Alumni-Coached College Teams

[childress22]

In case I'm not the only sad fucker that also enjoys following Northwestern, Marquette, and Pitt, or maybe UCF, Notre Dame, or Harvard, I've been thinking for a while of setting up their own thread. So here it is.

 

[childress22]

So, Capel and the Pitt athletic department have done some good work focusing trying to separate this year's team from the dismal recent past. In addition to new retro colors, they're dropping some DBP-esque media like this hype video/Mac Miller tribute.

 

[SeanMayTriedToEatMe]

Good preparation for what he’ll need to do at Duke in a few years.

 

[childress22]

Bumping this thread because it's like the only time I started a thread.

 

[childress22]

So, a big part of the reason Pitt's gotten off to such a good start is freshman point guard Xavier Johnson, who's the best freshman in the ACC not on our team. He was part of a three-man class Capel put together with basically no time after being hired at the end of March. He's athletic and can run a team, and he's shooting well so far, (48/44/86) albeit against middling competition.

 

[StopThePumpFakesShav]

Pitt loses by a point on the road to a team 75 spots ahead of it on Kenpom. Pitt's first loss of the year. Maybe Capel is a good coach.

 

[torontoduke]

Capel's guys almost pulled on out against Iowa. Hawkeyes probably over-ranked, but still surprising how competitive Pitt is given what we saw last year.

 

[deepdarkblue]

We should include TD-F alum Kevin Keatts here, as well.

They choked.

 

[childress22]

Northwestern better beat GT in Evanston pretty handily. Good test for Collins's slightly retooled (two of their top 4 players are transfers, one grad and one conventional) Wildcats, who've looked good so far except for one game when they inexplicably shat the bed against Fresno State.

 

[Slap the Floor]

Johnny Dawkins at UCF defeats Alabama, 70-64.

UCF is now 6-1 with impressive wins over Western Kentucky and Alabama. Their lone loss was by 1 point to Florida Atlantic. UCF has an impressive 19th rated defense on KenPom.

 

[Slap the Floor]

Northwestern had a 20 point half-time lead versus Georgia Tech and held on for a 6 point win.

 

[Slap the Floor]

The Fighting Wojo's have a big game this Saturday versus 12th ranked Kansas State, and also have big games this month versus #22 Wisconsin and #21 Buffalo.

All three games are true home games for Marquette.

 

[Topher]

Wojo, Dawkins, Hurley, and Collins all have top 50 kenpom teams so far. Brey at 57 and Capel at 116. Who else is out there?

 

[rhfarmer]

Amaker

 

[StopThePumpFakesShav]

Johnny Dawkins at UCF defeats Alabama, 70-64.

UCF is now 6-1 with impressive wins over Western Kentucky and Alabama. Their lone loss was by 1 point to Florida Atlantic. UCF has an impressive 19th rated defense on KenPom.

I looked back at UCF's defense and am pretty impressed. Despite not having made the tournament since he got there in 16-17 and likely having pretty mediocre talent, Dawkins has coached UCF to the 18th ranked D in 2017, 8th ranked D in 2018, and 19th so far this year (of course preseason ranks baked in). That's impressive and the year before Dawkins got there, UCF ranked 157.

I don't want Dawkins to be Duke's next head coach but from a selfish perspective, I'd love to see him back at Duke in a defensive coordinator role, similar to what Michigan has that's made them so good on D. Not realistic unless he gets fired and then just decides he doesn't want to coach mid major basketball anymore and would rather be the lead assistant again at Duke. I just don't know what it takes to get fired from UCF- I suspect they're thrilled with being a top 50 Kenpom team this year (as they should be) and have no reason to move on from Dawkins.

 

[childress22]

Dawkins clearly is solid at coaching defense; his numbers at Stanford were not like these, but always solid and much better on the defensive end of the floor. I had just been thinking earlier today that it would be cool if we could get Wojo to coach offense and Dawkins to coach defense, but we'd still need to pair those guys with an ace recruiter a la Capel, too.

 

[rome8180]

So basically we just need to hire three current head coaches at once? Cool.

 

[SeanMayTriedToEatMe]

Popovich and Stevens could decide to leave their terrible NBA situations, so Duke could pay them each $15 million to be assistants to Jon Scheyer.

 

[torontoduke]

Wojo's gang about to complete a big win over #13 KSU

 

[aiw]

I hate this stupid thread.