Buzz Williams left Marquette to coach at Virginia Tech, and many wonder why
His team hadn't just lost; it had been lazy and uninspired, deadly sins for a coach who sees himself as an overachiever. Two players missed a weightlifting session two days earlier, he had been told, because they didn't want to walk in the snow. Now this: Virginia Tech's 10th Atlantic Coast Conference loss by a double-digit margin, a bottom-half finish in 18 of the 21 statistical categories maintained by the ACC, and seven consecutive losses to end a miserable first season in Blacksburg.
"I'm not going to endure this just because I'm getting paid," Williams, 42, told the players, who remained quiet. "I'm just ... not."
All in all, just not a very inspiring piece about the status of the culture of Virginia Tech basketball. Buzz knew he was in for some struggles here, but he didn't realize it was as awful as it was. Laziness and an inability to give a crap became the norm, and its not going to be a quick or easy fix. I'm not even sure it'll be fixed before his current contract comes to term (before rollovers).
I think this put it best.
Now, the memories fresh in players' minds, Williams hoped to reinforce the good and bad things, asking players to turn in their notebooks to the blank pages and to write down one thing he had learned today. "Take your time," Williams said, beginning his own list on the whiteboard. Ten minutes passed, and Williams started calling names.
....
Devin. "It's extremely hard to win when you're accustomed to losing," guard Devin Wilson said.
What is most frustrating about this is that only 4 years ago this was not the case. Fresh off that home win against Duke after GameDay, would you believe we would be this bad this soon? I don't know if I'll ever be able to forgive the old administration for allowing what was on the verge of becoming a potential revenue generating sport fall into such disarray.
Comments
I have quite a bit of faith in Buzz's ability to turn this program around, but this is a very disheartening read.
Whoever that was, I hope Buzz had them running suicides in the cold.
Don't we need scholarship space next year? Sounds like two that opened up.
To me, this was the single most disheartening thing of the whole piece...
Our best recruiter is openly saying we will never be able to lure a top prospect into Blacksburg. Wasn't that long ago that Montrezl Harrell was coming to Tech, only to have that possibility blown up because of Jim Weaver's ego. And now, with a better coaching staff than we had then, we have guys who are openly admitting there is a level of player that we will never attain. This level of player being fairly necessary to legitimately compete in this conference, the level of player that likely will soon be showing up with increasing frequency in Charlottesville.
To counter, UVa has only had one mcdonalds all American since 2000, so not sure that elite high school talent is necessary. Actually I'm pretty confident it isn't. Isn't that how our football team has competed, by getting "our guys"?
There are some fans who get extremely rankled at the idea that elite basketball players won't choose Virginia Tech because of the lack of basketball history, proximity to an urban area, weather, etc. and instead choose to believe the only obstacle is how well the head coach can recruit. I've seen many completely dismiss the idea that Virginia Tech is at any sort of recruiting disadvantage and that it's essentially a loser attitude propagated by another portion of the fan base.
I find this comment especially intriguing because it's one of our very own coaches, who is one year into the job and came from a successful program, essentially confirming that some of these obstacles do exist for recruiting at Virginia Tech. Now I only wonder if the aforementioned fans will decide to turn against this coaching staff for daring to say such a thing or if they will finally admit that there are some challenges to recruiting at Virginia Tech.
(Even though I know the answer to that because anyone who has been on a message board has probably at least followed an argument with this kind of person and knows the outcome)
I think it is a football mindset that keeps some fans from understanding why it is really hard for us to get elite basketball players here. The list is long, but any rational discussion about Blacksburg as a location for hoops talent has to recognize it isn't exactly high on the desirable list. I know that will bring out the knee jerk responses about how fun it was back when... but those responses ignore the difference in the poster and in an elite hoops recruit. i don't think we'll ever approach Duke or UNC or UK, etc. but we can secure 'our type' of hard working Buzz disciples, given enough time.
It would also be really nice if the fan base stopped refusing to attend games unless they were against Duke/UNC/UVa. Especially the students.
Agree with nearly everything you said. I'm not sure it's a fair characterization to say the fan base has refused to attend games though. With many games on weekdays, I think it's more likely fans decided they'd rather do something else than make the effort to see the product that was on display. It's sad that students don't attend very well either, but hey, if I only knew the bitter end of the Greenberg and the James Johnson eras I'm not sure I can blame them either. There's a lot of options for entertainment these days- if you really care about the team it's been infuriating or agonizing to watch recently and if you don't care that much there hasn't been much to generate interest or excitement.
Student attendance has been soft for over a decade now. Donor attendance began dropping in Greenberg's next to last season. Prior to that, paid attendance was near capacity since ACC inclusion. Of course, paid does not equal actual seats, but that is all that Weaver would report, since that was all he cared about, the money, not the atmosphere.
Student attendance can be fixed without a huge increase in the wins in the court. VCU did it. You need a quality student/athletic dept organization to get students involved and reward the loyal ones.
you have two conflicting statements, we have only been in the ACC for about a decade now (2004). I can say during the 4 years I held student season tickets (04-08) the student section was packed which was the height of the Greenberg years and before he was holding lunchtime talks at D2 (wish I could have had that).
While i don't think we necessarily need McDonald's All Americans to compete in the conference (there aren't many of these players with that honor anyways in the grand scope of 300 something NCAA teams), there is some comic irony here that Marquette signed a 2015 McDonald's All American PF.
That's not disheartening to me at all. We're building a program from scratch. Mike Krzyzewski didn't get McDonald All-Americans to come to Duke in the early 1980s. John Calipari didn't get McDonald All-Americans to come to UMass in late 1980s.
Guys like Thon Maker aren't going to even consider VT unless we have some some of track record. We're "buying time" right now because of Buzz's reputation but if we don't start winning in the next 2-3 years, the next "can't miss" prospect isn't coming to Blacksburg.
I will be honest, unless you are like Kentucky, where you are set up for wholesale change year in and year out, I dont want the next "cant miss" prospect coming to Tech until they change the eligibility rules for the NBA. I am not a fan of one and done players and think for many programs they become a hindrance to work past rather than a positive in the short run. Look at many of the blue bloods, and those programs bring in a one and done and immediately begin recruiting the depth replacement behind that person. I am not saying I want our guys with so little talent they cant consider jumping early but I am just not a fan of the ones like Thon Maker, which we know is only going the college route for publicity before going pro the next year.
Agreed. I would rather have players that stick around for multiple years and develop into stars. Wouldn't mind a big time recruit every couple of years though.
The length of time a player is in the program is very important.
I work at GMU, and during the time of their run for the final four, it was the major factor according to Larranage.
In a private conversation I asked Larranaga what he thought caused the final four run. He said that it was because all of the players had played together for so long.
Ive seen Thon Maker play a couple of times, and I dont see him being an automatic NBA player. He is 7' and very athletic, but he has 0 post moves. He doesnt like to bang and 6'8 guys in college that can play will eat him up. Unless he becomes a Kevin Durant, I dont see him becoming a superstar. He wouldnt be a quick fix for us and would probably just be in the way, as hes not really one guy to build a team around.
Seven footers are rare, but you gotta be able to play and I dont see Maker as being a very good basketball player. We will see, but I wouldnt be upset about missing out.
Everyone I know that has seen him play in person came away disappointed.
Could you imagine the uproar if one of the football coaches said we'd never get a blue chipper to commit? Oh boy.
You know what bother me more than that comment, this one: ""Here, you don't have a tradition. You don't have a culture of winning," Chew said. "You have to have families who believe in your vision — because that's all we've got."
Really, I remember it wasn't that long ago when I watched the Hokies being competitive not much longer than the Football program. I'm tired of hearing this BS! We had a culture of winning with Seth Greenberg, we have a culture of winning with Frank Beamer. I can't wait for both of our Football and Basketball programs to turn around and start whooping some ass!
Seth Greenberg = culture of shortcuts. That mentality got engrained in the last couple rounds of Greenberg recruits that influenced the kids who came in under Johnson. Greenberg was a snake oil salesman, no different than Lane Kiffin. This culture is a direct reflection of his tenure.
And for those of you who want to waive the success against Duke as a flag, Greenberg recruited higher talent level players that could break guys down one on one. Duke was an exclusive man to man team. When those Hokie teams played any team that was competent at zone, it was over. It speaks to Greenberg's ability to teach. He couldn't. Not worth a damn. When his con couldn't get players anymore, things went in the toilet.
Good riddance. I have no dog in the hunt, but as someone who has devoted a ton of bandwidth to Virginia Tech, Greenberg was an embarrassment and stories like this only keeps the embarrassment alive.
Where the hell are you getting this from?
I think that mentality isn't uncommon in college basketball and might be a little harsh toward Greenberg but the bit about his teams not being able to handle the zone certainly rings true.
That is an amazingly harsh and amazingly incorrect portrayal on virtually every count. For someone who claims to 'have no dog in the hunt' that was certainly a lot of barking. Especially since I see no such posts about Johnson any where, and he was clearly inferior to Greenberg in every manner, except that he made deference to the football program a priority, which seems to have bought him not only his job under Weaver but also his grace from many posters.
Woof x 2
Johnson was a lousy coach. Greenberg being better than Johnson doesn't make Greenberg a good coach any more than being the tallest midget in Duluth makes you tall.
Yet posting such venom towards Greenberg while conveniently avoiding discussion of Johnson, who was not a fraction of the coach Greenberg was, offensively or defensively or in any manner whatsoever, was not a good move.
I understand how some really hated Greenberg, and still show it through their posts online, because 'he isn't one of us', which is code for myopia (to put it as nicely as I can). Yet you really can't ignore how the program collapsed totally under Johnson.
Perhaps Johnson was ignored because French was responding to a comment that discussed the culture under Greenberg, not Johnson.
Do you not get that my entire diatribe is mocking you because you have written numerous lengthy vague, unfounded criticisms of Frank Beamer without uttering one iota of measurable evidence besides dissatisfaction with his record? Which is even more ironic given that Beamer had teams that played in the BCS, while last I checked the NIT was the college hoops equivalent of the typical UVA football season.
But yep, this here good ole boy (who grew up a diehard New York Rangers, Syracuse basketball, and Don Mattingly fan) is just being overly harsh because Greenberg is just a damn Yankee.
.
Wow. So let me get this straight. You initially posted an acerbic post about Greenberg as a response to an entirely different poster, I responded and you now say that you were mocking me because of something you didn't like me saying about Frank Beamer? Okay. I really have to wonder why you are even carrying the grudge over whatever it was that made me displease you. I really haven't talked about Beamer since January. Except saying today that I thought he was the primary reason for us getting into the ACC..
I thought this was a message board with open discussion of various opinions about Hokie sports and other topics. Very interesting. I suppose you have truly enlightened me. I'll step away from the discussion since it has made you volatile. Enjoy your evening.
It is a place with open discussions about various opinions about Hokie sports and other topics. Sadly, throwing out myopic instead of just calling us unwashed proletariat shooting rabbits up in the hills "short sighted" really let your Wahoo slip. Feel free to troll on The Sabre from now on.
Isn't that how this trolling thing works?
I GOT A BIG ONE...
I'm feeling so myopic. Give me gin and tonic. You can have it all but how much do you want it?
Oh snap French has fallen into Don's quicksand. Somebody throw him a rope.
Damn near lost a four hundred dollar hand cart
"On the other hand, he had a tremendous singing voice. " --Jack Napier
Seth Greenberg = culture of shortcuts
Sorry, but what does that even mean?
Because his teams couldn't score well against the zone? Maybe he put more focus on developing players who could attack off the dribble because that would lend itself to being more successful with the guys he had. His teams also rarely lacked confidence and control on the defensive side of the ball.
He's not here anymore, so you can share your firsthand examples.
Because his kids never got better. Seth's solution was to get talented kids and let them play. It worked in some cases for a short period of time. But, those kids never got better, and from what I could tell he wasn't making much of an effort to facilitate getting better (or he wasn't capable, which based on some of the asinine things he says on ESPN is certainly a possibility.)
Was he a better coach than James Johnson? Sure- that is a pretty low standard there. But, to argue that he was a good COACH, which by definition is a teacher and a face/leader of the program, he wasn't There is a reason why he is still at ESPN and hasn't been swooped up by a basketball program. Greenberg was good at one thing, being the sales pitch guy to recruits. That is about it.
And, I provided first hand examples. Watch the film of those Hokie teams against man to man, and then watch them against zones. You didn't see effective screens on the baseline. You didn't see bigs flash to the elbow. Instead, guys took tough shots, just like they would have on a playground with no formal sets. Different players, backgrounds, attitudes, and skill sets. SAME RESULTS. When you see one off problems, that could be a personnel issue. When the same poor fundamentals appear over time with different players, that means the teaching is poor.
These criticisms ring pretty true to me as well. Many players under Greenberg didn't seem to improve much, if at all (Coleman Collins, Malcolm Delaney, Dorenzo Hudson, and Jeff Allen regressed). Admittedly, I believe Washington improved quite a bit and Dowdell did as well.
Still, I don't like nor agree with calling Greenberg an embarrassment because he did an excellent job of engaging the students through letters to the Collegiate Times and giving regular chalk talks. He seemed to care about Virginia Tech- his daughters attending VT supports this idea and I can't recall him trashing VT in the aftermath of his firing either. Honestly, Greenberg helped make it an exciting time to be a student and fan of VT basketball, and that was no small feat considering where the program was when he took over. He certainly had his shortcomings when it came to coaching and apparently within the athletic department as well. I can see how his demeanor would grate on others and eventually wear thin, but 9 years isn't exactly a short tenure for a head coach either. While I appreciate what he did in his time at Virginia Tech, I recognize that it was probably time for both parties to move on. However, I absolutely wish it had ended in a more carefully considered manner.
Except that we had two of the top recruits in the country in DFS and Montrezl Harrell committed in Greenberg's last two years. Say what you will about his style of play, but I think con man and snake oil salesman does not apply.
Ehh, McDonalds AA are not necessary...it is all about the system and finding players that fit. UVa, Wisconsin, Gonzaga, Wichita St, Butler, VCU, etc. all do just fine year in and year out...Marquette did as well when Buzz was there.
Because I was curious, I went and looked up Buzz's recruiting classes during his time at Marquette.
From what I can tell, a McDonald's All-American never committed to play for Buzz at Marquette. His highest rated recruit was JaJuan Johnson, who was rated in the 25-30 range (by various scouting services) of prospects during his recruiting class.
So based on his track record, I didn't realize people were expecting Buzz to start attracting blue-chip recruits to Blacksburg. It was also pretty clear during the period of attrition that it takes certain types of players to thrive under Buzz, so it's going to take some time to rebuild with his guys.
the harrell comment is wrong. when he signed with VT he was 100 to 150 player, blew up his sr yr to around 50. he was looking to get even if Greenberg had stayed. his star was too bright for VT.
facts
Very likely true. But the fact of the matter is, he was still a VT commit until the day Seth was fired, at which time he promptly decommitted and never looked back. There was still a chance he was going to stay at VT, a chance that vaporized the second Seth was fired.
maybe, he also was considering prepping, but doubt he would've done it. the firing was a God send for him.
he was looking to get even if Greenberg had stayed. his star was to bright for VT
Source?
This interview says otherwise...
Montrezl Harrell was a Virginia Tech Hokie
haha, media pieces as examples. you think kids really let you behind the curtain?
kip t jam (rev zeke vodka then)
Fair enough.
Seems like you are setting an awfully high burden of evidence on the opposing side there, BCO.
I mean, if I'm being completely objective about this, quotes from Harrell tends to trump the suspicions of the average fan.
Whatever the ultimate straw was the lost his commitment, I think it's more than fair to say Seth's firing played no small part.
I've made no secret, I don't believe most interviews given by recruits, players or coaches.
what I do believe are insiders with more knowledge than us, who sometimes share this. FYI, rev Zeke made noise about Harrell wanting out signed letter months before Seth firing.
So we are supposed to discount the significance of Greenberg getting an early commit from such an elite player? Because... it helps play down Seth's success?
Also - Harrell has been quoted in national media multiple times after Greenberg's firing that he left only because of Greenberg being gone. So - we're supposed to not believe the guy who made the decision... because it doesn't fit the narrative.
Yes, I understand he could spin it now, but nobody has ever provided a reason as why it would matter to him that he lied about his reason. It doesn't matter now, yet he sticks to the same story. Why bother, if he really wanted to bolt all along? The cynics spin doesn't compute.
ok
Well said.
I'll support Buzz all the way. I understand the players are tired of losing and physically tired but not wanting to walk in the snow...
I have nothing nice to say so I'll just stop here.
I'm just speculating, but idk if I'm as confident about what the status of the program was even 4 years ago, at least internally. I don't get the feeling Greenburg was necessarily the most strict of coaches, and his teams were definitely not the most disciplined, just more talented than the bunch we have right now.
I second that...also did anyone notice during the UVA vs Lousiville broadcast that Dick Vitale said if Hazell had stuck with VT, that Greenberg would still be at VT....but didnt Hazell Decommit after Greenburg left, meaning there have been some other under the surface stuff going on with that...I remeber some speculation that Finney Smith was leaving either way too, the more time that goes by the more I think Greenburg was just as guilty on the mess that was his firing.
Seth left then Harrell decommitted.
First of all, his name is Montrezl Harrell... Secondly, it was well known throughout the staff that Seth and Jim Weaver did not get along. From the stories I have heard from people who knew, Seth was a bit of a hardass and bull headed, and the team faltered a bit from the plateau it enjoyed in 2010. A few coaches realized Seth was likely gone soon because of the relationship he had with the AD, so they started to bail. Then, Seth misses a mandatory meeting with Weaver in order to go on an important recruiting trip, and he was fired with the press conference announced before Seth knew what was up. I believe he was in the middle of an in-home visit when he heard he was dismissed.
Here's the thing, the assistants didn't hear Seth was going to leave and then start leaving themselves, it was happening well before Greenberg was fired (like years before) and it wasn't just one guy, it was multiple. Also, had Seth made more tourney appearances he may not have been canned, some of the snubs were horrendous on the part of the selection committee, but the bottom line is he wasn't getting it done. We had some major wins and some serious head scratching losses. The James Johnson hire was a joke, completely unqualified and was never going to be a long term answer. But the Buzz hire is going to take time and I have way more long term faith in Buzz than I did in Seth, look at who we have to put on the court, we have a serious lack of talent on this years roster.
I also worked in the Athletic Department from 2004-2010 and on a regular basis with the Men's Basketball team and coaches. To say that Seth did not get along with Weaver alone is false, he didn't get along with many people and was a bit of an outsider. I am not defending the way Seth was let go or the hire that followed him, but Seth being let go was merit based and his personality did him no favors with the people he called co-workers.
As far as the relationships within the athletic department - there are two sides to that story, and one remains untold.
At the time James Johnson left the program he marked the 6th assistant in four years to leave the program. Some of the notable schools these coaches were going to: Clemson, UAB, UNC-Charlotte, Georgia. Only one who left that really made sense was Adrian Autry for Syracuse, he was an All Big-East player under Boeheim and was a Syracuse guy. Other than Autry, these guys weren't leaving to take top tier assistant positions at better basketball programs, they were lateral at best and in most cases i wouldn't even say that.
Which completely ignores the fact thet Jim Weaver severely underfunded the basketball program and that assistant coaches often move around during their careers. I'm not excusing Greenberg's management style, but I am also not using it as a false attack against him, like so many did while he was here and afterwards.
I don't have time to go pull numbers, so I will go out on limb. I am willing to bet Clemson, UAB, UNC-Charlotte (but maybe not Georgia, I just don't know) were not giving/offering significant raises in pay to the assistant coaches who left VT to join their staff's in the same roles. I seriously might be completely wrong in that assumption. Your argument makes all the sense in the world if the positions these guys were leaving for promised them a lot more money because the AD at their new schools were willing to invest more into the assistant salaries, I just don't think that is case.
2009 - Stacey Palmore received a significant raise to go to a new UGA staff as an assistant coach.
2010 - Bill Courtney took the head coaching job at Cornell, so a promotion and raise
Ryan Odom left to go to Charlotte, where he was named associate head coach, and was named interim head coach this season while the head coach took a medical leave of absence. It also allowed him to relocate to where the majority of his family lives, who could help out his wife when he was on long recruiting trips.
2011 - Adrian Autry takes a raise as a new assistant at Syracuse, his alma mater, but initially was leaving to become Associate Head Coach at Dayton before the Syracuse opportunity arose. Autry was on a fast track because he only spent one year as an assistant under Greenberg, previously spending three years at Director of Basketball Operations.
2012 - Rob Ehsan and Jeff Wulbrun leave together to join new staff at UAB. Wulbrun received promotion from Director of Basketball Operations to a full time assistant coach position that brought with it a significant raise. Both Ehsan and Wulbrun become Associate Head Coaches for UAB. Wulbrun and Haase, UAB's new coach had worked together in the past for a significant amount of time. Haase also played under Wulbrun for a year as an assistant coach at California.
James Johnson leaves Tech to go to Clemson to assume the same Associate Head Coach position, which brought him around a $40K raise annually.
Interesting, thanks for the research and info. I stand corrected on the salary argument, but I still contend the Greenberg personality factor cannot be dismissed.
Dont get me wrong, Greenberg and his behind the scene dictator like mentality is likely at the root of all of these coaches looking for other opportunities. It just so happens that because of how poorly funded our basketball program was that almost any opportunity also brought with it more money or a promotion.
A lot of people ignore the refusal by Weaver to adequately fund the coaching positions when they discuss Greenberg's staff turnover. Lest we forget, Weaver was really proud when he announced that under James Johnson the basketball staff would be funded at a level close to Clemson's, which was still in the lower half of the conference. The 'good news' was that we would stop being worst.
This is my own personal opinion, but weaver held us back in a lot of sports! Look how many new positions we have added in football alone. A lot of our down years recently could possibly be attributed to weaver! He was terrible for our sports IMO!
The reason we could add those positions so quickly was because our Athletic Department was/is in great financial shape. Add to that the practice facility and the ability to hire Buzz at (pretty close to) top dollar, and you see the principal positive thing to come out of Weaver's tenure - financial security. Did he have missteps? Yes. Were some of them big ones? Yes, undoubtedly. But when 90% of college ADs operate in the red, the fact that ours was not a burden to the university or its donors is a big plus. People forget that when they start talking about how horrible Jim Weaver was.
I do agree that he did do some things that were huge for VT, but I really believe that he held back hokie athletics. You have to spend money to make money. And the recent years of not selling out football games and our product on the field could be a direct result of not having those newly added positions.
I've said this before and it was discounted without thought, but Jim Weaver is the type of financial adviser who would put your retirement into a savings account at the bank and tell you he didn't lose you any money. Whit Babcock and 95% of the rest of the Athletic Directors in the nation had far more sense and could put your money into an investment that brought you a 10% return in growth annually.
Lots of people are still blinded by the fact Weaver never lost money, while they ignore the fact he left such huge amounts of opportunity on the table it is ridiculous. Opportunity cost is the difference in the scared and the successful. Far too many let the illness soften their perception of the man.
Well said.
Would this be a bad time to point out the athletic department that Babcock left is bleeding money?
Any specifics on this? I haven't seen anything about Cincinnati's current financial situation.
They're a subprime athletic program. Losing the Big East money was really, really bad since they spent money they didn't have in anticipation of future wealth.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/2013/05/07/ncaa-finances-su...
"However, Cincinnati still added nearly $1 million to a cumulative athletics operating deficit that it said was $34.9 million as of the end of its 2012 fiscal year."
http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/writer/jon-solomon/24839675/uab...
Interesting. Don't get me wrong, I'm firmly on the Whit bandwagon, but some people may need to realize that Whit isn't the reincarnation of God and that Jim Weaver wasn't the worst AD of all time.
It's no use. The narrative on Weaver has been written- he's blamed for all sins real or imagined. He also takes far too much heat for VT not going to the SEC. That was never his call to make. Decisions like that are made at a presidential level.
As for Whit, he's not the reason Cincy is in financial straits. They decided they wanted to spend like they were one of the Haves. That's another decision that's made above the AD level. But he left behind a mess once it was clear Cincy was stuck in the ACK bleeding cash. Once the Big East died they really needed to get into the Big 12 or ACC. I think he's doing great work here but it's a smidge concerning that a fair amount of what he is doing is throwing around money since that's what got Cincy into trouble.
Oh, I know. I was just appreciating the wonderful irony of the situation.
I think you're over reacting a bit. He helped bring VT from obscurity to the ACC. He wasn't the right person to take us to an elite level. He's far from a god amongst athletic directors and administrators, but he's not the devil either.
The overwhelming majority of the reason we got accepted into the ACC is because Frank Beamer built a solid, reliably Top 20-type football program. A small minority of the reason was that Jim Weaver wasn't running a program in the red. As I said, he essentially took a dollar, and turned it into a dollar and a nickel. All while the college sports landscape exploded around him with his compatriots taking a dollar & turning it into two dollars. VT took the ultra conservative approach on everything, including football, and excluding football took an essentially miserly approach. There's just no denying that.
Many programs would kill to have 5% growth. Again, I'm not saying Weaver was a great athletic director, and he made some bad hires, but I don't think he deserves this much hate after his career is over. IMO, he probably should've been replaced after hiring Coach Wolff (when he just walked down the hall instead of performing an actual coaching search). But, I believe that is president Steger's fault, no? Why isn't he getting any blame?
Oh? Just like many programs would 'kill' to not be put on probation. Your assessment is a complete strawman argument.
As for the supposed 'hate'? I suppose we should pretend he left us in a wonderful place - even though he didn't. Not even with football.
As for Steger? Yes, I blame him as well. The entire 'Gang of 69' or whatever they liked to call themselves, as if they were the Rat Pack. The thing is - adding blame to Steger does not shift blame from Weaver. No matter how much the revisionists prefer it do so. Jim is primarily responsible. Period. Sure he's sick, and nobody likes that. That does not erase the fact he is primarily responsible for his incompetence.
I think you're missing the fact that the Athletic Dept was built from nothing. Who did that building you ask? Oh, Jim Weaver. Now maybe you have an argument that he did not transition from conservatively building a stable and competitive department into aggressing into the next tier. But make no mistake that our financial stability and lack of scandals is a net positive. No offense but disregarding what he built from where he took over makes you seem whiney and ungrateful.
Built from nothing? Seriously? LOL... As for 'lack of scandals' - that completely ignores all of the 'minor' athletic scandals we had during Weaver's reign. No offense, but that really seems like revisionism.
He took over in 1997. Before that we had done what in any sport? Please tell me where before '97 that we were competitive for any length of time? Mens basketball in the 80's? Sure football was on the rise, but you really think that he didn't build us into what we are now... Then there is no use debating with you. And if you cherry pick a few athletes getting arrested and label them as "scandals" thats just sad.
1995 Sugar Bowl Champions
1995 Men's NIT Champions
Jim Weaver takes over in 1997.
In 1999 Ricky Stokes is hired as head men's basketball coach
In 2000 we nearly let Frank Beamer walk out the door for wanting too much money.
In 2004 Bonnie Henrickson allowed to leave for Kansas after taking women's team to numerous NCAA bids and one Sweet 16... She was hired in the months before Weaver took over in 1997.
I wouldn't exactly say he was left with a completely bare cupboard. We actually were in a pretty good position in both football and basketball right before he was hired, and quickly, basketball was undone and football was nearly dismantled as well.
I acknowledged football was on the rise, the staying power had not yet been proven. And one NIT does not a length of time make..... He isn't flawless, but he took a sub par program and turned it into a pretty good one all while avoiding sanction and financial burdens.
We also advanced to the 2nd round of the 1996 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament....
I'd say we were in pretty good shape in that sport when Jim Weaver was hired in 1997.
...and look at us now....ba dum dum
I'll disagree with this. Even though we were a reliable top 20 program, the ACC didn't want us. The overwhelming majority of the reason we're in the ACC is the efforts of Mark Warner.
The ACC wanted us because of football, but enough of the conference (read: Duke, UNC, UVa, and I believe Wake) had issues with just how ridiculously poor the rest of our athletic department was as a whole in regards to lack of acumen in really any Olympic Sport and an embarrassingly poor basketball profile, that the conference looked towards Syracuse in replace of us, as they knew they would get the votes. Only when Warner stepped in and forced UVa's hand by threatening to withhold state funding unless they voted to let us in did the rest of the conference realize they had the votes to get us, in which time the process moves exceptionally fast and we were admitted (with both UNC and Duke still officially voting 'no' on letting us in).
They wanted us for the football. Having our financials in the black certainly helped, but being at the time a perennial Top 10 program only a couple years removed from the BCS National Championship Game was the deciding factor.
I can't tell... Did you just agree or disagree with me? Either way, you're dead on in your assessment.
hah.... a little bit of both, I guess, but just expanding upon what you said to bring a little more clarity.
From everything I have heard, that round of ACC expansion was always about bolstering up the ACC football footprint, with VT, Miami, and Syracuse being the dream scenario trifecta. If it were about anything but football, neither VT nor Miami would have ever been considered, because both had very poor basketball programs at the time. And without Miami putting their foot down on needing BC for the supposed massive Miami following in Boston, we would have gotten that trifecta back then, and I image, would have been a much stronger conference as a whole going forward.
I still remember leading up to the 2004 season, a talking point on ESPN programming was, "Is the ACC now the best football conference?"
How times change.
Regardless, Mark Warner deserves a plaque in the VT sports hall of fame.
Thank goodness or else we would have never developed our fierce rivalry with BC.
Wow, I must have had my window open for an hour before posting but this is essentially what I was saying below only an hour earlier and more succinctly. Nice.
yea but unfortunately he never changed the program with the times. here a graph that in my opinion shows us against them. The years are pretty generalized as are the points but it illustrates the greater picture.
We were all equal but didnt keep up at VT
edit- to add image
Where did this graph come from? What's the Y-Axis?
EDIT: whoosh
"The years are pretty generalized as are the points"...
So you arbitrarily came up with a graph that graphically represents your opinion? Congrats...
Its not an arbitrary graph.... its a 5 year graph of the following 4 investment options in the New York Stock Exchange that he pulled from Yahoo Finance:
VOO (blue line) = Vanguard 500 Index Fund
VBMFX (red line) = Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund Investor Shares
DJI (pink line) = Dow Jones Industrial Average
XBI (green line) = SPDR S&P Biotech ETF
He's basically saying VT is a Bond (low yield), the ACC as a whole is the Dow Jones, Clemson is the Market Mutual Fund, and FSU is a successful stock. Just threw random events on a graph trying to play it all off as accurate...
Wow, I see it now...
A long term investor should never look at such a narrow window to try to gauge past and future returns...
Good summary. I didnt think so much though would go into a visualization of playing it to safe. Would you disagree that VT is a Low Yield Ultra Safe investment compared to a High Risk Managed Fund of FSU. The items are things that have impacted each school in order but just not aligned to the exact date. Was VT that good or was it that everyone else suffered from the times of being to aggressive previously
The Winston Issue hurt FSU and shows the Risk/reward of that player.
Did losing the Rose Bowl hurt FSU, slightly. Did winning the Military Bowl help VT.
I think Clemson Moves in stride with the ACC but slightly faster a capitalizing on gains
We have a new indoor facility for practice, EVERYBODY DOES - One of just two SEC programs without an indoor practice facility, Georgia has authorized $400,000 to an architectural firm to design and find a location for a new structure. WHOOPS. Almost EVERYBODY does
Wake Forest broke ground on a new field house featuring a 120-yard artificial turf field. While a football facility, all of Wake's athletic teams will be able to use the facility. Head football coach Dave Clawson said that the new McCreary Field House will have a huge impact on the football program.
"This facility is a game-changer for our program," said Clawson. "It is easy to tell people that football is important at Wake Forest and now we can show them."
Marshall dedicated its new $14 million indoor practice facility.
Kentucky, KENTUCKY FOOTBALL, unveiled plans for a $45 million football training facility. The facility will house dining facilities, strength & conditioning areas, players' lounge and new locker room.
Florida Atlantic The Schmidt Family Complex: a new athletic facility to be used primarily by the football program. The facility will include an academic center, larger weight room and more spacious locker room. The project is expected to cost between $45 and $50 million.
Penn State is planning $12 million in renovations and branding upgrades to the Lasch Football Building. The school plans to emulate other schools like Oregon and Oklahoma State as it upgrades the player locker room, nutrition bar, equipment room and meeting rooms.
LSU will build the new $12 million Tiger Athletics Nutrition Center on the site of old Alex Box Stadium. The 22,500 square-foot facility will be an athletes-only dining hall and will teach healthy eating habits and food preparation in addition to feeding the athletes.
University of Houston has begun construction on a $25 million basketball practice facility. The 53,000 square foot facility will be the headquarters for both the men's and women's programs.
Maybe this has been discussed above and, if so, I'm sorry but this ignores the fact that our financial position was/ is one of the reasons that we are now in the ACC and not the AAC. If we were in trouble financially back in the early 2000s the ACC almost certainly would have used that as an excuse to keep us out.
So, while I agree with you about opportunity costs, I think the reality it's a little more nuanced than Weaver's philosophy was wrong and Whit's is right. I think it's more like we needed an approach like Weaver's when we were struggling as partial members of the Big East but as soon as we became equal members of a stable conference, we needed a new approach that focused more on opportunity and less on risk. The 10 years of wasted time between ACC membership and Whit's hiring was the real problem IMHO.
I made a pic that i think shows that pretty well
he never changed the program with the times. The years are pretty generalized as are the points but it illustrates the greater picture.
We were all equal but didnt keep up at VT
The concept that Weaver was fiscally superior to all other ADs because he ran a department in the black is absurd. Weaver did not leave WB a department in great financial shape, he left a department that had been cheap and did not realize it revenue potential. The goal of an AD should not be to operate in the black, it should be to maximize revenue over the long term and reinvest all funds to enhance sports and the student athlete experience.
WB has done a great job but he has a department which is/was in need of investment and revenues which have not nearly been tapped to their potential. Better days are ahead.
Hence why I didn't say that.
I merely cited a fact that most college athletics programs bleed money. We don't. That's a positive. I felt that something needed to be said in the barrage of Weaver-bashing that was/is going on. "Worst thing to ever happen to VT athletics" and like is total crap and I can't stand the hyperbole being thrown around. Did Weaver do great things for us? No. Did he do an adequate job keeping us fiscally solvent, allowing us some ability to spend some money under the guidance of someone who is more energetic and forward thinking? Yes. To think otherwise is just ridiculous in my mind.
I understand your point that the Weaver bashing is pointless but the praise for JW is often blown out of proportion. Dave Braine & FB deserve the praise for putting the VT athletic department on the trajectory to be a major force in college athletics; JW just kept doing the same thing to raise funds (and enjoyed ever bigger TV payouts) and spent frugally.
This is a touchy subject for many but his stupid SEC comments were the proof I needed that he was no longer fit to run a big-time athletic department.
What comments are those? If it was that VT didn't need to go to the SEC, I wholehearlty agree with that. I don't think VT needs to be in the SEC to be a quality program.
I've yet to find a coherent argument for VT going to the SEC. Every one seems to be centered around the myopic distortion that no other sport than football matters ever for any reason, and that geography has virtually no relevance either.
The underlying themes always seem to be - 'Uhh... more TV money!... uhh... we'll stop losing those eliite 757 players!...'
Modern college athletics is an arm's race and you need money to keep up. The SEC and Big Ten networks deliver dump trucks of money to their schools. Babcock understands this, do you not? Being the northernmost SEC school is something Virginia Tech could have marketed not only in the 757, but in NJ, PA, D.C., NOVA and Maryland.
Well I completely misunderstood that, thought you were talking about Jim for a second.
I agree, being in the SEC would be a financial windfall for us, and something that Jim just never understood. The earning potential of VT in a conference that aligns to our strengths (football) and being the lone wolf in a great football conference in a region that is a hotbed of talent would be massive.
I like being in the ACC, but financially for us, being in the SEC would be ideal. We just aren't going to make the cash in the ACC we would have made there, especially with Swoffy bungling our TV deals to get his son a bonus at Raycom.
That being said, very much happy we have a AD in place that is willing to spend money instead of constantly and overwhelmingly saving for the sake of not spending.
I agree, but did I write anything to the contrary to make you think I disagreed?
Revised comment to actually address your statement... sorry about that
No worries, was replying to swvadon's specific point.
I wanted VT to join the B1G. Moar wins.
"Virginia Tech has always wanted to be in the Atlantic Coast Conference and I would think that's where we're going to stay, because it's the right thing and the best thing for our university" ...
"[W]hen you realize the travel involved and so on, we're virtually in a 'bus league' right now. The SEC would cause other travel issues. Certainly there is (increased) revenue involved (with joining the SEC). But I just feel like, and this is me talking – I haven't talked to the president or any of that – Virginia Tech would politely decline, because we're very happy to be in the Atlantic Coast Conference."
http://www.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/24156338/31277305
He completely dismissed the idea. Nice "bus league" we are in. Again, I don't want tom stir up the ACC vs. SEC debate. I was just stunned that our AD would make such public statements.
Why? That is his job to lead/direct the athletic dept.
I agree, the bus league comment was unnecessary, but if left the quote at:
it would be fine.
The Bus League comment is not unnecassary. It may have been worded poorly, but the savings involved by being able to bus our athletes to almost half of the conference competitions, especially in non revenue sports saves us millions over what flying would cost us in the SEC. There are only two, possibly three SEC programs within driving distance in Vanderbilt, Tennessee and Kentucky. All of the other programs would require flights. Correct me if I am wrong but I believe we bus our athletes to UVA, UNC, WF, NC State, Duke, Clemson and possibly Pitt/Louisville and formerly Maryland. I am not sure at what distance they cut off using busses. Not many conferences can say that they have that many schools within bus distance.
Just ask WVU how it feels to fly non revenue sports to every away event.
'Bus League' has a very bad connotation IMO. It makes the ACC sound subpar. I know that's not the case, but being an AD is like being a politician; how you sound matters. He should've said something like:
But alas, we're here to discuss this WaPo article and the current state of our basketball team, not shit on statements our old athletic director made 2 years ago.
I agree 100 percent.
interesting story, but dont think we lost that game cause 2 guys didnt work out before the last day of the season.
most of these guys are freshmen, just a year ago if they saw this much snow they would be excited cause they are staying home from school.
Agreed
That being said, I wouldn't be upset if I found out that the 2 kids who skipped the workouts because they didn't want to walk through snow had their scholarships revoked and ended up transferring out of Tech.
If they are over 6'6", I would be upset.
Attrition got us in this mess. We gotta stop it.
I don't care how tall they are, if they're routinely acting like that, we're better off without them than with them.
I'm almost afraid to find out who they are, but really? Didn't want to walk through the snow? As a student, I always thought the campus staff did a good job when it came to clearing out snow. If students (many of whom pay for tuition) can endure the elements of Blacksburg across the Drillfield, then these guys have no excuse. I hope Buzz reinforces the concept that wearing the "VT" means you are tough.
The mere thought that they would use the - 'My feet might get wet in the snow' excuse is laughable. Ask yourself what Coach K would say to players that gave that as an excuse.
A fact of life we're going to have to get used to is this - Buzz will lose players every single season, forever. Buzz demands a lot. Most players today are too soft to think they gain from giving as much as he expects. It boils down to this - will the team be disciplined? Or will it continue to lose? Those who waver in their confidence need to examine Coach K's method of running a program. Anybody think his players would whimper about having to walk in snow to practice? Seriously?
Suliamon was the first player Coach K ever kicked off, right? So how would Coach K deal with it? Interally. You would never know about it.
It's one known instance. You said routinely. Calm down.
VT hoops is in a state where we need to be a little more flexible.
Attrition did not get us in this mess. I do agree that now that Buzz is established as the head coach, we should have a core group of players moving forward and it is important for attrition to slow down. However, the attrition itself really wasn't the issue. Hiring an unqualified head coach was the biggest contributing factor to this mess.
Do you agree that we should have fired Coach Johnson? Because if you do, attrition is part of changing coaches in college basketball. Even if you completely ignore that fact, adding Thompson, Emelogou, and Van Zegeren to this team wouldn't put it on the NCAA tournament bubble or compete for an ACC Championship. We would have more bodies and likely be more competitive, but that's far from fixing all the issues. Now on the other hand if we had kept Coach Johnson, how would this year have gone? We'd almost certainly be at or near the bottom of the league again and certainly wouldn't be competing for an ACC title or NCAA berth.
It's been a tough year to watch, but Buzz needs his players to be committed so that the team can play beyond the sum of its parts. If they can't do that, the entire team is going to suffer and it's better for all parties to move on sooner rather than later.
Am I missing something? What does ANY of this have to do with Greenberg? We don't know who the players are! Was it a Greenberg recruited player? Was it a Buzz recruited player? I don't buy that this is due to a residual culture of laziness. Two players did something stupid, and Buzz will need to make a resounding gesture to put them in line (which I believe is the more reasonable response), or get them out of the program. The only thing to dissect from this story is that we will be waiting to see how Buzz responds.
We just went 2 and 18. Two and eighteen!
Thompson, Barksdale, Emelogou and JvZ may not make us a bubble team (I would project it very well could) but it would make the state of the program much, much better. We are a fucking shit storm right now.
As I said when JvZ was kicked off, if you need to kick a player off the team, there is error on all sides, including the coach. It's like parenting, this is the equivalent of sending your kid to rehab or cutting off communication with them. You only do that once you have tried everything else. If it gets to that point, as a parent, you have failed in at least some way. Same with coaches. We take these boys and tell their momma's that we will be there for them, mentor, lead, get them an education. Then they miss a weight lifting session and we're ready to get rid of them.
It's not like they had a sexual encounter with a 13-15 year old. That, I have no patience for. You are dead to me, even at the arrest point. But a kid throws a fit in a practice? Deal with it. A kid misses a weight lifting session because of snow? Deal with it internally. We don't need to know about it. Run the kid until they throw up and make them better people for it. "OMG, we need more toughness!" How about we take the players we have and develop them instead of constantly trading them in for some other lottery ticket at the drop of a hat?
We have to stop justifying attrition. It has been a plague upon this program for 15 years.
If a player isn't going to buy into what Buzz is selling, that player can GTFO. You're right, there is an issue that has been plaguing this program for a long time, and its an acceptance of mediocrity and that you don't have to give it your all every day of the week, which is something Buzz preached from Day 1 of practice. If you're not going to dedicate yourself to the game, and you're going to let something like a little snow on the ground prevent you from putting in the hours required of you from your scholarship, than there is no place for you on this roster.
I have no problem at all with attrition if its weeding out the distractions. I would rather have a team of freshman going 2 and 16 playing their nuts off every week for this school than a bunch of player half dedicated to the sport who only try when its convenient playing themselves into the NIT.
We went 2-16, which is the exact same record we had last year under Johnson. Two years ago, we went 4-14 with the ACC Player of the Year on the team. Part of the reason for keeping Johnson was so that all our players wouldn't transfer after Greenberg was fired and that lack of attrition led us to a sterling 6-30 ACC record.
It's Buzz's first season as head coach following up two years where our players had essentially no expectations. You don't have to look too far to see the mindset of these players under Coach Johnson. Just see Devin Wilson's comment that, "it's extremely hard to win when you're accustomed to losing." Buzz was tasked with a steep challenge of changing the mindset of the players on the roster. I don't think it's unreasonable that a successful coach demanding high expectations would receive push back from players entrenched in a losing culture. The worst thing Buzz could have done for the program is ease up on his demands to keep more players around. Not only would that be a head coach giving in to his players, but that would signal the coach already giving into a losing culture and attitude from the past.
You can talk about the program over the past 15 years, but I firmly believe attrition rates have far more to do with the individual head coach rather than a basketball program as a whole. James Johnson had a low attrition rate and incredibly poor results. As I said, if attrition were to continue at this rate then I would agree that it's a potential problem under Buzz's tenure as logically there is an attrition rate that would be prohibitive for success. However, the simple fact that Buzz has a perceived "higher" attrition rate doesn't necessarily equate to the results on the court being bad.
Just a minor thing....we are now 3-16 and counting :)
JvZ is a poor example of deal with it. Buzz did deal with it. There were repercussions for the incident in practice but JVZ was the one unable to deal with it and take care of his responsibility. This one is all on JvZ.
They didn't want to walk in the snow? Seriously? My mama always said if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all so I'll just leave this instead:
If you read the article, the gist of it is not the two players doing what is highlighted above. It plainly states that Williams has a long mountain to climb to generate a winning program at VT that fans will support better and it wonders why he left MU. Well, we've had that discussion. Yea this season stunk. It had a few moments. The portions about the kids in the article shows to me that there are more there that aren't that committed. Buzz needs a committed full team with a larger # of scholarship players. I'm not going to blame Buzz for that.
I'm not sure I'm buying what this guy is writing in that article. Consider me #skeptical.
The author mispelled Roccoforte, instead referring to him as Roccefort...as for the rest of it, its a fluff piece to fill up a little corner of a page somewhere. They might as well of had Mark Berman write it the way it came out though. I did like some of the insight into how Buzz manages himself financially. That part makes for a really interesting read.
Yep- fluff piece telling the disaffected angry minority what they want to hear. It is the age old equivalent of a sports talk radio host talking about hall of fame snubs or top ten lists on a slow news day
"It's extremely hard to win when you're accustomed to losing,"
I think the team is mentally exhausted after an incredibly trying season. I felt like I saw significantly better effort out of the team when they were a little more optimistic about their ability. With the the amount of sprit-crushing loses, I think most of them are mentally check out.
To be honest, I think that's ok. I don't think a lot of players are going to care that much when Cassell is only a 1/3 full every game, when you are getting destroyed on the boards night in and night out and there isn't a post-season tournament to play for...it's extremely difficult to play "balls to the wall" defense when there is good chance the opponent is going to get the offensive rebound. It's extremely difficult to win games when the team doesn't have confidence in both the personnel or the coaching staff to find a way to win with said personnel.
I don't think this is Buzz's fault. This was a terrible season and it's difficult to get yourself motivated when you don't feel like you even have a small chance of accomplishing something special.
I don't think this attitude is going to impact next season's performance. I really think the kids just need the summer to get away from everything, mentally recharge and focus on the task ahead. I'm still optimistic about the future at VT.
I can't help but think of the Cowherd rant where he said: "that's why you're no threat in big boy college football, because you're not dedicated enough." Obviously this was referring to UVA football and as much as this pains me to compare the two, it is a good indication of the programs. This headline makes our team look like pansies and a few of them truly are wimps if they wouldn't even walk through snow of all things. This is freaking Blacksburg in the winter! Get used to it as a freshman, plenty more from where that came from. The most shocking part of it all is that Buzz didn't tell the two guys to kick rocks, though my guess is neither of them had much of an impact in the Miami game anyways. Seriously, this is a terrible look for a failing program. I hope Buzz can turn this ship around, but my gosh this is going to take some time.
Being cold builds character, while walking back and forth to to the Cassell builds leg muscles. Did these guys stay at home playing video games on their fancy electronics? There will come a day when the internet comes to life and all these gizmos turn on us.
Will these kids be able to run away on their shriveled little calfs? I don't think so.
Somebody had to do it.
I don't know what the problem is I walked to school in the snow uphill both ways!
Considering the changes in elevation/grade just within Blacksburg, this is accurate.
I'll have to say - I knew Buzz was never going to be here longer than a decade at the most, but this tells me that even he is aggravated with the lack of desire by the team. Oh, for the reported buyout terms that floated last week about Buzz's contract? They're all false. He negotiated a contract weighted HEAVILY in his favor, as that was the only way Whit could get him to commit here. Also, Buzz committed here sight unseen. Also, Buzz is completely puzzled by the absence of support by the fan base, especially by the students. That's not an inference he's going to leave, because he is going to stay. He wants to prove a point. But he's not going to stay as long as he planned, unless he finds players willing to buy in for all 30+ games.
As far as the softness of the players? It is really puzzling that they could endure his boot camp, and then just essentially give up at the end of the season. I would imagine that we will see a minimum of three players 'decide to leave' the program after this week. Buzz will do it quietly, and with respect, but they will be gone. And I'm completely fine with that.
Not sure which terms floated last week, but per his contract his buyout would be $7 million this year, $3.5 million next and then $1.5 million the third year. Then its $900K, $500K and then $250K any time after that.
Post Here
It is my understanding that information is incorrect. I know this will be readily assailed, but that's my understanding. Hopefully we won't know for another 6-8 years.
I don't have any information regarding the contract and Buzz's thoughts, but I thought Buzz expected that he would have to earn fan interest. I mean, I can't blame the fans for not showing up when the team isn't really that good. They show up for the big games. I think its clear that students and fans are hungry for a competitive basketball team; the culture here at VT so tight that I think once the team gets over the .500 mark, Cassell will be at or near capacity.
I agree with this, we're Tech fans, we get excited to be in the NIT. We're hungry to be competitive in the ACC again. We don't need it to be an elite program to fill up Cassel, but we need hope. There's certainly more hope than there was under Johnson, but I think most of us thought we would be at least a little better than we were.
Diehards who watch every game and hang out on message boards can see how we've improved but it's tough to convince people to come to games when it's almost guaranteed that we'll lose.
Buzz did play against Rutgers when he was at Marquette. A lack of fan support given the floundering state of a program with all of 1 NCAA tourney appearance in 19 years and no solid basketball history to speak of shouldn't be all that shocking.
Couple things.
1. I'm not sure I'd go as far as calling the players 'soft.' They play in front of no one at home, except for maybe Duke and UVa, and they've been looking up in the standings at most of the ACC all season, and now they've been looking up at the ENTIRE ACC for a few weeks. The season ends in a few hours for them, and they're beaten down. Doesn't make them soft. Makes them human. Unless you've been on a team like that, and know what it's like, give them a little slack. No one expected anything of them, and judging from the attendance I could see on camera, no one showed up most of the time to see.
2. Buzz will not "do it quietly and with respect" if he drops some guys from the team. The article tells me that. The whole piece felt like it was set up to show Buzz against all odds, to include support from his own players. It's to grease the skids for when the knives come out after today. There was a lot of turnover at the beginning of the season, and they'll be more at the end.
I don't know how I feel about #2 there, and Godspeed at making VT relevant in the ACC. But I almost feel like the bloodletting shortens his leash, rather than lengthens it. Getting people gone, and fast, means he's bringing the OKG players that much faster, which means we'd better be better that much faster. And again, even if Buzz doesn't want them, we - the people that represented VT at the time, thus "we" - went to their homes and asked them to come play at Tech. So I'm not as completely fine with being ready to rush them out the door, especially when the coaches can move at will, and players are virtually locked in place.
Under Jim Weaver, I would have agreed. Under Whit Babcock, his leash is so long that it'll take a decade of shortening it before it becomes short enough to be relevant.
Reading this article just made me realize that he is the man for this job. I don't believe an ordinary coach could turn this around, but for some reason I think he will.
Wow. Weaver really bent us over a couch on his way out.
I take this article with a shrug and a sigh. Season didn't go as well as we had hoped (though admittedly, double digit wins is actually better than my worst case scenario), everyone is drained, and some players know they aren't coming back next year one way or another. It took Seth a while to make us into a team that could beat the number one team in the country, and it'll take Buzz a while to make us into a team that can be in the running for the number one team in the country.
Yeah, but a whole lot of folks only realized during the last 3-4 months of his tenure at Tech tha Weaver suffered from Parkinsons, ignoring that he had it for SEVEN years prior, so they now feel sorry for him and try to paint him as a laudable financially prudent 'facilities guy'. Which conveniently ignores all of his deficiencies and how those still negatively impact our program.
He was an accountant who overstayed his welcome by three years. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't wish Parkinson on my worst enemy, but it doesn't change the fact that he came a gnat's eyelash from running our athletics program into the ground.
In regards to what Buzz did to prepare for VT
Contract -
Getting ready For ACC play
Watched every ACC game VT did not play in
Recruiting his next star player
@HokiesJournal
Buzz talking about 2015 recruiting class. Saw all but one Boo Williams AAU game this summer. Clarke, Robinson & Blackshear were top choices.
4:15 PM - 12 Nov 2014
All signed a LOI 11/2014
All are Top 25 players at there position
RECRUITING
(If I could make the letters dance I would have done that to)
VT Class rank
2012 87th
2013 63rd
2014 23rd
2015 20th
This site is exploding with the news on VT recruiting and the fact that some sites listed VT Football as a Top 20 NSD finish just sent it even further crazy. Football went from 26 in recruiting 2014 to 20ish in 2015 and its a whole new game?
YET
Basketball
Goes from 63rd to 20th and there's not even time for the new players to play an official game yet to already say its over
WTF mates
Well said. This is a process and there seems to be a lot of jumping off the ship when the 1st mate lit a cigarette and set the smoke detector off.
on a side note: this brought back great memories of my Winnie Cooper crush
Its hard to put any value in recruiting rankings for basketball. It's such a small sample size, it doesn't really tell you anything. And if you have attrition, like VT is wont to do, then what does it matter? 3 high ranking kids will become one kid in a year anyway.
My view on recruiting rankings (in any sport) is the higher our rank, the more likely the team is to have success. I'll take our 2015 class over our previous classes listed by jpole.
No offense to everyone above but reading anything negative into this seems like a huge stretch.
As French stated this seems like a poorly stringed together fluff piece with random quotes and information.
1) 2 players didn't walk through the snow to get to workouts. Yes, that's a discipline problem. Yes, I missed class not wanting to walking across the snow-filled drill field. Is that emblematic of a larger issue? No.
2) Chew says we aren't going to get All Americans at VT because there is no tradition. Is that wrong? No, its absolutely correct. VT has very little bball tradition. Even in our best of times we were not competitive enough to dance well or often. Looking at this statement as an indictment is way out of context, it's matter of fact. Nothing more. He is not wrong. We can't look to All Americans, we need those OKG's that built a program like Gonzaga out of mediocrity. However, we have Buzz who will draw his own level of talent despite the lack of history.
3) As was stated above by SevenLayersofPlayers, we are program building. That doesn't start with the foundation that starts by digging the hole for the foundation. You gotta dig out the loose soil to get to bedrock so you can lay the right foundation. That's this year. yeah, we had a lot of attrition. Yeah, players are tired of losing and having a rough end of season. None of that means anything more than what everyone should have expected: an incredibly difficult job.
Buzz seems like a pretty smart guy, does anyone think he came to VT, a program with very little history and tradition, and he didn't expect this in year 1, or worse? The entire premise of this article is presuming him an idiot for not understanding what he was getting into. A man that writes his own contract with a dream of building an ACC powerhouse program is not a dumb person.
Everyone needs to roll with the punches for a while. Rome wasn't built in a day and there are always more losses than you want/expect on the way to the top.
I don't think the article tries to portray Buzz as an idiot at all. I don't see where that is coming from, I think the article questions why he made the choice. There is a huge difference in the two.
As for trying to rationalize the players deciding to skip practice for such a (truly) Cavalier reason? I am amazed that anyone tries to rationalize that. Equating that to a non-scholarship athlete skipping class is absurd. That is an apples to lug nuts comparison.
It seems the general reaction to the program has been supportive of Buzz and patient (mostly) this season with the lack of success in the W-L column. The only frustration has been with the level of commitment by the players.
The article's title states that "many wonder why" and uses this quote to say that even Buzz doesn't know. This is definition of presumption.
Apples to Lug Nuts: The comparison is not me to them, or classes to workouts. It's to illustrate that just because they missed a workout it does not mean there is some systemic problem with player discipline. Using my class skipping is to illustrate that skipping said class was not emblematic of a larger issue with my studies. Try to be less amazed and reaching for hyperbolic absurdity to read less into the statements that are made, which is essentially my point about the article.
You seem to be reading as much into what the author wrote as you accuse me of doing with the comparison you made.
I wasn't exactly 'thrilled' with the article, but I saw it as more of an exercise in questioning Buzz's motive than anything. Some things I suppose I need to write so they will stop being misunderstood - Speaking of hyperbolic, I don't think there is a 'systemic problem with player discipline'. I do think it is possible at least a couple of the players have checked out for the season & will not play here next fall. Time will prove that one out. I also think Buzz knows exactly why he came to VT, he just didn't share it with the writer. The articlejust seems to be an continued exercise in what was done last spring - wonder why Buzz gave up a seemingly great job for such a seemingly inferior job. I don't take it as much of a slam on our program, because everyone should be able to admit our program is a massive rebuild job for the next couple of years. If this were 2018 and this article appeared, it would bother me. Now? Not much, except for the snow silliness.
Don't see how I am reading anything into what was written. The title is there to question why, the quote is there to answer that even Buzz doesn't know. That's exactly what the author wanted to do. propose the question then answer it by saying there is no reason, not even for the man himself, which is both presumptuous and dumb.
I agree with your second paragraph though. It's not a slam piece, it's a poorly written loosely put together piece. So in other words fluff. I wasn't saying the author said there was a 'systemic problem" as I stated in my first post my response is to those above reading that into the article, which they shouldn't.
The article seems to imply it was missed practice, but actually says skipped weight lifting, which is not even with Buzz, and is "optional" for the players. Yes, their commitment to the team and to getting better is judged by attending these work-outs, and if they are missed often by a player the player is not one I want to keep, but IMO this is a teaching perseverance moment, not a "get out" moment.
This whole thing about the workouts reminds me of Allen Iverson, except we aren't even talking about practice, we are talking about lifting. Not the game, not practice, but lifting? On a snow day? These kids have worked there butts off all year undermanned and actually competing and going through boot camp and we are going to get on them for missing lifting? Not even practice, but lifting. On a snow day. One time. Not the game, not practice. Lifting. The last week of the season, when your body is already worn out. And we are getting on these guys for not lifting once, on a snow day. Not practice, not a game, lifting.
Ok I should stop, but I think you guys get my point.
So - refusing to give full effort is not a problem? Ignoring coaching directions is no big deal? Blowing off the responsibilities of your athletic scholarship don't really matter? Because that seems like what you're saying.
NBA is one thing, college is totally different. Having members of the team just decide the weather would be a nice excuse to ignore their responsibilities would raise a firestorm on here. If it were football players.
since there is nothing left to play for, why have practices or scouting reports. Everyone should just show up to the games that are scheduled and have fun. Probably shouldn't even bother getting dressed, just wear the old PJs.
Too bad the sarcasm font isn't working.
You can't pick and choose when to give a shit when you have committed to other people or yourself!
Dang I remember having to cross that wind tunnel of a drill field at 0500 in the morning to get to War Memorial for PT from Upper Quad. That sucked. Isn't the players dorms basically right down the street from the practice facilities?? Weak sisters. That being said, I agree with someone above who said they are freshman and last year they would be happy because they would be out of school for that. Should Buzz discipline them for it?? Yes. Should they have scholarships revoked?? No way, unless it becomes a reoccurring theme.
I didnt' expect VT basketball to be that great this year. I don't think many did. I don't think they will be great next year....or the year after either. Should we see progress?? Yes. I have faith in Buzz.
unless they were in fact freshman you can live off campus and still be an athlete
This year has been full of 18 and 19 year old kids fresh out of high school where they were top dogs and didn't have to work to be the best. Now they come to a program with little tradition in hopes to making a change. They are pushed and stretched to their emotional and physical limits across a 31 game season by a Coach who is still settling in himself and demands 100% each day in practice and even more in games. After the Duke game there was an obvious focus and momentum loss from the players and complacency had settled in wanting this season to come to an end.
In the case of Virginia Tech Basketball, a mentality has set in and it is hard to break. There is no excuse for not finishing strong and allowing trivial obstacles like snow to stop you from finishing a goal. Buzz is going to do some great things but until there is some veteran players that have gone through the fire, learned to despise the bitter taste of losing, and expect the same effort from the younger guys just like their coach does then there are going to be more instances of this coming from young guys.
Right now we are on the wrong side of this great quote from a great coach:
Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all time thing. You don't win once in a while, you don't do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.
Vince Lombardi
Culture Change is in Progress.
Buzz is building his program and he is going to push this program to excellence.
During Greenberg's time this might have happened more than we know.
Missing a weightlifting session, I believe less players will be missing anything because of snow or a cold.
Buzz is going to get his players to win and as far as I can tell he is the best coach at VT since Charlie Moir.
So Buzz used WAPO for a public calling out of lazy players, although no names were mentioned. They know
who they are and I'm pretty sure the next snow storm they will find a way to the gym.
(There will be no more WAPO stories on topic - behavior corrected)
Blue Chip recruits, they are not necessary in College Basketball.
Its proven every year in March!
Coaching and players that execute and hustle beats better talent often.
No problem here - Continue with Culture Change. Go Buzz! Go Hokies!
I think some people have taken this post from me and inferred way more about what was said than was actually said.
I do think Buzz is going to turn this ship around. I originally thought it wouldn't take too overly long to do it, because basketball rosters turn over so fast that within 3 years we should be playing at a very high level. Unfortunately, I no longer think this is the case. There are systemic issues throughout the Virginia Tech athletic department that have allowed for the basketball program to stagnate to the level it has. Make no mistake, our administration allowed it to happen, and for that I'm not sure I will ever be able to forgive them.
We had momentum under Seth Greenberg. Over the period of 8 years from our couple years in the Big East to where we ended up in the ACC we had cultivated a basketball culture that, while it wasn't used to winning all the time, it knew how to pick itself up and routinely knock off top teams. That didn't happen overnight. It was a long and tiresome process by which he had to literally pick this program up off the floor and make it respectable. He had to fight tooth and nail to get the simple basic amenities to our program that our ACC peers. That practice facility was desperately needed to get us from standards that were mediocre on a high school level to something that is decent for an ACC level. Cassell still has issues with it to this day, and, while I could see it being acceptable for a program with a glorious history of playing in it, it just feels old and run down nowadays, and combined with a program that is multiple years running in the ACC basement with few wins to show for it... the overall feel when you combine the two is of a program that just doesn't care. (to be honest, just to rid ourselves of the "Virginia Tech doesn't care about basketball" reputation, I want to see Cassell replaced with a state of the art all purpose facility, but that's another discussion for another day) And he had to really fight to get our coaching salaries up from 'not awful' to 'decent but still on the very low end of ACC standards'. When he got his big raise after getting ACC Coach of the Year the first time, his salary went from worst in the ACC to I believe second worst in the ACC.
But with all of that going against us, we started to win games. We beat #1 UNC, we beat #1 Duke, we beat #1 Wake on the road. We knocked off numerous other ranked opponents. We got our first NCAA bid in a decade as a 5 seed. We hit a plateau as a team on the NCAA bubble where at the very worst, there was a pretty good chance that we were going to be in the NIT any given season. We were a program that routinely hit 20 wins over the course of the year. We had the foundation created for another coach to come in and build upon it and take us to the next level. With any foresight and any planning we avoid turning into the program we have become. But that didn't happen, the firing and replacement of Seth was absolutely bungled from everyone involved, we became a national punchline and we hired the first guy we could find for pennies on the dollar in hopes that it wouldn't get too bad.
My frustrations come from the fact that it really didn't have to be like this. We shouldn't be having to go through our 2nd legitimate from the ground up rebuild in 13 years. We should have been able to build upon the momentum we created the first time around. But we pissed it all away and now we're right back where we started. That's what gets me. We've already done this. We've already coached out the "I don't want to walk in the snow" mindset, and we shouldn't have to do it again.
Oh, and about that whole "we will never get an elite player here" thing that Chew said. Do I agree that we likely won't? Of course, I don't think we will. But don't admit it. Don't concede defeat before the process has even begun. We get ourselves playing to the level at which Marquette was playing before Buzz left and who knows, we might actually be attractive to those kinds of players.
Very well stated. Very well.
I thought at the time, and continue to believe, that one of the perverse twists in our basketball timeline was that Greenberg was somehow able to achieve his (near) highest level almost immediately. I'd have to re-check, but we beat Duke the 2nd time we played them (seems like), we beat UNC home & away, Duke home & away, beat Wake when they were #1. All of those things are fantasy dreams for anyone who grew up during the 70's/80's with the ACC on TV every Saturday.
All of that, and somehow we were denied NCAA bids (Hokie karma). We were actually winning enough to be in the top 3rd of the ACC, yet getting almost nothing in return.
Shuffle ahead to the end of Greenberg's era, when it went especially sour and the James Johnson era, when... let's just say that nothing improved. We won't even talk about the refusal to provide money for the programs under either coach.
Somehow, Weaver finally retired, Whit came in, and proved that he was all in on making Hokie athletics competitive across the board. yet we are once again rebuilding from literally about twenty feet below Ground Zero.
I'm reminded of the 50th anniversary of the Selma March, and the old song - 'We Shall Overcome'. It really would be nice to get to even, and not feel like we're paddling like crazy just to keep our noses above water. I think Whit provides us the foundation, and Buzz provides us the structure. I just want to see us all care about basketball and to succeed in it. Not even at an elite level, I'm not greedy. Just as a pretty regular NCAA tourney team, and top half ACC. That's all I ask.
warning: soapbox post
It depends on the level of success you are aiming for in those 3 years. Does your high level mean Final Four, going to the Dance or competing for ACC Championship? 3 years should be enough time for Buzz to bring the program into relevance and bidding for invitation to the dance. I wouldn't really expect much more than that and I wouldn't think any reasonable follower of VT college bball would either. That's already a hefty job to do given the state of things.
which issues are these? forgive me but you seem to think that VT went all in on basketball in the past, then pulled back and let it wallow until it withered and died, which couldn't be further from the truth. VT athletics was notoriously underfunded for a LONG time. Under David Braine we were able to bully our way into building a real football program that could achieve something like winning the 1995 Sugar Bowl. Braine fought tooth and nail to get that program established and kept Beamer in position during those early years with a eye to the future. he ultimately left because the school administration wouldn't pay him what he was worth and he left to GT for a 250k/year job from 100k I believe. Football built this school, not basketball, and nowhere before or after 1995 has basketball been a primary focus until now. We finally have gone all in for a coach that knows what it takes to win, plays by the rules, and is willing to work hard to build a program from scratch (or at least we all believe so). This is the first time that has EVER happened at VT. Nothing, not even our time with Seth, comes close to this. And to be fair to the school which saw football be successful in terms of tangible symbiotic success for the larger school, it was not that long ago. You can't build football and basketball at the same time and football, despite our run in 2000 and ten win seasons, under went massive growth and change. All costing tens of millions of dollars. So while you pout in the corner about "not ever forgiving them" I am exceedingly proud and jubilant at the department and where we are now. Sure I wish we had greater success earlier in basketball, but I have perspective to know where the school was financially, growth wise and strategically to understand why basketball has never been THE focus until now.
About Seth: Everything you said is one side of the story, of which always has two. Yeah, he fought tooth and nail but again he was at VT during a time when football was the priority and rightly so, and a directive from the school administration that the Athletic department be excruciatingly budget conscious which Weaver was. Yet, despite you blaming Weaver the practice facility and coaching salaries were delivered by none other than Weaver. Don't fool yourself into believing Seth somehow found a way to raise that money, get it approved by the school and board of regents. All Seth did was demand it, Weaver actually did it. I am by no means a huge Weaver fan, but give the man credit for what he actually did.
I agree completely on the bungling of the firing of Seth and Johnson hiring, but Seth didn't do himself any favors with the AD, school or alumni. If he really was the be all, end all then major boosters would never had let him go. So the foundation that you say was built was just as subverted by Seth's own ego as it was by an Athletic department and school not ready to invest full stop in building a basketball program.
Sure it sucks that we are back to square one essentially. The transition was a bumpy ride, but the "i'll never forgive you" school yard mentality is exactly what needs to go. It's not about "we shouldn't have to do it again". We are Virginia Tech. Blue collar, lunch pail, wake the fuck up in the morning and get to work Hokies. (And yes I wrote that ironically to my comment above about missing class because I didn't want to go out in the snow) You keep doing it every damn day until it's done right. So yeah, these kids didn't want to walk in the snow, and that's a mindset that we need to get past, but you don't cross your arms and get mad about it. You keep working and change it, no matter how many times it's been done before.
progress from before may have been "pissed away" for whatever reason, it was not just Weaver, but it's time to get past it. Focus on the here and now. Seth is gone. Weaver is gone. All the players from that time are gone. It's Whit and Buzz, and it's a real shot at program building. It takes time and it takes redoing some things that were done before, because either that foundation was never built properly or we want to build a completely different structure.
Your last paragraph is precisely what we should be focused on: Don't concede defeat before the process has even begun.
follow your own advice. Stop blaming and not forgiving things in the past. focus on the future.
EDIT: Not picking on Alum07, just this idea the VT was on it's way to bball dominance in the past and that we should all be pissing and moaning about it We weren't and we shouldn't be.
Great perspective. People tend to believe that progress (in anything) should always keep a positive slope. Not true - there are always ups and downs. No amount of Weaver-Hating will fix the problem we have now.
By no means was I even saying that.
I am saying that we were, as a program, at a level that had reached a plateau where another coach could have and should have been able to come in and improved upon. Would we be as good as UVa right now? Of course not, but we wouldn't be arguably the worst Power 5 program in the nation. With any foresight and any planning, we aren't in this mess right now. We needed to follow up the Greenberg regime with someone who could have taken a step forward, not handing the reigns over to someone who legitimately in over his head for the sake of saving money. What DIDN'T need to happen was to wait until the end of April, nearly 2 months after our final game, after the coaching carousel had run its course to make the decision, leaving us with no good candidates available, having to fall back on a coach with zero experience praying he can do the impossible in the toughest league in the sport.
And make no mistake, our basketball facilities when we first joined the ACC were embarrassingly bad. It wasn't that we had to spend all that to have top of the line facilities... No, we had to desperately revamp everything just to get up to the ACC standards. Our practice court was a horribly outdated dump in the basement of Cassell. It was so bad that kids who came from better high school or prep basketball programs actually had better facilities in prep and high school than they did at Tech. The Hann-Hurst Center was necessary at the time, and its telling Seth had to fight like he did to bring us up to the level he did for funding the program. Especially in a conference that is run by a basketball-first mentality. And then when you consider we had a 2-time ACC Coach of the Year making what I believe was the 2nd cheapest salary in the conference with no hope of a raise... it didn't really make us all that attractive of a destination for when the replacement happened.
I stick with what I said. Jim Weaver and the overly cheap mindset we had as an Athletic Department is the single biggest reason we are as bad of a program as we are right now.
ACC Coach of the Year isn't all it's cracked up to be. Other ACC Coaches of the Year include: Al Groh (2002, 2007), Dave Leitao (2007), and Mike London (2011).
but your perspective of the reality of why he was so cheap is skewed. Weaver wasn't Scrooge McDuck penny pinching with a vault full of gold, he was given directives to run a program the way he did. That starts at the top, above Weaver. And I am sure there are millions of valid reasons why that was the decision.
Also as I mentioned we were still in the midst of building a football program. Just because we went to the NC in 2000 didn't mean we were "established" by any means. We had massive facility upgrades, program upgrades, salary upgrades, conference upgrade, etc. Where is the money to do that AND build a basketball program that is going to be relevant at the same time?
Last point, Braine and Beamer had to prove to the school admin that a successful football program would improve the school at large, and deserve more funding. After Braine left he had to do the same with Weaver. It took a LONG time. The school had the same thought for basketball. We were close with Seth, and admittedly snubbed in selection, but we didn't have that magic run that brought the program to the forefront which that administration wanted to see. It's different now with Sands and Whit. Buzz is evidence of that. Is that fair to Seth or any coach before, probably not, but again it's not like VT had shown the willingness to go all in for basketball at any point beforehand or during Seth's tenure. And as I said, Seth didn't do himself any favors with the Athletic Department, School or Boosters.
Enough of the doom and gloom! Win the next 11 straight games and we are National Champs!
I think that would be 15 games...
There is only one way to go from dead last in the conference; so improvement is inevitable.
Buzz knows what he is doing, gotta get the guys that want to be here and work for it. I don't know if that will lead to a McDonalds All American committing, but were there a lot of those Blue Chippers going through Marquette when Buzz was there? I think getting "our-guys" is fine for now and see where it goes. People don't want perfection, just progress, and I think that will come with time.
I think Whit will give him a long leash because he knows what Buzz is capable of. I just hope the fanbase sets realistic expectations and can enjoy the year-over-year growth; which is coming.
I'm with you fellows.
Well it don't look like a one horse town,but try finding a decent pomade.
Blacksburg: Well aint this place a geographical oddity, 2
weeks from everywhereblocks from any barThe personal rancor reflected in this Topic I don't intend to dignify with a comment. But I would like to address everyone's general attitude of hopeless negativism. Consider the lilies of the goshdarned field or... hell! Take a look at Leonard here as your paradigm of hope!
Paterfamilias!
I don't like this WaPo article. From the article:
If this Kent Babb fellow used the google machine, he would have discovered this article by CBS's Gary Parrish.
It's obvious why he came to VT - He has the possibility to create a legacy. We have a brand name. We're not a traditional basketball powerhouse, but more people have heard of VT (due to football success) than have heard of Butler, Marquette, Gonzaga, or other mid-majors. Buzz believes it's a lot easier to build a basketball program from VT's football success than it is to keep a basketball program running at Marquette. If we can beat the best in the ACC, then we become the best in nation. If Buzz can repeat this season after season, then we could slowly become a traditional power.
TL;DR the initial challenge may be greater, but the potential reward is far higher at VT than at many other schools
I know why Buzz came to VT, and he personally said as much at the O&M Tour (Hokie Club golf outing) in Raleigh last year... He saw the writing on the wall about the big picture future of the NCAA. The Power 5 conferences are going to split away from everyone else, the Big East will be left in the rear view mirror, and he wanted to ensure himself a seat at the big boy table when it happened. He saw the opportunity to jump to the ACC and build a program as he sees fit, and he saw it as a good enough opportunity that he jumped at it. He knew full well that coming to VT was going to be a struggle, he knew he was going to have to start over from a roster standpoint, and he knew he had to rewrite the culture of VT. That being said, I'm not sure he knew just how bad things were at this point last year.
And that is why I'm okay with the strong possibility that Buzz will only be here 6-8 years. If he gets our program to where it needs to be, then I've no complaints.
Just looking forward, can't change the past.
Happy about snow thing, of course not.
However, I actually like Buzz's response.
I also like how Buzz is coaching this group of players. He puts them in postion to win games they had no business winning. He called the play from timeout to win the game in regulation against Duke, it was a beautiful open layup attempt that didn't get a foul call. Should have been the game. I feel good about Buzz's odds of changing the direction of the VT basketball program. To recognize that we can't pull down elite players at this point is just being realistic. Eventually we will get elite players, but that is not necessary to win. Coaching in college basketball is more important than the individual players. I also feel Seth G. could have done much better with the talent he assembled at VT. Just imagine if he wasn't so arrogant and gave Dell Curry's son a full ride. He might still be VTs coach, but I can't change that screw up. Moving forward with Buzz it's all we got.
Buzz is going to be living well over the next few seasons....
MOVED THE ODDS TO THEIR OWN POST.
I think Adam had the most to lose by venturing out, dude could easily get lost in a snow bank. Not sure about Mueller, I dunno if the German thing works for or against him here. He could be scared of Russians
On a side note, do you get to talk at your new radio digs? What shows do you work on?
I dunno... he probably forgot to bring a coat and had to turn back halfway there
I see what you did there, comrade.
Not sure if this was mentioned above but having OKG's instead ofMcDonald's All Americans has worked out OK for Buzz in the past. See: Jimmy Butler (not rated by Rivals), Wes Matthews (85th nationally Rivals, similar to Chris Clarke), Jae Crowder (3 star by Rivals).