New Assistant Coach

[Muddy River]

The last time IU hired a coach with an emphasis on "Diversity" it did not end well.  Hire the best regardless.  Also, I don't understand everyone's infatuation with "East Coast Connections".  It seems the East Coast kids that have come through here have an affinity for "Hero Ball" and end up being good/bad.  Think Troy and Devonte.  What east coast kid has ever made an impact at IU (I know about Vic, but that kid is an exception to almost every rule).

[IU Scott]

24 minutes ago, IUskim said:

Her? That would be intriguing. Would we be the first college team with a female assistant coach on the bench?

Pretty sure Pitino had a women assistant at UK

[IU Scott]

7 minutes ago, RoadToZion said:

The days when being white is a bad thing. 

What he is saying is that if all of your assistants are white it will really hurt recruiting

[FKIM01]

2 minutes ago, IU Scott said:

What he is saying is that if all of your assistants are white it will really hurt recruiting

...and I think that is a fair statement.  We'd all like to pretend that the world is colorblind, but it's not.  It shouldn't matter, but it does.

I like Mike Miller as a candidate here and I generally agree with taking the best available regardless of race, gender, etc., but I can't argue with needing some staff diversity.  It is what it is whether we like it or not.

[Billingsley99]

Carolyn Peck was an assistant for UK i thought

[IU Scott]

4 minutes ago, Billingsley99 said:

Carolyn Peck was an assistant for UK i thought

Bernadette Locke-Mattox (born December 31, 1958) is a former head coach of the University of Kentucky women's basketball. While at Kentucky in 1990, she became the first female to serve as assistant coach for a men's NCAA Division I basketball team, when she served under Rick Pitino.

[cybergates]

4 minutes ago, IU Scott said:

Bernadette Locke-Mattox (born December 31, 1958) is a former head coach of the University of Kentucky women's basketball. While at Kentucky in 1990, she became the first female to serve as assistant coach for a men's NCAA Division I basketball team, when she served under Rick Pitino.

Must resist temptation to make served under Pitino joke...

[dbmhoosier]

39 minutes ago, CoachSS said:

Indiana with 4 white coaches is an unmitigated disaster. 

Some people still think RMK kept Mike Davis on staff due to his coaching ability. 

[milehiiu]

4 minutes ago, dbmhoosier said:

Some people still think RMK kept Mike Davis on staff due to his coaching ability. 

Well Coach Davis did take us to a NC final game. Some... at the time argued it was not because of him....but rather the players and how the brackets shook down.

[dbmhoosier]

4 minutes ago, milehiiu said:

Well Coach Davis did take us to a NC final game. Some... at the time argued it was not because of him....but rather the players and how the brackets shook down.

JJ, Coverdale, and Fife took us there.  Not Mike Davis.  I'm pretty sure Mike is on record saying that Treloar did most of the coaching. 

[IU Scott]

1 minute ago, dbmhoosier said:

JJ, Coverdale, and Fife took us there.  Not Mike Davis.  I'm pretty sure Mike is on record saying that Treloar did most of the coaching. 

Davis let those players to play more relaxed and they played with way more freedom that they did under RMK.  I would bet big money that if RMK was still the coach they would not have made that run to the final game.

[Fiveoutofsix]

1 hour ago, CoachSS said:

Indiana doesn't have diversity on the staff with Bruiser leaving. He'll be replaced by an African-American. Super straightforward. Very easy to understand. 

And the right decision for the right reason.  

[CrimsonV]

1 hour ago, dbmhoosier said:

JJ, Coverdale, and Fife took us there.  Not Mike Davis.  I'm pretty sure Mike is on record saying that Treloar did most of the coaching. 

Every one of those players you mentioned above have talked about Mike Davis offensive coaching acumen. The guy could run some NBA style offense and we had the personnel to fit it.

[BobSaccamanno]

I think Knight would have been fine with the 2002 team but that can't be proven either way.  The problem with the late 1990s was that his staff didn't recruit the right kind of players.  They didn't fit.  This was coming off the early 1990s crew, which was fantastic.  Knight isn't an idiot.  He saw that he didn't have the right roster in the late 1990s and the focus changed in recruiting.  Moye, Jeffries, Fife and on and on, that crew loved Knight.  That team was mentally tough and would have been good with Knight.  It's nothing more than an exercise in alternate history.  Just my opinions, of course.  

[addictedtoIU]

2 hours ago, RoadToZion said:

Can you imagine what would happen if IU's golf team said that they would only hire a white assistant golf coach? 

The thing is they're not going to say that even if there are evidences. For IU basketball, a young African American assistant coach makes whole lot of sense to me. Hopefully no one here would take this as some sort of reverse racism because it's not. We can see it as a diversity, and truthfully, it's not that African-American student athletes like their African-American head coaches (or assistant coaches) more than their White head coaches (or assistant coaches). It's simply because 'culturally' African-American student athletes can find more common aspects from African-American coaches. I just see it as a bit higher level of comfort. Hope this makes sense. 

[Seeking6]

2 hours ago, CoachSS said:

Indiana with 4 white coaches is an unmitigated disaster. 

Thanks for saying this. I've been thinking this for months but didn't want to go down that path. IU absolutely needs a young, up and coming African-American preferably from fertile recruiting grounds. Just makes sense.

[cybergates]

2 hours ago, CoachSS said:

Indiana with 4 white coaches is an unmitigated disaster. 

Legit question is Tom Ostrom white?

[Muddy River]

4 minutes ago, addictedtoIU said:

 It's simply because 'culturally' African-American student athletes can find more common aspects from African-American coaches. I just see it as a bit higher level of comfort. Hope this makes sense. 

So, as an employer it's OK for me to only hire whites because we are more culturally similar and we will be more comfortable with each other?  How is that anything but racism?  I get what everyone is saying, but the elephant in the room is that the idea we would make skin color a prerequisite in hiring a coach is racist at its core.

 

[dbmhoosier]

You hire the best person for the job.  Period.  In this case the best person for the job is a black man.

[Hoosierhoopster]

^^ You guys are walking the line into socially divisive and political topics. This isn't a board for race relations discussion. 

General comments about it being good to have diversity on your coaching staff (that falls into the category of clearly obvious), ok. Getting into the only hire whites as an employer and racisim, no -- time to stop the extension of this discussion here.

[dbmhoosier]

9 minutes ago, Hoosierhoopster said:

^^ You guys are walking the line into socially divisive and political topics. This isn't a board for race relations discussion. 

General comments about it being good to have diversity on your coaching staff (that falls into the category of clearly obvious), ok. Getting into the only hire whites as an employer and racisim, no -- time to stop the extension of this discussion here.

Here's a better way to phrase it.   If you take the top 10-15 programs in the nation currently, how many have an all white staff?  I don't have the answer but I'll guess zero.

[addictedtoIU]

2 minutes ago, Muddy River said:

So, as an employer it's OK for me to only hire whites because we are more culturally similar and we will be more comfortable with each other?  How is that anything but racism?  I get what everyone is saying, but the elephant in the room is that the idea we would make skin color a prerequisite in hiring a coach is racist at its core.

 

The main difference is a college basketball team is not a for-profit company even thought IU basketball makes a lot of money for IU. If you're the big boss of a company and you feel more comfortable around white colleagues, I think you can make that choice and only hire white people; it doesn't make things right, but at the same time, it's not wrong either. Let me ask you. Is 'diversity' a must in every organization? Does everyone have to pursue 'diversity' for diversity's sake in every situation? I don't feel it that way. 

Why does IU men's basketball need an African-American coach? That's because it's hugely beneficial for the program. It's because our team (student athletes) is diverse. Coaches exist and they have their jobs and make tons of money BECAUSE there are student athletes. Let's face reality. Can any good college basketball program run their program without the aspect of 'diversity' in student athletes? 

 

[Hoosierhoopster]

1 minute ago, dbmhoosier said:

Here's a better way to phrase it.   If you take the top 10-15 programs in the nation currently, how many have an all white staff?  I don't have the answer but I'll guess zero.

Should fall into the category of captain obvious. 

This is just one of those conversations that spills into today's socially divisive racial conversation. 

Look guys, if you don't get it's a good idea to have diversity on your basketball coaching staff, I don't know what to tell you. That should be as obvious as obvious gets. 

But let's not go down the rabbit hole of racially focused conversation. This isn't the board for that.

[btroesch14]

I don’t want to burst some of your bubbles and hurt your feelings, but somebody is going to have to say it. 

-The new assistant will be a POC. Young black men aren’t going to go to a place where there is no one they can relate to (in life and personal experiences) on the coaching staff. 
-Dane Fife is NEVER going to be an assistant at IU. He could be the head coach at MSU once Izzo retires and the only way he returns to IU is as a head coach. 
- Michael Lewis will not be our next assistant as he is white. 
-AJ Guyton was an assistant at Loyola Maryland for the 18-19 season and that is it. He doesn’t have the required recruiting connections and many other coaching abilities. Just because he could put the ball through the basket doesn’t mean he is a good coach. 
-AJ Moye is a basketball trainer in California. Archie and IU are not going to hire a guy that has never been a college assistant coach. 
-Mike Miller just resigned from being an assistant at Memphis. He is not going to IU, he doesn’t need the money, and recruiting is very stressful and takes a lot of time away from family and friends. 
- See the Mike Miller points stated above for the reasons as to why Calbert Cheaney won’t be the next assistant at IU. 
-I don’t have any sources or anybody in my ear telling me this. This is common knowledge on how college basketball and recruiting work, especially at a high major program. 
 

As for who the next assistant coach will be. I am going to throw out some names that have been mentioned. I have no clue if one of these people will be hired. 

-David Ragland (Utah State)

-Jamall Walker (Grand Canyon)

-Jonas Hayes (Xavier)

-Brandin Knight (Rutgers)

-Christian Webster (Virginia Tech)

-Allen Griffin (Syracuse)

[IU Scott]

51 minutes ago, BobSaccamanno said:

I think Knight would have been fine with the 2002 team but that can't be proven either way.  The problem with the late 1990s was that his staff didn't recruit the right kind of players.  They didn't fit.  This was coming off the early 1990s crew, which was fantastic.  Knight isn't an idiot.  He saw that he didn't have the right roster in the late 1990s and the focus changed in recruiting.  Moye, Jeffries, Fife and on and on, that crew loved Knight.  That team was mentally tough and would have been good with Knight.  It's nothing more than an exercise in alternate history.  Just my opinions, of course.  

During all of this down time I have watched a lot of old games and the era I have trouble watching was like the 96-98 teams.  You had like 3 or 4 high school AA Patterson, Reed, Recker, Collier and players like Guyton and Miller but it was just not a fun team to watch.   The other one was 04-05 which is the Bracey wright years after Coverdale and Newton left.