I enjoyed yelling "whose house? Our house!" Toward the end of the last time we played them. They will be tough to overtake as the top team in the state next year, though! Sent from my SM-G977U using Butler Hoops mobile app
Well that is just ****ing awesome. I mean I’m the guy who wore a Butler jersey to a Penn State basketball game in 2008... (Iowa game when Lick was the coach). Love seeing my two worlds collide like this.
So damn cool. I hope shrews and big Mike tear it up in happy valley. Sent from my iPhone using Butler Hoops mobile app
Brad and Coach K have clearly planned their exits so they can join Woodson's staff at IU. The timing is just too coincidental to be anything other than the number one blue blood in college sports / the most prestigious organization in American history pulling strings. Sent from my SM-G973U using Butler Hoops mobile app
Much more interesting than the K news. Sure, the K news is big, but I see it as a nothing burger because they'll go the way of UNC and keep it in the family/down the bench. Probably won't even be a "search". If the celtics reach out to Howard, that gets the pool bubbling aplenty. I don't think he'd go tbh...but I agree they should reach out. Edit-Scheyer's been named next coach. How long until the four letter labels this as "white privilege"??
Sounds like they're going Jon Scheyer. Makes sense from a recruiting perspective to keep the ball rolling, but I'm still a little surprised they didn't at least try to make the call next year to a Brad Stevens, Tony Bennett, or Jay Wright in a year. They might all rightfully say no, but I feel like you'd at least want to make the call. Just seems like you limit your options a year early.
Brad Stevens hires Juwan Howard for the Celtics Michigan hires LaVall Jordan for the Wolverines Butler hires Brad Stevens for the Bulldogs Perfect circle.
No one really wants to be the guy that follows the legend, so this works out well for everyone. If Scheyer works out, Coach K can be hailed as a genius, if he doesn't, then Duke's had its palate cleanser and can then go after the home run hire.
At the end of the day - Duke is still Duke, so they'll still be a powerhouse and they'll still be hated by others. With that said, I would imagine people like John Calipari and Bill Self could benefit a lot from this, part of the allure of Duke was playing for a legend, now they can't sell that anymore. We're slowly starting to see a changing of the guard for the blue bloods, and it'll be cool to see if the landscape changes at all in the next five years.
The landscape will almost certainly change. Duke is Coach K. Before his arrival they were an above average program, but not a blue blood. The foundation he's built gives them a chance to stay in that upper tier, but how many times have we seen when a coach of that stature retires, the program struggles - usually for a while. UCLA, Kentucky, Indiana have all been through that. Carolina experienced it briefly and got very lucky that Roy Williams decided to come home after all. There's a good chance that both UNC and Duke drop off for a while, maybe one of 'em doesn't blip for long but it seems like a long shot that both will stay at that top tier level. Jim Boeheim's retirement is on the horizon too and Leonard Hamilton can't be too far behind. At the same time Tony Bennett has cemented Virginia as an upper echelon program. After 30+ years of Duke and Carolina dominating the league, we're heading into a period where it looks like it'll be UVa and someone else - maybe one of those two, but maybe another emerges. Wake has a really good coach in Steve Forbes and Virginia Tech has the same in Mike Young. Josh Pastner seems to have turned a corner at Ga. Tech. Living in the area, the idea that we might return to an era where NC State is the dominant Tobacco Road team, like in the 70s and early 80s, is kind of fascinating. And I have to emphasize *might* because obviously the other two still have a ton going for them and State is still State.
