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Fire McDevitt

sWiley

sWiley

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Jul 25, 2012
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We've seen enough. Not interested in giving all the reasons why he needs to go, I would say most are painfully obvious by this point. Put simply, he doesn't have the chops to recruit or coach at this level. He's had ample time to prove his worth and has not done so. I appreciate his time and efforts here, I really do. He seems like a nice guy and all that but his teams just have not been good.

There's a great coaching candidate out there who is a proven winner at our level....in fact he won and won big when he was coaching for us. Kermit Davis.

Let's go get'em
 
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This was the first thread I saw when I logged on. Is it safe to assume we lost to Illinois-Chicago???😂😂
At least they are a Missouri Valley Conf. school and not some Carolina directional school.
 
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FranklinRaider315 said:
This was the first thread I saw when I logged on. Is it safe to assume we lost to Illinois-Chicago???😂😂
At least they are a Missouri Valley Conf. school and not some Carolina directional school.
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Lost by 30.......as a 3.5 point favorite.......

I have followed MT athletics for approaching 20 years....We've never lost by 30 while simultaneously being favored to win the game. That is unspeakably bad. Takes effort to be that bad.

I was suspect of this team because I know how poorly McDevitt's teams have played away from the Murphy Center.....but my god....I didn't think they would be THIS fragile.
 
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He needs to go. His "system" of having terrible post players and guards that all they can do is be tall does not work here.
 
sWiley said:
Lost by 30.......as a 3.5 point favorite.......

I have followed MT athletics for approaching 20 years....We've never lost by 30 while simultaneously being favored to win the game. That is unspeakably bad. Takes effort to be that bad.

I was suspect of this team because I know how poorly McDevitt's teams have played away from the Murphy Center.....but my god....I didn't think they would be THIS fragile.
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3.5 point favorite. Lost by 30.

Last night I watched an older movie called The Gambler. Mark Wahlberg. Star basketball player was convinced to manipulate the spread. I think this happens all the time.
 
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I honestly haven’t paid any attention to this holiday tournament since the Blue Raiders lost to UAB last Sat.
I googled the field this morning and just shake my head. Free Thanksgiving Family Reunion for you know who???

”Action starts Friday, Nov. 24 with the following matchups:
  • UNC Greensboro vs. Kansas City – 11 a.m. ET
  • Brown vs. Delaware – 1:30 p.m.
  • Middle Tennessee vs. UIC – 4:30 p.m.
  • Ohio vs. George Washington – 7 p.m.
 
This is an old thread from November, but just wanted to point out that Ohio St just fired head basketball coach Chris Holtmann for having only a 14-11 record.
 
They're also on the hook for 13 million for his buyout. Idk what McDevitt's is, but not a good comparison. I realize this is gonna be an unpopular opinion, but the guy did just win 45 games the last 2 seasons. My guess is that bought him some goodwill inside the department
 
MidTennFootball said:
They're also on the hook for 13 million for his buyout. Idk what McDevitt's is, but not a good comparison. I realize this is gonna be an unpopular opinion, but the guy did just win 45 games the last 2 seasons. My guess is that bought him some goodwill inside the department
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McD's buyout (not counting staff) is around $300k. And your point is valid that he did win 45 games in two seasons. But by the same token if he loses one more we are guaranteed a losing regular season. Assuming one and done in the tourney, that's 4 losing seasons in 6yrs with an overall losing record and conference record. Goodwill or not, that is unacceptable in my book. I have no ill will towards him. I don't know him. But strictly from a win/loss perspective, it is horrible.
 
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He had one good season here with four out of six being losing seasons. And in the one good season he did have the exact same broader problems that have plagued his teams also existed even in the one year he had good players that masked his coaching flaws. This is evidenced by his 0-7 record that season against Top 100 opponents in the RPI.

There isn't a single thing different between his first year here and his sixth. The deficiencies are glaring and obvious. No, he has not done anything to earn goodwill (at least that shouldn't have happened). The key question I presented on this board after being surprised at the one good season he had was whether or not he could follow it up. And he didn't follow it up. He went 17-14 against D1 opposition the following year, which included a record of 12-7 against Quad 3 and 4 opponents. And three of those were Quad 4. MT should never lose to a Quad 4. Ever. Not given how much we pay the coach and put into the program.

It's not like the schedule was hard this year. Yet, he has managed to go 7-11 against Quad 3/4 with four of those Quad 4 losses. That's not because we lost Cam Weston!!

I pointed out my concerns before he coached a game. He did nothing in the first two years except coach right into the concerns. Each year he's been here there have been serious flaws - which some of us have pointed out to the point it became unnecessarily repetitive and boring - and why he shouldn't be retained. He should have never even gotten a fourth year. He wouldn't have gotten a third if I were AD. And he damn sure doesn't deserve a seventh.
 
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Since reg season is over, thought I'd give a summary here. It appears we will be a 7 seed vs LaT in the tourney, so I'm going to assume one and done.....

I would be fully surprised if CM moves on from McD. As I've said before, from a W/L record, there is zero justification for CM to not move on. Here are those records.

Year /reg seas/conf/tourn/post/total
2018 / 11-20 / 8-10 / 0-1 / 0-0 / 11-21
2019 / 8-23 / 4-14 / 0-0 / 0-0 / 8-23
2020 / 5-17 / 3-13 / 0-1 / 0-0 / 5-18
2021 / 22-9 / 13-5 / 1-1 / 3-1 / 26-11
2022 / 18-13 / 11-9 / 1-1 / 0-0 / 19-14
2023 / 13-18 / 7-9

Overall 82-105
Conf 48-64
Vs D1 73-105
CUSA Tourney 2-4
Conference Regular Champs 0/6
Division Regular Champs 1/4 (stopped for '22)
Tourney Champs 0/4 (none in '19/'20 season)
NCAA 0-0
NIT 0-0
CBI 3-1
 
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He needs to go. They probably won't. But they sure as hell better not add a year or two because 'its hard to recruit during the last year of a contract'. If they do that a lot of the goodwill of the Stockstill firing will be gone. Either fire him or say 'you got one more year, prove your worth'
 
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MTFAN61 said:
He can't & hasn't put fans in the seats. No need to spend money building luxury box seating in a remodeled arena for a basketball coach that averages only 10 wins a year.
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A few end-of-season thoughts re:MBB

1) What is the trajectory of the program? IMO, the MBB program is trending down. Yes, I know his tenure got off to a rocky start after CKD left, then COVID, and had the 2023-2024 season derailed by injuries.

But I'm not sure HOW Massaro can say "we have championship expectations" for our programs while the MBB program is 20+ games under .500 (and that includes playing a relatively "soft" OOC schedule.

2) Build Blue Now, NIL, and cooperative require a coach that engages fans & wins. Fans won't come to watch a coach who wins 44% of the time.

Further, BuildBlueNow will be turning to Murphy Center in the coming 12-18 months. And, as MTFan61 pointed out, I'm not sure building luxury boxes & remodeling an arena is going to do a lot of good without SIGNIFICANT changes.

3) McD contract has one year left (expires next summer IIRC). You can't leave him on a lame duck contract for recruiting purposes. And you can't extend a coach with a .400 record at this point in his tenure.

All that said, Massaro just fired Stock. While McD's buyout isn't huge, I'm hard pressed to believe they'll pull the trigger. Although, I was SHOCKED that Massaro pulled trigger on Stock last year.

As I've said in the GoMiddle writers chat, if a change is made & CKD is the guy...

CDM (football)
CKD (MBB)
CRI / CMI (WBB)

The BIG3 sports will have REALLY engaging personalities that will do wonders for MT in a day where fan engagement matters for tickets, NLI, cooperative, etc.
 
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Predarat said:
He needs to go. They probably won't. But they sure as hell better not add a year or two because 'its hard to recruit during the last year of a contract'. If they do that a lot of the goodwill of the Stockstill firing will be gone. Either fire him or say 'you got one more year, prove your worth'
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I think this is the middle ground. As Austin said, I too would be hard pressed to think CM would do it. But that buyout is SUPER affordable compared to others.

But CM did say when CDM was hired that there needed to be more transparency. So do that. Publicly say things need to change. Don't set a physical standard like Iowa did with Brian Ferentz. That is asking for trouble. But say something. Demand something. Say it is a make it or break it year.

At one point in time I agreed with the lame duck line of thought, but that isn't as big a deal as it used to be with no limitations on portal transfers now. Want to build an all out go for it all one and done group of guys, go for it.

Or heck, make some deal for a lower buyout for a one year extension. Other coaches have done it and it would still be favorable for the school but appease the fans and eliminate the lame duck scenario.
 
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Austin summed up the men's basketball coaching circumstance perfectly with issue #3. In this era of recruiting savvy, fellow coaches interested in players CNM recruits will use the lame duck scenario if he doesn't get at least a 1-2 year extension. But how many high quality recruits can CNM attain with the disappointing record he's accumulated these last 6 years? Quality athletes want to be a part of a quality program. And as Austin pointed out in 12-18 months a huge investment will be invested to the arena.
I know their's a huge fear that the administration will take the path of least resistance & give coach an extension, but with the huge amount of donor money procured to improve the whole MT athletics department (facilities & possible future conference affiliation upgrades) I just can't imagine a coaching change of some variety is not in the works.
 
AustinLewis said:
A few end-of-season thoughts re:MBB

1) What is the trajectory of the program? IMO, the MBB program is trending down. Yes, I know his tenure got off to a rocky start after CKD left, then COVID, and had the 2023-2024 season derailed by injuries.

But I'm not sure HOW Massaro can say "we have championship expectations" for our programs while the MBB program is 20+ games under .500 (and that includes playing a relatively "soft" OOC schedule.

2) Build Blue Now, NIL, and cooperative require a coach that engages fans & wins. Fans won't come to watch a coach who wins 44% of the time.

Further, BuildBlueNow will be turning to Murphy Center in the coming 12-18 months. And, as MTFan61 pointed out, I'm not sure building luxury boxes & remodeling an arena is going to do a lot of good without SIGNIFICANT changes.

3) McD contract has one year left (expires next summer IIRC). You can't leave him on a lame duck contract for recruiting purposes. And you can't extend a coach with a .400 record at this point in his tenure.

All that said, Massaro just fired Stock. While McD's buyout isn't huge, I'm hard pressed to believe they'll pull the trigger. Although, I was SHOCKED that Massaro pulled trigger on Stock last year.

As I've said in the GoMiddle writers chat, if a change is made & CKD is the guy...

CDM (football)
CKD (MBB)
CRI / CMI (WBB)

The BIG3 sports will have REALLY engaging personalities that will do wonders for MT in a day where fan engagement matters for tickets, NLI, cooperative, etc.
Click to expand...
In no way does McDevitt deserve any extension.
 
We endured so many years of bad basketball after the NCAA sanctions. Finally, finally it was turned around. We were making immense amount of progress with a fairly consistent near decade of basketball. Truly I don't fault Kermit for his decision.

I fault McPhee for screwing up the hire. Anyone who was willing to look at things objectively could see that Nick wasn't ready for this job even if you didn't know anything about basketball. But if you did you would have known what I tried to convey early and often that this style that he was bringing did not work at the high mid-major level and gave examples of all the coaches in C-USA that came before him who tried similar style/philosophy and failed.

Had this President not screwed up the hire for Odom, the Kermit train would have had a temporary pause but kept rolling. Yes, we would have had to hire a new coach by now (he probably would have left for the same VCU job or some other), but we would have been back in the Tournament and the brand would have continued growing. So, so much was lost I can't get even begin to articulate it.

I hope we make the right decisions here next but the history of this university with this leadership has demonstrated right decisions have generally been a stroke of luck not competence and certainly not genius.
 
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MT01 said:
the history of this university with this leadership has demonstrated right decisions have generally been a stroke of luck not competence and certainly not genius.
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Bolded for emphasis. If MT loses at any point this week, I despair for a correct decision.

Watched Hoosiers (actually re-watched) last night, and when Dennis Hopper's great line, “Now boys, don’t get watchin’ the paint dry!” came up, our situation came to mind. McPhee and Massaro should have already reached a consensus so there's no dithering here, if there's any common sense left, after using most of it in firing stockstill.
 
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If his buyout was over a million, I'd understand to an extent.

But if the info we have is correct, it is less than his freaking base salary next year. Sure we will have to buyout some assistants and pay for a new coach, but come on. You could question making up some of Stock's $4m buyout, but we can't make up under $500k in a few years with a new coach and revamped Murphy?
 
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If his buyout is $300K, then bye bye. We need to reposition the program and he has shown only one good season, that’s just not good enough.

I really think we are at a pivotal point for athletics and the next 2 years will be crucial. We need to get back on track, leverage our booming market and make up for lost ground in athletics. Literally no reason we should be at this point. But this is our last push to get it right and elevate the program. If we don’t reposition in the next few years, we will be bottom feeders forever, relegated to the worst and most embarrassing conference in D1. ZERO chance to move up and out. We are just getting passed by, with too big of a hill to climb If we can’t get it right in the next few years.
 
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He needs to be let go immediately. He cant recruit or coach at this level. We have enough evidence to show that now. No need to stretch this out forever like we did with Stockstill.
 
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Hopefully this was a very large exclamation point on the end of a dreadful tenure.

You cannot get destroyed by WKU, of all teams, like that in this situation.

Just unacceptable and unforgivable.
 
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