Linda Lappe has resigned as WBB Head Coach

[Buffnik]

Have it on good authority that Aaron Johnson from SD State is the coach CU wants.

Interesting. He wins a ton and has done it for a long time.

 

[Medford M.]

I say think outside, take a chance on an up and comer with an excellent background, and hire Katie Gearlds from NAIA Marian.

 

[buffgal]

Have it on good authority that Aaron Johnson from SD State is the coach CU wants.

If true, he has a long resume of winning. Will CU put enough $ on the table to lure him away from a job he has had for 16 years? He did successfully take it from DII to DI.

As for a NAIA coach, don't even consider it.

 

[MarkW]

Have it on good authority that Aaron Johnson from SD State is the coach CU wants.

Interesting. Not much experience outside of South Dakota st. Probably not much big time recruiting experience either

My biggest question/concern is as slider pointed above - recruiting. What it takes at SDSU and CU are two very different things. Clearly he's had a huge amount of success at his current position, but having the same success at CU is going to take a completely different level of recruiting.

I don't have the time, but it would be interesting to see how many top 100 caliber recruits he's landed.

Also, if this is the guy they want, why do they need a search firm?

 

[buffgal]

I would doubt South Dakota State has landed any top 100 recruits. It's a mid-major school.

Yes, why does CU need a search firm. Hoping for somebody who has proven they can recruit top 100 players. Many assistant coaches are the ones who get those players and if you read the bios for the Lin Dunn recommendations, you will see who those people have recruited.

 

[Highlander]

I would doubt South Dakota State has landed any top 100 recruits. It's a mid-major school.

Yes, why does CU need a search firm. Hoping for somebody who has proven they can recruit top 100 players. Many assistant coaches are the ones who get those players and if you read the bios for the Lin Dunn recommendations, you will see who those people have recruited.

The only reason I can see for the search firm is that they want to go after coaches that are currently employed by P5 schools. Buffnik mentioned this earlier, I believe. It gives both sides plausible deniability. "No, I didn't speak with CU about their coaching job" (because I spoke at length with their search firm).

 

[Buffnik]

The only reason I can see for the search firm is that they want to go after coaches that are currently employed by P5 schools. Buffnik mentioned this earlier, I believe. It gives both sides plausible deniability. "No, I didn't speak with CU about their coaching job" (because I spoke at length with their search firm).

Especially if it is a coach whose team is in the NCAA tournament right now.

 

[cu3x]

The only reason I can see for the search firm is that they want to go after coaches that are currently employed by P5 schools. Buffnik mentioned this earlier, I believe. It gives both sides plausible deniability. "No, I didn't speak with CU about their coaching job" (because I spoke at length with their search firm).

It gives them someone to shoulder some of the blame if things go south down the road, and it allows them to give big chunk of taxpayer's money to some of their buddies - note that Chuck Neinas had a paid role in several past searches. It's absurd to think the world of women's basketball is unaware of the vacancy and that our present people don't know who the good candidates are.

 

[jcatcher]

Isn't SD a hotbed of HS Girls basketball?

 

[BeBe]

Isn't SD a hotbed of HS Girls basketball?

Yes it is BUT the players from SD are middle of the road, not top level players. Where it really shows is in the fan support the teams get. When CU made the NCAA in 2013 they played at the CEC. One of the visiting teams was South Dakota State. And their fans came out in force.... several bus loads plus some who drove separately.

 

[MarkW]

Yes it is BUT the players from SD are middle of the road, not top level players.

Exactly. And looking at SDSU's roster almost all the players are from South Dakota and Minnesota. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to state that very few if any had serious offers from P5 teams.

Johnston has gotten to the NCAA tourney five teams prior to this season. In all but one, the first, his team has lost in the first round. That's not what I want CU to aspire to in a coach. Making it deep in the tourney regularly is what CU should be aspiring to do

Let's face it, recruiting is the foundation of any successful program. Regardless of how well a coach teaches and manages (s)he has to recruit the type of talent that can be coached to a high level of success nationally.

There isn't a lot of evidence that Johnston can recruit the caliber of player he'll need at CU to get the program to the top of the Pac 12. Or even the top hald of the conference. Has he recruited someone of Kennedy Leonard's caliber.

 

[buffgal]

Yes it is BUT the players from SD are middle of the road, not top level players. Where it really shows is in the fan support the teams get. When CU made the NCAA in 2013 they played at the CEC. One of the visiting teams was South Dakota State. And their fans came out in force.... several bus loads plus some who drove separately.

I drove out from Iowa for those games. My hotel was full of South Dakota State fans and me! However, they are, for the most part, not DI P5 players.

CU has had several players from South Dakota, like the great Lisa Van Goor.

 

[MarkW]

FYIW -
CSU's current RPI is 41 and South Dakota State is at 50. Neither would make the NCAA tourney as an at-large team this season. The Pac-12 has 5 teams with higher RPIs than both.

Last season SDSU finished with an RPI of 48.

 

[BeBe]

......There isn't a lot of evidence that Johnston can recruit the caliber of player he'll need at CU to get the program to the top of the Pac 12. Or even the top hald of the conference. Has he recruited someone of Kennedy Leonard's caliber.

Well, yes and no. As you know the rankings for the high school girls aren't the best but it's what we have to work with. If you look at the 2015 freshman class at SDSU, the only player listed on ProspectsNation was a 4 * PG ranked at #116. That's about where 3 of the CU freshmen (Robinson, Ellis, and Burich) were ranked, with Leonard ranked as a 4 * at #42 .... But HoopsGurlz had that SDSU PG ranked at #83 and on HG, the CU 2015 class showed Robinson as a 4* ranked at #79 and the other 3 players, including Kennedy L., ranked as 3 * players not in their top 100. So by HoopGurlz, he has recruited at or better than Kennedy's caliber.

Going back to the 2014 class, ProspectsNation shows SDSU with a 3 * forward and a 4* (but not top 150) PG. They also got a transfer from St. Johns who was a 4* forward ranked #99 on ProspectsNation in 2014.

So my net is that he has recruited fairly well considering the level of competition that SDSU offers. The top tier of players mostly want to play with and against other top level players and SDSU just does not offer that since they usually roll in conference. As for the fact that most of his players are from South Dakota and Minnesota, as Buffgal says, some good players have come out of SD. She mentions VanGoor. Becky Hammon also was from SD. And from Minn, CU had both Tera Bjorklund and Randi Wirt. I'd take players of that caliber on the current team any day and twice on Sunday.

 

[RalphieWasAGurl]

Also SliderNCider I find your screen name offensive. You are not a woman. No self respecting woman I've ever met in my life would pick a screen name like that, and post a picture of herself as her avatar. Just sayin'.

 

[Uncle Ken]

Also SliderNCider I find your screen name offensive. You are not a woman. No self respecting woman I've ever met in my life would pick a screen name like that, and post a picture of herself as her avatar. Just sayin'.

I've met Slider, and can confirm that that poster is no self-respecting woman.

 

[Creebuzz]

This is not going to end well.

 

[Buffballer]

RWAG AKA CoHoopzfan, There you go again. Another Manifesto filled with false facts, assumptions and attacks. The last four days had been so productive and elevated, sad to see your return.

 

[Buffnik]

I saw the comment about this being an all-male forum.

That's not true. Very heavily skewed toward males, but not all-male.

The discussions about WBB and so-called Olympic Sports is much more gender balanced... especially the higher level discussions of these see more participation by women.

I'd love to have more women participate on Allbuffs. But I think it's kind of like having a sports bar or cigar bar. Most of the folks who visit are men, but the women who like to hang out are especially cool.

 

[Goose]

I think this board is almost nonsensical.

I disagree with most of your post, but this is the most spot on thing that has ever been posted on this forum.

 

[boulder77]

I think this board is almost nonsensical.

I disagree with most of your post, but this is the most spot on thing that has ever been posted on this forum.

Too bad it took 2500 words to say what should have taken exactly 7 .....

 

[Denver_sc]

Barring Ryun Williams as the next head coach, I want the next candidate to be female. Its women's basketball, and I don't think a male coach will ever quite understand what its like to play this game as a woman. Its different. Ceal gets that.

Go Buffs!

 

[buffgal]

I saw the comment about this being an all-male forum.

That's not true. Very heavily skewed toward males, but not all-male.

The discussions about WBB and so-called Olympic Sports is much more gender balanced... especially the higher level discussions of these see more participation by women.

I'd love to have more women participate on Allbuffs. But I think it's kind of like having a sports bar or cigar bar. Most of the folks who visit are men, but the women who like to hang out are especially cool.

I am not reading RWAG's post. I can figure out the diatribe without reading it.

For the record, I am female. At one time, I had season tickets to football, men's and women's basketball. Now that I no longer live in the area, I only have season tix for women's basketball and volleyball.

I love my Buffs basketball, both men and women. Can't say I've had the same interest in football since the program tumbled so far downhill.

Thanks, Nik, for saying the women here are "especially cool".

 

[buffgal]

In Van Goor's playing days, we also had Diane Hiemstra and Kris Holwerda a few years later. Hiemstra was a great teammate for Van Goor. Holwerda blew out her knee and was not the same player her last two years as before the injury.

I'd happily take players of Tera Bjorkland and Randi Wirt's caliber any day. Great Buffs!

 

[Denver_sc]

I should mention, for the record, that despite my snarky reply I hope that the most qualified candidate is hired, be they female or male.

I also want to second Buffnik's opinion; I really enjoy participating in threads (such as this one) where we have both female and male participants as I think the diversity of viewpoints makes for a much more interesting discussion.

 

[aik]

RWAG, I appreciate the passion and the commitment to providing this much analysis, but generally when someone arrives on this board at the beginning of a coaching change and stumps this hard for a particular candidate it reveals an agenda which will have details skewed in favor of that person and no one else. The anti-Lappe and pro-Williams content looks pretty similar to a poster we had in the football forum just a few seasons ago who was convinced that Nick Hirschman was the best option to start at QB and if our coaches didn't see that they were clearly biased. We suspect that poster had a crush on him.

Colorado is a provincial place as a matter of geography. In the last decade our ADs have made head coaching hires from Air Force, Northern Colorado, an NFL position coach who used to be a CU player and assistant, a Metro State coach who used to be a CU player, Wyoming, and DU. Some of those hires looked very suspect and showed we were either lazy with our search or just wanted to wrap up the process and get someone we could sign to a hometown discount to go easy on the department's budget. And we got what we paid for. I think we know what we have in Tad Boyle and should be appreciative, the jury is still out on Sanchez although sandwiched between poor seasons he had an amazing two-year run in conference and the NCAA tournament, and we are hopeful with Mahoney. The value of a more local canidate is that those in charge of the hire can do more thorough research on them by being connected to other rival schools and high school coaches in the area and get a greater sample size of opinions to judge if they would be the right fit. The trouble is there are no schools anywhere near here who play the same level of competition so that will remain largely unknown. It would be foolish to assume Ryun Williams is an unknown to Rick George and his search committee, just as it would be foolish to think that the coach of the next closest Division I basketball school is without question the best candidate for the job and we should've made the hiring announcement yesterday. Making a lazy or budget-leaning hire would be antithetical to Rick George's stated goals for each program's success. Let's wait for the NCAA tourney to play out and take a breather while waiting for real news to be announced.

 

[Buffnik]

Reason enough that Ryun Williams will not be the next CU coach: RG will not send a 7 figure check to Ft Collins as long as he has this RMS albatross contract pissing him off on a daily basis.

 

[sackman]

I'm starting to think MarkW is a family member of our KL. The looney tunes moment projecting some testosterone fueled conflict with someone on social media onto me. I've seen all sides in that Twitter discussion. I think everyone has seen the egg jihad. I've strongly advocated on Twitter that the egg stop attacking KL, and I blocked his Twitter feed. In fact I also played a part in recommending to the program that they block the egg as well. That being said, KL wasn't exactly Shelly Sheetz. That's okay Jamie Swan wasn't exactly Jillian Alleyne for us. We can only get the players that we can get. The problem for me is the singular obsession with one player. I saw good things from Kennedy Leonard. However, I think she is just Brittany Wilson, with more minutes and shots. Both are find players, but I don't get the obsession. This is not Shonni Schimmel, Brittney Griner, Elle Delle Donne, or Breana Stewart.

Bickering over the differences between ESPN/HoopsGurlz and the other site MarkW seems to sing devotionals to is pointless. The reality is most of these evaluations are subjective, and in the end two things matter: 1. The ability of the coach to identify and evaluate skill and talent ceilings 2. The ability of the coach to develop the player to approach that potential within the limited time in the program. This blind obsession with pretending that KL is an All-Conference player just makes no sense to me. Oregon's Cazorla far and away set the bar for what a star Freshman PG looks like, I think her Assist efficiency was roughly double what KL managed. I'm a homer too. However, I don't pretend that Jen Reese is going to become a WNBA All-Star.

The ratings thing and obsession that MarkW has with the ESPN/HoopsGurlz Top-100 makes no sense. On the one hand MarkW keeps talking about getting players "of Kennedy's caliber" but she wasn't that good of a player, by the scout grades/rankings. MarkW can't tireless beat the dead horse that every head coach candidate has to have a proven track record recruiting ESPN/HoopsGurlz Top-100 players, and strangely be fixated on KL as somehow being the nexus of this program, without at some point reconciling the previous posts dismissing the HoopsGurlz Top-100 rankings dismissing them because they didn't preferably rank KL as high as Prospects Nation may have. Which is it? That ESPN/HoopsGurlz Top-100 has terrible ratings and when it identified KL as a common 3* player that was only proof of the irrelevancy of its ratings? Or that the next coach needs to solely be evaluated by how they can recruit the dogmatic ESPN/HoopsGurlz Top-100 players, as they are an accurate indication of the skill level and talent ceilings on these players?

I don't think most of this obviously all-male forum realizes how much a young woman's body physically changes between her Freshman year of high school through to her Senior year of high school. Then the physical changes from about the early Junior Year through the college years. This transformation completely changes how you can feel quick, explosive, powerful and how your body changes to injuries, overuse, and gaining weight by getting stronger and adding muscle. So much of scouting is projection, and its so inaccurate. A player is hard to evaluate separate from the context of her team.

I know Emmy Smith could have played PG for CU, because even though she only played at DU in the lowly Sun Belt conference, she was a natural PG. She effortlessly created Assists and I think was in the top-10 nationally for Assist efficiency. I know Becky Hammon was an elite player, and anyone who thought she couldn't take that next step (I think BOTH Michelle's at espnW) didn't know women's ball. I know Chucky Jeffery was a talent to behold, even if she wasn't the most efficient creator, but she was such an efficient scorer and one of the best Guards I've ever seen, and the best rebounding guard I've EVER seen. Sometimes the talent is just so obvious that it transcends the court, the opponents, and the game.

There is a reason that KL is at CU, and not leading some prestigious program into the NCAA tournament. She wasn't talented enough to be a top-recruit for the top programs. That's okay. Women's basketball shouldn't just be played at handful of Big-10, Pac-12, ACC, SEC and Big-12 schools plus the likes of SD/SDSU, Green Bay, and Middle Tennessee State type programs. I think its a better game that there are tiers of talent. I find it refreshing how resilient our guards were, carrying their team with the minutes they were asked to play, based on their skill levels. They literally gave everything they had to this program. Does that make them amongst the top players in the Pac-12? No it just doesn't.

MarkW, you can have KL as your favorite player. If she doesn't transfer, she should have a significant role with this team for three more years. However, this program is a Pac-12 program, and is larger in scope than one 3* player that wasn't even that close to Cazorla as far as being the best Freshman PG. That's okay. We're lucky to have her.

So enough with all this nonsense about the ESPN/HoopsGurlz Top-100 players. Any new coach isn't really going to be able to recruit that kind of talent to this program. Its broken, the broken has a very poor reputation in the club/AAU world as having something wrong inside. Hopefully that gets dismissed now that we've had a coach change. It can be all positive from here. The refreshing thing is that the new coach can try to BUILD the program up.

It doesn't matter if some Assistant somewhere was able to recruit ESPN/HoopsGurlz Top-100 players to Notre Dame or Stanford. Those players weren't going to those schools because of that Assistant but because of VanDeever and Muffet. Those are storied programs with top-10 traditions and legacies. Thinking that an Assistant that could get Top-100 players to those programs will be equally adept at brining similar talent to a rebuilding program where the cupboard is bare for player talent, is just fanciful thinking. Great players want to play with other great players at great programs.

CU needs a great coach that can take what we can recruit, the gritty 3* players like KL, the 4* players like AR and work with them to elevate their game and make them better. CU needs a coach that can take players and make them good. The idea that we are just going to win at basketball by just getting good players assumes this is Stanford, Notre Dame, Baylor, Cal, or UCLA. We are a Pac-12 school, but we don't have the recruiting cache in the LA and San Francisco suburbs that the CA schools do.

I think this board is almost nonsensical. I think there are some parents/uncle's/grandfathers perhaps on this forum that are confusing CU Buffs basketball with something its not. Quite frankly, if CU could recruit ESPN/HoopGurlz top-100 players then KL may have been on this team, but as a backup. However, no arbitrary ranking determines the talent of the player. We need a coach that can build up a program. So that the rankings trying to determine who these young girls were as basketball players, doesn't determine who our young women become as CU BUFFS ballplayers!

So enough talk and obsession with the ESPN/HoopGurlz top-100. We need someone that can build this program. That's a list for established programs competing for deep runs in the NCAA tournament. CU is at place where we are taking transfers from those types of schools, and the recruits they passed on. You can build a competitive program with those players, with the right coach. However, they have to be able to develop the players, and unfortunately that's one of the reasons that Linda isn't here anymore, that wasn't her strength. It maybe someday, but not now, and not at this level of competition. I love that CU plays in the Pac-12 now, but we've got to bring some reality to this fan community. This is not a great team, and quite frankly there isn't a single great player on this roster. There are good players, and any good coach will be excited to find the talent at CU that should exceed what they had to work with in the past at SDSU, CSU, Drake or wherever.

Barring Ryun Williams as the next head coach, I want the next candidate to be female. Its women's basketball, and I don't think a male coach will ever quite understand what its like to play this game as a woman. Its different. Ceal gets that.

Go Buffs!

My God. That's a lot of words. How long did it take to type all that out?

 

[sackman]

Reason enough that Ryun Williams will not be the next CSU coach: RG will not send a 7 figure check to Ft Collins as long as he has this RMS albatross contract pissing him off on a daily basis.

Troof. Well, except for the part about Williams being the next CSU coach. I think that already happened.

 

[AztecBuff]

Obviously not huge or definitive news in any way, but someone asked Brian Howell today about the the coaching search during his weekly chat (http://www.buffzone.com/buffzonechats/ci_29635428/live-chat-cu-buffs-beat-writer-brian-howell), and his response was (my emphasis)

"They've hired a search firm and they're in the process of identifying candidates. They'd like to have a new coach in place by the end of the NCAA Tournament."

So, assuming Mr. Howell is going off what someone in authority at the AD's Office told him, with the WBB National Championship Game scheduled for April 5th, assume that's the ending target date by which we'd expect to hear about a new coach.?. (Or, if there's nothing by that date, it might mean the Buffs had decided to target a major team's assistant and are waiting for their team's season to be done.?.)