We’ve been talking for a while about the correlation between the recent deterioration of the quality of Atlantic Coast Conference Basketball and the weak set of coaches in the league.
With Gary Williams’ surprise retirement, the ACC lost one of the best coaches the conference will ever see; but, on the other hand, we lose a coach whose program had clearly stagnated and was not helping add to performance production for the conference’s national reputation.
Williams’ departure means that eight of the ACC’s twelve coaching jobs have turned over in the last three off-seasons and seven of those eight have happened in 2010 and 2011. WRAL summarized the list in this link
Since March of 2009 there have been eight head coaching changes in the ACC, an astonishing amount or turnover to take place in two years and a month.
Here’s how it all changed:
1. Tony Bennett, named head coach at UVA on March 31, 2009, replaced Dave Leiitao.
2. Steve Donahue, named head coach at BC on April 6, 2010, replaced Al Skinner.
3. Brad Brownell, named head coach at Clemson on April 13, 2010, replaced Oliver Purnell.
4. Jeff Bzdelik, named head coach at Wake Forest on April 13, 2010, replaced Dino Guadio.
5. Brian Gregory, named head coahc at GT on March 28, 2011, replaced Paul Hewitt.
6. Mark Gottfried, named head coach at NCSU on April 5, 2011, replaced Sidney Lowe.
7. Jim Larranaga, named head coach at Miami on April 22, 2011, replaced Frank Haith.
8. ???????? replaces Gary Williams at Maryland.
The Maryland transition will be interesting for all fans to watch – particularly for NC State fans – as the media will most surely proclaim Maryland a significantly better ‘program’ than NC State despite NC State’s better facilities; more attractive geographic location; similar academics; larger fan base and more successful tradition. I’m thinking that Maryland is like every other school in the ACC EXCEPT NC State — for some reason the media doesn’t seem to think that they ‘compete with Duke and UNC’ like NC State does.
I know that everyone is interested…but, a couple of our long time message board members posted the news yesterday, “Herb Sendek has withdrawn his name from consideration.” That was a good one.
We’re going to have more topical blogging coming your way…but, in the meantime, our message forums available here have dozens of current topics that would be of interest to you.
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