Gonebarongone wrote: ↑3 years ago
sf2010 wrote: ↑3 years ago
I never understood the intense hate Jermaine received here. Well, I "understood" it - people were very disappointed he didn't live up to his recruiting hype. That said, it really went overboard IMO.
Good luck Jermaine - I was pumped when he came here, unfortunate that injuries happened and he stagnated in his development.
I think, if we are being honest, 90% of the people who wanted Cox hired were just worried about that class, in particular, not cutting bait. Along with roster continuity, in general. That has blown up in spectacular fashion. The 2020, 21, 22 classes are not great and he is trying to live off the transfer portal. Maybe that works in the new era of college basketball but I still think the best path for URI will remain evaluating and developing four year guys. And then adding the transfers as the finishing pieces of a very good team. That is before we even get into his ability to game plan and coach an actual basketball game. Disaster.
It was less about the class, and more about the continuation of the culture, style of play, and everything else that Hurley brought to this program.
At the time, you would've assumed an assistant coach with 2 decades of experience in power programs under coaches with a great pedigree, a solid recruiting history, and 4 full seasons under Hurley to see how you build/sustain a program - would be the right guy for the job. Cox deserved the shot. So much so that it was written into his contract that we would've had to pay him $500k if we didn't hire him as head coach. He was the defacto coach-in-waiting.
It was right to give him a shot for all reasons above. The program was the highest it had been in decades and we had the highest rated recruiting class coming in school history. Heavily influenced by Cox. You certainly weren't at a point in the program where you start over, you were at the point where you want to become Xavier/VCU/Dayton and continually swap coaches who helped sustain a strong program.
Everything lined up perfectly. You can't predict the future, you just go with the information you had at the time. Obviously Pitino would've worked out too, but hindsight is 20/20.
Cox has had every opportunity, every chance and squandered them so far. He is yet to identify or correct mistakes in his preparation, game planning, scouting, philosophy, player development, retention, in-game coaching, and hiring of his staff. If we are not a winner this year, than Cox should not be the coach next year. That's pretty fair. Likewise, if we have a great season and go dancing - than great, Cox figured it out just in time and was the right guy all along.
Now, to be fair - that 2018 class was equal part hit/miss with talent -but we'll never know how much of that was on a lack of proper development (Harris), lack of proper discipline (Tate), or a lack of good coaching to the extent that you lost the best player in that class to a better coach (Martin).
One issue that has been a constant theme around the roster in the last 3 seasons is an inability to identify players out of high school that can play at the A-10 level, which started when Cox grabbed Silverio to replace Brendan Adams.
2019's class of Mading and Hammond (and the greek lol) missed the mark in the talent department. Long looked like he could be a serviceable bench/glue piece had he been able to stay engaged. Toppin again was the same issue as Martin in not believing this coach could get him or his team where he wanted to go.
Our roster has been a complete mess with zero continuity since 2018. We were losing players before the transfer rule. For a fan base who claimed "gelling" was a problem last year, how many more roster overhauls do we need to see before we can make a judgement?