So the Bears just hired Kermit Davis..
- Thread starter fishwater99
- Start date
I don't no anything about MTSU, but somebody posted that he only started doing well at MTSU when he hit a string of years where he snagged grad transfers from major conferences who were all conference players in MTSU's league.
Hopefully he is dependent on that, because that won't be easy to replicate in a major conference.
OU, Kansas, and Duke have all taken transfers from MSU. Hell Lawrence Roberts and Shane Power were transfers. It's not that difficult.
Hes a good coach. Much better than AK. But hes also completely a "non fit" in oxford. More likely there will be a clash than him being overly successful.
If.....if they are patient and give him 6or7 yrs to slowly catch up to the rest of tge league and that clash doesnt seperate he could do a good job there. But hes gonna go after Memphis. If umemphis hires penny that plan wont work.
If.....if they are patient and give him 6or7 yrs to slowly catch up to the rest of tge league and that clash doesnt seperate he could do a good job there. But hes gonna go after Memphis. If umemphis hires penny that plan wont work.
My OM buds are less than happy with the BB hire. It's more than just hiring a 'former' MSU player. They lose ~5 seniors and their best recruit wants to bail. They were looking for a 'home run' and they think they hired more of a 'Rick Ray' kind of HC.
Right now there is a general 'malaise' over the ENTIRE OM AD and most blame Bjork. They think Luke was a mediocre, compromise hire (think MSU & Croom) and they will be stuck with him for a couple years. They are less than confident that anyone wants to coach their WBB team with Vic at MSU .. even their 'fabulous' softball team is sputtering. Most don't think their NCAA appeal will go anywhere and even the Rebel Rags suit looks bleak unless they are listening to Yancy.
Well, maybe at an SEC school he can recruit some decent players directly out of high school and not have to rely so heavily on transfers. But, as noted, finding good transfers is just part of the college game today.
I wonder what the loan sharks think about this?.....
A second generation bulldog largely raised in Vegas handed the keys to the rebel basketball program. I know what I would think if say Sean Tuohy became our basketball coach.
I can tell you this. He better get ready for each and every hiccup in his tenure to be met with copious references to his heritage.
He did get a two-year show cause at TAM which is probably what attracted the sharts to him.
A second generation bulldog largely raised in Vegas handed the keys to the rebel basketball program. I know what I would think if say Sean Tuohy became our basketball coach.
I can tell you this. He better get ready for each and every hiccup in his tenure to be met with copious references to his heritage.
He did get a two-year show cause at TAM which is probably what attracted the sharts to him.
Seriously? Go look at OMs success the last several years and you’ll see it’s becsuse of that same reason. Transfer players. He walked into the SEC version of MTSU. Marshall Henderson, Stephan Moody, Deandre Burnett. That’s just the ones I can think of that were their go to guys. “If you are transferring and want to play QB or basketball, Oxford is the place for you.” - some racist in a bow tie
Per 24/7 .. Sources indicate MTSU assistants Ronnie Hamilton and Win Case will follow Davis to Ole Miss. As reported by The Ole Miss Spirit earlier this week, former LSU head coach John Brady is a candidate to potentially join Davis in a consultant capacity. He will not come to Ole Miss as a full-time assistant, per a source familiar with Brady’s thinking.
Transfers are very hit or miss. For every Marshall Henderson and Stef Moody, there’s a Cullen Neal or Markel Crawford that didn’t live up to expectations.
Many of AK’s best players were transfers, but his over-reliance on them came back to haunt him his last couple of years.
I've got a bad feeling about this.
Not to be chicken little, but contrary to the opinion around here it seems, I expect Kermit to be somewhat successful over there, at least in gathering talent. He has been around successful recruiters and knows very well how the *ahem* game is played. He fits perfectly with a certain majority of their fanbase who wants to win at all costs.
Howland seems to be a much better X's and O's coach, at least historically. But this is going to cause us some problems on the recruiting trail, at least with Mississippi kids. Mark my words.
If Brady is really coming with him, the situation gets a little worse. If they get the old gang back together and add Kirby, we may have a problem.
Not to be chicken little, but contrary to the opinion around here it seems, I expect Kermit to be somewhat successful over there, at least in gathering talent. He has been around successful recruiters and knows very well how the *ahem* game is played. He fits perfectly with a certain majority of their fanbase who wants to win at all costs.
Howland seems to be a much better X's and O's coach, at least historically. But this is going to cause us some problems on the recruiting trail, at least with Mississippi kids. Mark my words.
If Brady is really coming with him, the situation gets a little worse. If they get the old gang back together and add Kirby, we may have a problem.
Brady is coming with him. CKD is bring 2 of his 3 primary MTSU assistants and Brady is apparently the 3rd.
I have watched 100s of CKD's games at MTSU and I honestly have no idea what change 7 years ago other than he hit on some amazing transfers and players that no SEC school wanted. He went 9 years winning 51% of his games against D1 schools, no wins versus P5 programs, and not even a division championship in the Sun Belt / C-USA. Then all of the sudden he's winning the conference, is 10-6 versus the SEC, and is regulary going to the NCAA/NIT. Maybe he knew he could turn Nick King and JaCorey Williams into C-USA players of the year in one season instead of the 5 ppg and 3.8 ppg players they were at Alabama and Arkansas.
I have no idea if his recruiting will translate at Ole Miss. I think the most telling thing about CKD is that most MT fans want Mark Fox as their next HC because they feel he will carry on CKD style and recruiting level.
A story told by my father..he's told it several times ...this is the short version but......My father used to be a vendor of sorts for SWCC. His work had to do with the gym floor, paint and some other stencil type things he would sell. He developed a relationship with coach and both were about the same age. Dad would catch several games a year while Kermit was there. He still talks very highly of coach....so this is not to discredit him........Dad said he was finishing up a check in with coach in his office when a player runs in after a practice and says "coach, toss me the trust bag"
Dad said Kermit reached in his desk, grabbed a bank bag and tossed it to the kid....without looking inside. The player opens it, takes two bills out....of unknown face....zipped the bag up and tossed it back on the desk.
Kermit explained to dad that he keeps 200$ cash in an envelope in his desk. The players were allowed to borrow money but they had to find a way to repay it. Most of his players couldn't afford shoes, let alone a night on the town with a date. Coach never cared who got what... but he expected his trust full at the end of the year. Dad asked him, had it ever been empty when he checked it?? Coach replied
"I've never had to check it"
Ole Miss got a hell of a guy. Welcome back, Coach.
Dad said Kermit reached in his desk, grabbed a bank bag and tossed it to the kid....without looking inside. The player opens it, takes two bills out....of unknown face....zipped the bag up and tossed it back on the desk.
Kermit explained to dad that he keeps 200$ cash in an envelope in his desk. The players were allowed to borrow money but they had to find a way to repay it. Most of his players couldn't afford shoes, let alone a night on the town with a date. Coach never cared who got what... but he expected his trust full at the end of the year. Dad asked him, had it ever been empty when he checked it?? Coach replied
"I've never had to check it"
Ole Miss got a hell of a guy. Welcome back, Coach.
You can make a pretty good living off of getting a few of the best Mississippi kids, then picking up a couple of transfers that work out. (See: Stans)
We have not had to worry about getting almost any MS player we wanted in - what - 25 years? Now we will.
We have not had to worry about getting almost any MS player we wanted in - what - 25 years? Now we will.
Little different finding first team all conference players through transfers in the SEC versus C-USA.
This year, Nick King, first team all conference and conference player of the year senior transfer who had been at Memphis and Alabama. Averaged 20 pts after averaging ~3, ~7, and ~3 his first three seasons in bigger conferences.
In 2017, MTSU had CUSA first teamer and conference player of the year Jacorey Williams, who had averaged ~5, 6, and 7 pts his first three seasons at Arkansas. He did have a second and third team representative that he recruited out of high school.
Can't find anything on 2016 or 2015 but he also had the conference player of the year in 2014, and that was a guy that was at MTSU all four years.
So definitely looks like the guy may have overplayed davis's reliance on transfers. yes, he's had them the last two years, but he also had some success prior to that. Also they had finished up two dominant years in the SunBelt and then moved to CUSA and finished either 1st, tied for 1st, or 2nd in four out of the next four years (and I guess CUSA was a step up in basketball conference? Really don't know). All-in-all, that looks like a much more promising hire than I thought.
At the time we "retired" Stansbury, Davis had one 20 win season since 1991, which happened to be the same season Stans was let go. He hadn't made a tournament since 91. That's 8, 13, 16, 17, 19, 16, 15, 17, 18, 19, 16, and finally a 27 win breakthrough season as a head coach. He didn't have the resume for it then. Neither did Rick Ray obviously and given hindsight Davis would have been better. That doesn't mean we should have given him the job though.
Now -- he's been awesome for 5 of the last 6 years. He obviously figured out the niche of how to win at MTSU after being given quadruple the amount of time he would have been given almost anywhere for the amount of winning he did for many seasons. I'm not sure that niche translates well to Ole Miss. We will see. He's obviously always been pretty good at the coaching aspect. But that's a really small piece of the puzzle.
I feel bad for Kermit outside of the career payday he’s getting. As someone has said, they lose a ton, current top players looking to transfer, and their top recruit just decomitted. They had the worst roster in the SEC this year and it’s about to get worse. They are now squarely in the cellar of the SEC. How is Kermit going to recruit with Penny to the north, Howland and Avery Johnson next door, and Arky back bring pretty good? It won’t be with help from Nike. He’ll have to depend on the transfer market which is exactly what AK did. Kermit essentially went .500 for 8 years at MTSU. Relative to their conference and competition, OM is a much harder job. It’s amazing how much Oxford and the beautiful campus help football recruiting and mean zero in basketball... OM has just committed itself to the SEC cellar for the long haul and it started when Vitter torpedo’d AK.
Ok. So no tournaments in 11 straight as a head guy -- is the guy people think we should have hired when Stans was let go? That's tantamount to saying we should have hired Brian Shoop when we ran Polk off. Just because the wrong guy was picked doesn't mean the slightly less wrong guy should have been picked.
I didn't want Kermit, Mike Davis, Dooley, Woods or Payne at the time but every single one of us woulda picked any of them over Ray. Again I ain't mad things turned out how they did as I am happy with Howland.
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