Johnnie Harris

[preacher_dawg]

Do you think there would ever be a chance she would come back and be our coach if we start searching?

 

[pmack3641]

I think she would . Spent a number of years here plus being a head coach could be no brainer. Seriously doubt it happens though.

 

[patdog]

There's no doubt she'd come back tomorrow if we offered her the job. But from what I've heard, she's not head coaching material, and the fact she's not been offered any jobs that we're aware of seems to bear that out.

 

[dickiedawg]

We’re ready to run off one coach we hired with too little head coaching experience to hire one with none?

Whenever John pulls the plug on NMP, he’d better go hit a grand slam on the next hire.

 

[HamSammich]

And please, what would be a grand slam hire in women’s basketball?

Geno or Dawn isn’t coming here.

We had a great run and was so close to the top of the mountain but it’s over.

 

[Requiem For A Dawg]

I agree. Someone posted awhile back that there aren’t any great women’s basketball programs, there are only great coaches... and there aren’t many of them out there.

We lost our great coach. We caught lightning in a bottle with him. Time to move on from women’s basketball. It’s over.

 

[BiscuitEater]

Do you think there would ever be a chance she would come back and be our coach if we start searching?

Cohen gets unmitigated crap on here for the 'unproven' OC hire of Morehead and you think he should try a 21+ year career assistant without a single game as HC?

She's been passed over for HC jobs for decades! Why?

 

[thekimmer]

Maybe but not as high as it would have been last year.....

Do you think there would ever be a chance she would come back and be our coach if we start searching?

For a couple of reasons. On her part, she was obviously snubbed so she might justifiably question the confidence in her from a program that passed her up and concluded that she didn't have what it took. The other reason is our administration would be reticent to hire her because they would have to publicly eat crow by admitting they made a huge mistake.

With that said, I know with Johnnie we would not be getting anything different on paper than what we have now but it would be the closest thing we could do to try and recapture the culture we had here with Vic with the community relationship, hard-nosed defense, etc. Absolutely no guarantee that we would get that but at this point we are starting over anyway because what was built is now gone.

 

[Russ Wheeler]

And please, what would be a grand slam hire in women’s basketball?

Geno or Dawn isn’t coming here.

We had a great run and was so close to the top of the mountain but it’s over.

This. Had our chance in 2018 but we blew it. We had a nice moment in 2017 with the UConn win and could have capped it all off but now it will be just another nice memory for MSU athletics, rather than a crowning achievement.

People will say, "well 1985 spearheaded our baseball program!!!!", which I would return with "yeah well the coach stayed here too and really built something". Vic bailed.

 

[BiscuitEater]

On her part, she was obviously snubbed ..

I understood that she interviewed and came in third. That's NOT 'being obviously snubbed!' We hired someone with HC'ing experience over a career assistant.

 

[thekimmer]

I understood that she interviewed and came in third. That's NOT 'being obviously snubbed!' We hired someone with HC'ing experience over a career assistant.

I also see how it worked out for us. I know we hired HC experience but Johnnie wasn't just a career assistant. She was the career assistant for the person who built the program from nothing and was already in residence. I am not saying it wasn't done for legitimate reasons but it was nonetheless a snub. It's all a matter of opinion I suppose.

 

[maroonmadman]

You folks are just way too impatient. Although he had a winning record overall in his second season here, Vic was 5-11 in the SEC his first two years here. And even though Vic had head coaching experience he was 80-110 (.421 winning percentage) in that head coaching experience and went BACK to being an assistant head coach after he parted ways with Sam Houston St. Plus, several of our prized recruits bailed after Vic bailed. Give it some time folks. Vic was 13-17 his first season here.

Yeah I know, more facts and logic and ****. Suck it up.

 

[thekimmer]

You folks are just way too impatient. Although he had a winning record overall in his second season here, Vic was 5-11 in the SEC his first two years here. And even though Vic had head coaching experience he was 80-110 (.421 winning percentage) in that head coaching experience and went BACK to being an assistant head coach after he parted ways with Sam Houston St. Plus, several of our prized recruits bailed after Vic bailed. Give it some time folks. Vic was 13-17 his first season here.

Yeah I know, more facts and logic and ****. Suck it up.

Vic inherited a team that finished 15-16, 4-12 and pretty much kept them there in year 1. NMP inherited a team that went 27-6, 13-3 and let's just say she didn't keep them there. The team looked absolutely AWFUL. Patience is required when you have a bad program that you are trying to build into a good one not when you already have a good one and proceed to turn it into a bad one in ONE SEASON! Not to mention the social media stuff that she has a perfect right to do but fans have a perfect right to be turned off by it.

 

[maroonmania]

Do you think there would ever be a chance she would come back and be our coach if we start searching?

The biggest advantage to hiring her would have been to maintain the continuity of culture that Vic had set in place. That's lost now even if you brought her back. I'm just surprised that the one thing I thought Cohen would have been good at as an AD, hiring coaches, has turned out to be something he is not especially good at.

 

[RocketDawg]

We’re ready to run off one coach we hired with too little head coaching experience to hire one with none?

Whenever John pulls the plug on NMP, he’d better go hit a grand slam on the next hire.

Yes, absolutely on all accounts.

 

[G-Dawg]

The biggest advantage to hiring her would have been to maintain the continuity of culture that Vic had set in place. That's lost now even if you brought her back. I'm just surprised that the one thing I thought Cohen would have been good at as an AD, hiring coaches, has turned out to be something he is not especially good at.

Hiring Vic's assistant does not mean we get Vic's program. Johnnie Harris is a quality assistant coach. She is NOT a head coach. If she ever has a winning record as a head coach somewhere (even HS) I'll come back and eat crow. She only looks good now because of how bad this past season was.

 

[FlotownDawg]

Hiring the top assistant of the former successful coach doesn’t work much of the time. Just look at Tennessee. After Pat Summitt retired, they hired her top assistant who had been with her for over 20 years. She proceeded to drive the program down to the mediocrity which they now seem to be coming out of after firing her and hiring another coach. I guarantee that if Harris had been hired, many people on here would be bitching that it was a lazy hire that we hired a career assistant when we should have done a national search for a proven coach.

 

[MSUDC11]

I don’t think hiring Johnnie would’ve been the right move either. I just don’t know that she has the qualities that make a successful head coach. Fantastic assistant, just kinda think maybe that’s her ceiling though.

And honestly I don’t know that Cohen handled this search poorly at the time. He went after a big fish in Jeff Walz and it didn’t work out, so he pivoted to a rising young name in Nikki.

The problem is Cohen has this tendency to make hires that look good on paper but don’t fit in well with the existing culture of programs that already have a good culture in place. So here we are undergoing a rebuild of our most successful program in the last 5 years and it took less than a year to tear it all down.

 

[maroonmania]

Hiring Vic's assistant does not mean we get Vic's program. Johnnie Harris is a quality assistant coach. She is NOT a head coach. If she ever has a winning record as a head coach somewhere (even HS) I'll come back and eat crow. She only looks good now because of how bad this past season was.

You could be absolutely correct, I don't really know. All I know is that Vic keeps her as his top assistant and seems to lean on her a lot and she seems to be very well liked by the players. She would have been the best shot we had at keeping the culture Vic had put in place. Now whether she could have done that I don't know. But I'm just saying that now that we've hired another HC that is setting her own culture (good or bad) and likely going to turnover most of the roster, that is out the window as an option anyway. For me, the biggest plus in hiring JH is gone now because there would be no continuity between Schaefer and her. I just wish we would have given her a chance because if she couldn't keep the program rolling with the continuity of players and staff already here then we could have easily made a change after that. No way to get back to it now. Can't put the toothpaste back in the tube, its gone.

 

[Drebin]

Yes, absolutely on all accounts.

The time for a home run was when Vic left. I'm afraid this program becomes less and less attractive the further we get away from that.