#HokieNation welcome Kenny Brooks as your next head women's basketball coach!#WelcomeHome pic.twitter.com/rflut9zmnV— HokieSports (@hokiesports) March 28, 2016
http://www.hokiesports.com/wbasketball/recaps/20160328aaa.html
The 47-year-old Brooks joins the Hokies after an impressive 14-season stint as head coach at James Madison University where he compiled a record of 337-122 (.756), making him the winningest coach in that school's history. Brooks guided the Dukes to 11 consecutive postseason appearances, including six NCAA bids and five trips to the WNIT. Under his direction this past season, JMU compiled a 27-6 record, including a 17-1 mark in conference play, as the Dukes made a third straight trip to the NCAA tournament.
"I'm confident that Kenny's competitive spirit will help elevate our program, while upholding the values we live and embrace at Virginia Tech," Babcock continued. "As a lifelong Virginian, Kenny possesses an appreciation for the passion of Virginia Tech fans, and is highly-respected in the basketball community. In our opinion, he's clearly the right individual to lead our women's basketball program into the future. He's the ideal fit."
Over the past 11 seasons at JMU, Brooks' squads have never won fewer than 24 games, averaging 26.3 wins per year over that span. The Dukes have won the past three Colonial Athletic Association championships under Brooks' tutelage and have captured five conference titles over the past seven seasons. He was named CAA Coach of the Year for a fourth time in 2015-16, while his student-athletes also garnered CAA Player and Rookie of the Year honors.
Coach Brooks sounds like he has an excellent track record, and we know he was high on Whit's list, probably his #1 choice. Welcome to Hokie Nation, Coach Brooks and family!
Comments
The best part is he kind of looks like a young Whit Babcock.
This is a great hire.
But damn, my wife (the JMU alum) is going to be so mad about this... Thanks Whit, thanks a bunch. /s
Or, as Whit probably calls it, a pretty typical Monday at the office.
Little known fact: That was actually a direct quote from Whit Babcock, it's just none of us Hokies knew who he was at the time.
A follow-up:
When my wife heard the news about Kenny Brooks, she texted me "I don't walk to talk about this later. Just FYI."
So I got off pretty easy... for now, at least.
Don't buy it. Buy flowers, candy, whatever, but don't buy it, you WILL be passively aggressively compelled to talk about this later. Be prepared, bow your head to hide your smile, shuffle your feet and remember the most important two words in any functional marriage..."yes dear". G'luck. (43 years of experience, no disrespect intended toward your certainly most excellent spouse.)
Ha, appreciate the advice!
She knows she'll always be able to hold 21-16 over me though... she's extremely supportive of my Hokie fandom, but it's pretty much the only thing she ever needs to shut me up talking about VT.
One spot does not the apple spoil.
Whit is awesome! Dude's going to have this athletic department humming in a few years and that is really impressive. He is outstanding!
FTFY
OK, so assuming the "two years to make an impact" rule that always gets thrown out there, that means in the 2017-2018 school year we will be winning or competing for the ACC title in wrastlin, football, men's bball, and women's bball. Did I miss any?
Are we still good at bass fishing?
you bet your sweet bass we are
Women's soccer, men's golf, and swimming and diving
Women' Soccer is tied with Wrestling for our best chance to win a national title in the immediate future. Ended the 2015 season #13 in the nation, though 4 ACC schools finished higher, including UVA, and Duke's loss in the title game.
Men's Tennis is lookin on the up and up
Sounds like a fantastic hire. Whit seems to be moving us towards being nationally relevant in every sport possible.
I'm amazed at how fast Whit turns all these hires around.
Sounds like a good hire.
Let's back up a second for those of us out of the loop. What happened to the old coach? Fired, retired, or found a new job?
http://www.thekeyplay.com/content/2016/march/22/womens-basketball-coach-...
So what sport is next? Baseball?
EDIT: So out of curiosity, I took a look at other Weaver hires with overall records below .500 and here were the 3 that kind of stood out to me:
Men's Soccer: Mike Brizendine - 8 Seasons (37-73-18)
Baseball: Pat mason - 3 seasons (58-73-1)
Women's Lacrosse: Megan Burker - 6 seasons (46-53)
Seeing as Whit is an ex-baseball player and now with the renaming ($$$) of the Baseball stadium, I would think its safe to say that Whit will expect an improvement from that program or a change will come soon.
Woman's Lacrosse is going to be hard to win the ACC in, 7 of the top 20 teams are in the ACC.
All the more reason a top coach would want to come here.
Top competition
AD willing to compete
Rabid fan base
Am I missing something?
Yea don't know about that one.
Going to disagree that it is wise to spend the resources needed on it at this point.
WBball at least can come close to being neutral when it comes to revenue/expenses, but as has been well debated VT is working with a smaller budget than peer schools like Clemson, and we need to be aware of that and not stretch thin.
Would much rather accept so-so performance in some of the teams, and perhaps expand the non coaching football staff for instance. We don't have the money to be world class in all sports and it is important to target those we can be.
I like the WBball hire but there needs to be an upper price tag too that Whit had in mind, so long as Scar, ND, UConn, et al. continue to field teams sustained national success is pretty much not in the cards for us in the sport.
Would Whit necessarily want make AS big moves (I'm still expecting him to make big moves regardless) in these sports seeing as they don't bring in any ticket revenue like women's basketball does?
Coach Briz is a great, great guy, but he's 7-40-12 in the ACC, so I'd expect he's next.
I would say Briz is next too. He has been there for a while with little success. He also has a very high turnover rate of players. Usually losing at least a few non seniors each spring and fall season. Great guy though off the field. Has rubbed quite a few players the wrong way on the field though.
welcome to the good guys!
From his record, it looks obvious to me that the dude can relate to female student athletes, he can recruit, he can develop the talent, he can win and even more so is that Whit hired him, so, yeah, I'm feelin' a bucket full of fully dipped dork magic served over your choice of pie or cake!
We lost a big scorer in Hannah Young plus our two bigs, Campbell and Powell and our two signees for 2016 are a 5'7" PG (ESPN 100) and a 5'10" G. One big, 6'9", is considering us. So our inside needs would seem to be a priority. Magarity at 6'3" could be one option and maybe he can get more out of Nahodil at 6'4".
Well the #1 women's recruit in the country is in Richmond... time to get to work on those recruiting skills! :)
http://espn.go.com/high-school/girls-basketball/recruiting/player/_/id/1...
Kenny is a great coach. Ironically, his oldest daughter who just won a state BB championship as a high school senior, will be playing for JMU next year.
Committed or already enrolled? Cause that could change.
Signed NLI, graduates in June.
http://jmusports.com/news/2015/11/11/WBB_1111155804.aspx?path=wbball
If its anything like mens bball, she can ask for a release from the NLI due to a coaching change. They may not grant her a release to VT though.
According to @Ladyswish on Twitter, Kendyl says she will be moving with him.
Can't embed the tweet since work has Twitter firewalled, unfortunately.
Thanks Fireman!
And another thank you to Whit.
He's playing chess, while the others are playing checkers.
Hopefully Brooks brings Precious Hall along with him from JMU. Hall was the 2015 CAA Player of the Year as a Junior and sat out the 2015-16 season due to injuries. Assuming Hall will graduate this spring, she could transfer to Tech and play immediately next season under NCAA graduate transfer rules.
How does a team find room/schollies for players like Hall? We're losing only 3 seniors & have 2 signed. If his daughter comes, that makes 3. Not really up on the rules.
Walk on for first year would be my guess.
Brook's daughter should be a walk on. He can afford the tuition now.
Attrition also often plays into any situation where there is a coaching change. Look on the men's side-- Emelogu, Kirby, Thompson, Wood, and Barksdale all had eligibility left when Buzz was hired but never played for him (for various reasons). JVZ only made it through a partial season before transferring. Mueller and Smith transferred out after 1 season with eligibility remaining. In Year 2 of Buzzketball, I'm pretty sure Devin Wilson was the only remaining scholarship player from when Buzz took over.
Whit is opening up that checkbook man!!
The best part is, he's not even opening up his own checkbook. Carilion is prety much paying for this.
Stop me if you've heard this before: Whit is really freakin' good at his job.
....stop ?
Next thing you know, somebody'll start a "Is Whit leaving for (wherever)?" thread.
Seriously though, HokieFireman, don't you dare.
I mean the USCw job is opening up.
Here's the thing, though... He is from this area and all of his family is here. He's sitting on a relatively low pressure job with incredibly low expectations (one title in any sport and he's a god here) with legitimate potential to be a national big brand name program with the success that brings. At places like USC, yes there are more resources but if he goes 10 years and that football program doesn't win a crystal ball, it doesn't matter how anything else is doing, he's getting fired.
Why would you move away from family for that? I think he's with us for the long haul.
From Mark Berman:
(Lefty) Driesell and (Kenny) Brooks talk frequently. Brooks called Driesell last Thursday for some advice about whether to leave JMU for Tech.
"I said, 'Go for it. Don't even think about it,' " Driesell said. "I told him, 'You'll love Virginia Tech.' "
I think we all get that!