WBB: Virginia Tech Women's Basketball Coach Dennis Wolff relieved of duties: National .. https://t.co/8RSDrSDsNV— HokieSports (@hokiesports) March 22, 2016
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WBB: Virginia Tech Women's Basketball Coach Dennis Wolff relieved of duties: National .. https://t.co/8RSDrSDsNV— HokieSports (@hokiesports) March 22, 2016
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I feel for Coach Wolff and his family. Wish them all the best.
Having said that first and foremost, I can't help but feel excited (and guilty for being excited) for the next major hire of the Whit Babcock era.
Soooo..... speaking of guilty excitements, baseball is next, right?
Looks that way. Giving up unearned runs seems to be a disappointing characteristic of this team.
I think that recruiting will have to be priority #1. The upgrades to English Field cement that Whit knows that we need better players.
For some reason, Pete Hughes managed to assemble and coach a team that hosted an NCAA regional well before any of those improvements came about. Just sayin.
You act like Virginia Tech pulled in great baseball recruits all the time with Pete Hughes which is just not the case. His best years all came with a large senior class with a group of them all going on to play professional baseball.
Yeah, and I'm honestly ok with baseball being consistently decent with the occasional stellar year. Plus, getting a bunch of guys who go on to the pros to play at VT is no small task. We just aren't set up to be consistently good at baseball here. As has been mentioned before, the losing coupled with how we've been losing (tons of errors) is what makes me long for the Hughes days again. I just don't see us getting beyond decent at any point with this staff.
Recruiting is #2 behind coaching. Errors are a lack of focus on fundamentals and that comes from coaching. Recruiting should see a boost just by having facilities on par with the middle of the ACC. Baseball needs a significant investment to win just because it hasn't gotten the necessary investment in a long time.
Whit certainly means business.
It's kind of crazy how much is changing around Virginia Tech athletics in Babcock's short time here. He's leaving no stone unturned and this is just the latest example.
via GIPHY
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I know three women's college coaches: Wolff, Arieemreraa and Staley.
I guess we should settle for Staley.
We need to give the interim coach a chance to earn the job. /s
Pretty sure JW would have considered hiring the intern to be the head coach.
I think during Jim Weaver's time, basketball recruits on campus visits were offered the job before moving up to candidates with head coaching experience.
Yeah, he may (or may not have) done some things well, but as far as hiring/firing coaches I'd give him a D+ or something like that. I thought he was a good AD who screwed up with Greenberg/JJ until I got perspective with Whit.
I thought Weaver was a decent to good AD if a bit tight with the wallet who screwed up majorly with Greenberg and hiring JJ.
I also feel bad for Coach Wolff. However, the goal is to be relevant in the ACC. He has ladies that are on their respective national teams and has had very little up tick in total team performance. In light of this firing, look out for baseball and softball changes in the near future.
You tryin' to start a ruckus?
Edit, somehow forgot to hit the reply tab. Meant this as a reply to cds7c's Staley suggestion. My bad.
Not a problem. I'm sure Whit has already pocketed a replacement.
Btw, did they make past the 2nd round?
No, they lost to Ohio 64-57 but that took a major 4th quarter comeback to make it look that close. Sidney Cook had a double double with 22 and 10. No one else's performance really jumps out at you.
So Bonnie Henrickson just coached UC-Santa Barbara to a 10 win improvement in her 1st season there. Took a team that won 2 games total to a team that went 8-8 in their conference. I think she can still coach.
When did she leave Kansas?
Fired on March 9, 2015 for failing to make Kansas a top team in the Big 12. The press conference basically revolved around "Bonnie is everything you want in a coach, but she isn't a winner, and we need a winner"
Like Mike Singletary, they want winners.
I'm sure they didn't enjoy going 0-18 in the Big XII this year,then.
UC-Satna Barbara... One of the most beautiful places on earth.
Best wishes and thanks to Coach Wolff & Co. Sounds like it was a purely professional move on everyone's part, and hopefully the parting was as amicable as possible. Never a good thing to have to let someone go, but I'm sure he'll land on his feet elsewhere and Whit will have us moving on up in ladies hoops soon enough.
With the previous trends of Whit, I expect an announcement about the hiring of Geno Auriemma any day now... /s
Short Stack has some names to watch.
If we could get Courtney Banghart (one of Fortune's 50 greatest leaders), Whit would probably be doing cartwheels.
It would really be something if we beat Princeton men's bball team in the NIT and then steal their great women's bball coach 2 weeks later.
Kind of like what Oklahoma did to us in baseball a few years back?...
Oh man. My wife, the JMU alum, will be very angry if Brooks were to leave for the VT job.
For the sake of my marriage, I hope Whit pursues someone else.
Kenny Brooks is a hero in Harrisonburg. Not sure what it would take for him to leave since he really loves his hometown... but he would be an outstanding hire for VT!
Agreed, Brooks would be solid.
Contrast this to Weaver's handling of the Greenberg firing.
We're in good hands, folks.
I know that I've been asking for his dismissal for a while now and altho it is sad when someone loses their job this way, I still think that it needed to happen. There was enough talent on that team to win many more games this year. I hope there is another Buzz out there, male or female, that Whit can land. I'm a proponent of recruiting good foreign players if we can't otherwise attract them here.
As for baseball and softball, they haven't been all that bad recently and softball has been pretty good since Angela Tincher's days. What has been lacking since her time has been pitchers of her quality. I'm meaning consistent pitching. We can have a no-hitter one day (Maggie Tyler) and then get blown out in 3 innings the next day. Scott Thomas is a decent coach IMHO.
Allow me to play a little devil's advocate here: Any time you're talking about a college sports team and your argument is in any way, shape, or form of "lacking players" then the blame goes straight to the head coach. They are, ultimately, in charge of recruiting and, more importantly, developing those key players that make their respective teams successful. I realize that there are certain limitations that may hamper a coach (recent lack of success, poor history at a school, etc) but my point still stands.
Ultimately, I think we have a ceiling under Thomas and that we've hit it. Now we're faced with either being content to make NCAA regionals but do nothing at them OR do we want to make a change that could, potentially, have us actually winning games in the post-season?
Last season ended on a horrific slide that was painful to watch and this season started off with much of the same. Granted, they seem to have righted the ship now that ACC play has started but when you're 7-2 in conference and STILL have a losing record.......
I was in Bridgewater a couple of years ago eating in a local restaurant and some big dudes were at the adjoining table. From their conversation, it became clear that at least one of them was connected to the JMU softball program. They were laughing about Thomas and the Hokies, seemed to think we were doomed to perpetual mediocrity, and generally lording it over our program. I was by myself, hungry, and not a scrapper anyway, then add in the fact that they seemed to know a ton more about it than I did, so, I ate and left. Did I also mention that they were big? Anyway, I was uncomfortable hearing the critique, it hurts to hear VT being joked about. I personally don't know enough to be able to evaluate what our program's issues might be, but those guys seemed to really like us having Thomas at the helm.
Hard to take a stand when the odds are overwhelming. Discretion is the better part of valor, my friend.
Its only since 2013 that the Dukes can really harp on being good in softball. They made a homerun hire by stealing Mickey Dean away from Radford. At Radford he went 241-116 as a head coach, and now at JMU he has done nothing but win more than 40 games a season every year. He won the CAA tournament in 2014.
He has taken them to the NCAA's every season he has been there as well but hasnt had much success once getting there. The Dukes are 3-6 in NCAA Regionals so far under Dean.
So far this season they are off to a 22-2 start so right in line with about 45-50 wins. He is 157-42 as the head coach at JMU so far since 2013. Tech is 120-80 since Dean took over at JMU.
Lets put some perspective on their record for this season at least if we are going to bring it up. Yes, they are 7-2 in ACC play. OOC they went 5-12. What was behind that kind of start? How about the 12 neutral game locations so far? and seven more on the road? 19 of 26 games away from Tech so far. Opponents in OOC include #1 Florida once, #2 Michigan three times, and #18 Minnesota twice. 6 of their 12 OOC losses to ranked teams. 3 more losses to P5 opponents.
The biggest thing to keep in mind is that the coach is essentially in year 2 of a total overhaul of the program because of graduations. There are four seniors this year, two juniors, seven sophomores, and seven freshmen. The top five hitters on this team this year are freshmen, four of them hitting over .300, only two of the Seniors are regular starters. Their best pinch hitter/bench player is also a freshmen who is also hitting over .300.
The pitching though is still a major concern. One senior having a pretty good season in Maggie Tyler but after that it drops off precipitously. The batting averages in conference are significantly higher in conference than out but the pitching remains the problem.
If he can identify even one or two quality pitchers the next year or two, he could easily have himself a NCAA competitive squad with the way the freshmen hit for this team
Keep in mind the last time baseball was good was under Coach Hughes with players like Chad Pinder, Joe Mantiply, and Tyler Horan.
Maybe Buzz can lead the women's team, too?
No distractions.
The women get their own excellent coach. Whit can make this happen.
Wolff was always an odd fit as HC at Tech after coaching men, then operations for Tech men, and finally operations. I always found him very interesting because the women's game is so much different whether coaching, recruiting, style of play and he is someone who had to adjust. Was always very open about the differences and never got the impression he was 100% sure he was going to pull it off.
FYI - always got the impression he was 'no frills' hard@ss, but that is only from seeing him speak at various Tech functions over the years. Pretty intimidating guy in my opinion.
Wish him well and interested to see which direction he heads.
Hoopdirt.com gave a few names to keep an eye on for this... If unaware of hoopdirt, the guy who runs hoopdirt is usually spot on when it comes to the rumors and potential names for jobs and movings on both the men's and women's side. He listed these 3 names to watch... http://whoopdirt.com/virginia-tech-search-update/
Katie Abrahamson-Henderson – Head Women's Basketball Coach – Albany
Kenny Brooks: Head Women's Basketball Coach – James Madison
Quentin Hillsman – Head Women's Basketball Coach – Syracuse
Only name that matches Berman's article is Brooks. Not saying Berman is off track, but if you want to follow a legit source that has their ears on jobs 24/7, I'm taking hoopdirt any day of the week.
Found it interesting that he has the SU coach listed. Not everyday that you see an in-conference move like that. But again, this info source is usually right on the money.
I don't see Hillsman leaving Syracuse. They were a four seed in the tournament this year and just stunned #1 seed South Carolina tonight to advance to the Elite Eight. Have to be a great sales job by Whit, even for his accolades so far.
Tablet duplication
It's been three days and we still haven't signed Geno Auriemma or Muffet McGraw, I am beginning to lose faith in Whit.
/SSSSS
I wouldn't be surprised to hear something soon.
#sauces pouring
His target must still be coaching...
http://www.richmond.com/sports/college/schools/virginia-tech/article_09c...
A really good move IMO