Yogi: I think you and I are on the same page here. Keatts is the best hire we have made since V was pushed out. I will kind of give Les a pass, and I could sort of see some thinking HWSNBN was an up and comer (we clearly picked the wrong Pitino assistant on that one).
Sid clearly was a bad hire. That was Fowler trying to buy some time before being run out of town on a rail. That was obvious at the time of the hire, and many of us on here were vocal about it. We had some good candidates in Marshall and Miller and then went with a “name.” I remember my conversation with Packi the day that hire was made and the best we could say was “at least Fowler won’t hire the next coach.”
With Gott it was clearly as bad as Sid. I knew when I found “the email” in my inbox that we were in dire straights. Then when we hired Gott with a Yow presser of “trust me and Gary got his revenge” all I could do was shake my head. I had followed Gott’s career at Alabama. It wasn’t just the antics off the court that got him fired mid-season. It was the incredibly inconsistent results within seasons, failure to seize the moment, lack of defense and overall .500 record in the SEC. A tiger doesn’t change its stripes, but I guess Yow really wanted to believe he had. I guess it looked like he may have for a season, but year two was a complete train wreck and he completely shut it down once we took him off that incentives based contract.
I bring all this up for a couple of reasons. It feels a little different this time. I actually have hope as opposed to just waiting to see how long it will take before it blows up. There’s also the cautionary piece which was the intent of the original post. Let’s be suppprtive but not get ahead of ourselves.
