elsewhere. By the time Greenberg was fired, it was all but certain with those close to the program that he was going to ask for his release from the LOI, and we were going to grant it.
I would fully agree most of ESPN's sports coverage is a farce, with the atrocity still known as Sportscenter leading the way. However, I think you are applying way too much bias against ESPN's writers in this situation. Remove the parentheses about Greenberg working for ESPN and you have this, "...the now-disastrous decision to fire Seth Greenberg and hire greenhorn James Johnson."
In my opinion, that implies the sequence of events (firing and hiring) resulted in disaster. I'm not sure how one takes much issue with that, since regardless of the timing (as Hokie fans on a basketball thread we're aware it was terrible), our basketball program turned out to be disastrous over the last few seasons.
Couple of points of disagreement - Greenberg didn't have us at the bottom of the barrel, even though we had a bad final year from him. Proof of that is the two seasons following. Both years under Johnson were decidedly worse than Greenberg's final season, and Johnson's second year was worse than his first. Objectively, if Johnson had not had Erick Green his first season as a coach, we would have seen two years as bad as this past season. Second disagreement - Jim Weaver had plenty of opportunities to attempt to hire a legitimate coach, but instead he chose the cheapest option possible by hiring Johnson. Firing Greenberg as late as he did showed Weaver had zero vision and was only interested in trying to jab Greenberg from getting another coaching job. Even with that, Weaver could have gotten someone reasonable. He chose to not do so, and hire an assistant on the cheap.
I would be hard pressed to think of a dozen coaches better than Buzz in the NCAA. As far as being a fit for the program, I can think of only a few that would be a better match. Maybe Izzo at MichState. Calipari at UK, Pitino at UofL. Bennett at UVa. Few at Gonzaga.
Not Bennett. Buzz has been to 1 Elite 8 and multiple Sweet 16s while Bennett has only been to 1 Sweet 16 and is known to be a better recruiter too.
Bennett wants to thank Buzz for coming to town initially. He just signed a new 7 year deal that bumps him up close to $2 mil a year with quite a few perks. Winning and having your opponent make a hiring splash is good for the checkbook. Hopefully UVA made some TimeCop type errors in this contract so they regret it later on.
http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/11028184/tony-benn...
You misread my post. I said Bennett was possibly a better MATCH for UVa, not a better coach. Matching the coach's personality and strategy to that of the university. Buzz seems to fit the Hokie mantra well, as does Bennett with that of UVa.
Yes I did. Leg for you.
S'alright. Now that Bennett has fully embraced his hooness and begun wearing orange/blue rep ties instead of open collars, he fits them. Other than the tie thing, that's not a dig. UVa has a better shot at attracting athletes for his style of play than trying to mimic UNC, Duke, etc. Buzz will do that here, too. We'll play scrappy hardnosed ball, but in a different manner than Duke plays scrappy hardnosed ball.
Coach K, Izzo, Few, Cal, Roy (great recruiter, that counts for something), Marshall, Barnes, Donovan, Boeheim, Pitino, Bo Ryan, Matta, Beilein. There are a couple others I didn't list because I don't like them, but let's not get ridiculous. I think Buzz is a great hire and is a very good coach who is very young, but he's not elite or on the level of elite yet. ESPn definitely ranked him too low, he should be around 20 to 25, but he is definitely not elite and has a lot left to do before he can be considered elite.
Think about this for a second, in March we had a coach who probably would be listed as one of the worst in a power conference. Now we have a coach who is being called top 50? And not only is he being listed as top 50, but to any rational college basketball fan he is listed about 10 to 15 spots too low.
Amazing how quickly the perception changes when you have an AD involved in moving the department forward, as opposed to scanning the ledger for ways to horde pennies.