Quote Originally Posted by MarketingBully View Post
The biggest elephant in the room and the biggest cautionary tale that I could tell anyone for basketball is when you fire a coach you damn well better upgrade the position or at least fire him when he has a shitty record and hasn’t left the cupboard bare. I agreed with letting Stansbury go at the time but you don’t fire him when A) we had just won 20+ games and made an NIT appearance and B) you don’t fire him when he left the cupboard bare. If Stricklin fires him a year earlier or a year later, we are in great shape to hire a new coach. We also saw a coaching search with Stricklin in selecting Ray that rivaled only Tennessee’s recent football coaching search in incompetence. You have to have a plan and a plan a, b, c, and d in place. Stricklin didn’t. If you want to know why our program was set back a decade look no further then the Florida AD Loafers and his self imposed three year death penalty. Ray’s three years of roster mismanagement, shitty recruiting, and shitty coaching is why it will take Coach Howland four years to get us back to the dance. Howland will get us back. Give him time.
A) Great point on firing Stands when we did. We should have waited one more year so he would have bottomed out and nobody could say a word about it.

B) Ray's recruiting was a by-product of our refusal to continue to sponsor AAU programs during his tenure. You dont sponsor- you dont sign.