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It's Hard to Win at FAU

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As you know, FAU has been playing men's basketball since 1988 (so 25 years).

I was looking at FAU's previous coaches (as I've only been following the program for less than 10 years) on Wikipedia and wanted to point out some interesting things:

Coach                         Years    Seasons  Record     Overall  Conf Champs         Postseason run
Lonnie Williams 1988–89 1 9–19 .321
Tim Loomis 1989–95 5 68–97 .412
Kevin Billerman 1995–99 4 36–71 .336
Sidney Green 1999–05 6 54–121 .309 1 (2002) NCAA First Round (2002)
Matt Doherty 2005–06 1 15–13 .536
Rex Walters 2006–08 2 31–33 .484
Mike Jarvis 2008–pres. 5 67–90 .427 1 (2010) NIT (2011)

So in our history we've had only one coach (Doherty) to go 0.500 or better... and it's possible he might have dipped below that had he stayed another season. I wonder if head coaching candidates look at this kind of data when considering whether to accept our offer because in theory if it's hard to win here, they might be fired, and if they're fired for "not getting it done at FAU", that may make it difficult to get hired somewhere else perhaps. Not sure if that's a legitimate concern or not.

Now, I know we had a love/hate relationship with Rex Walters (probably more of the latter than the former) but he was the next closest to digging us out of the hole.

Comparatively, Jarvis hasn't done too bad, I suppose, although I still personally feel like he's coasting now and we would be wise to move on when his contract expires. That aside, if he's here at least another two seasons (this and the next) he'll be the most persistent coach in FAU's history, edging out Sidney Green at 6.

Just food for thought.
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So we should just trying Coachs until we get a winner.
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If we could bring in a young/proven winner at a high major school, he will have no problem succeeding at FAU. You're telling me that kids from DC, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, etc. wouldn't fall in love with FAU (Boca Raton) on their visit. Add in 3 or 4 top 30 Florida kids and FAU takes off. 
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Recruiting is certainly a part of it and if coaching pedigree is not an issue - which I assume it isn't in Jarvis' case - then you have to look at the facilities.

An interesting thing about basketball vs football - and likely why it's easier for a basketball team to upset a major power than a football team - is because any one player can drive the length of the court and take a shot at the basket. And if he's that good, he makes most of those. So one really good guy can score you up to a third (30) of your final points.

Whereas in football you have to rely on so many other people and you have to go much further. Even if you have, say, a great runningback he needs a good QB to not fumble it on the handoff and a good O-line to open holes and downfield blocking by your receivers to really eat up the 70-80 yards and score the touchdown. In that case the talent disparity mucks up all those individual player-on-player interactions and you can't shine as easily.
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Performance against top 15 teams should be thrown in there as well. Do some home work on that and one will find Jarvis is #1.
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Miami has a awesome relatively brand new arena, in the ACC, private school with money and they can't be consistently good in hoops. Actually more bad years than good.

I never have pretended to know much about football recruiting even though I'm a much bigger football fan than basketball fan. But i do know a lot about basketball recruiting from friends who are in the business.

FAU need to hire a top JC coach from the NY or Baltimore area. That is really their only hope. McCall would be a great hire too.

Facts are there's no money for it and there won't be any money for it in the next 3-5 years. You need to sell conference USA, the location, the campus (which is very nice compared to a lot of places I think and I'm pretty negative on FAU the last few years in general so any positive from me should be taken exponentially). You need to go the JUCO route. You need to take kids with issues. They won't all work out but the ones that do will great. You can't go after big men, you need small fast athletic guys because the big men change the tempo of the game and FAU will never get any good big men. Its a fact. I could go on and on and on and if you look up my old post it explains my opinions.

Losing Ray Taylor was a huge loss in my opinion.

Jarvis is awful. I wish he was in Key West with Pelini.

Rick- my password doesn't work and the email under my username is wrong. can you message me so I can't rant on basketball for the next few months?

For some reason I don't think I'm going to get my password till March. Don't blame you though!
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That last post was very hard to understand. First, you say you know a lot about basketball recruiting…

1. Name the last JUCO head coach to get a Division 1 job?
2. You do know that the best JUCO players are in Florida, then Texas, then Kansas, right? What's the benefit of hiring a NY or Baltimore guy?
3. FAU does not need to take kids with issues. CUSA and being in South Florida allows you to be picky with who you go after. Take away Jarvis, and FAU has the potential to be a very VERY good mid major school.
4. Your point of saying you have to go only for small, fast, athletic guys makes no sense. Name another D1 school that goes after only small juco athletes?

Look, everyone has to agree that Jarvis has to go. You bring in somebody that wants to be at FAU, somebody who is young/energetic/proven winner/recruiter (McCall, Rhoades at VCU, Jans at Wichita State). If you are all true fans of this program you start collecting money and telling everybody that Matt McCall needs to be the next HC at FAU.
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Guest said

Rick- my password doesn't work and the email under my username is wrong. can you message me so I can't rant on basketball for the next few months?

For some reason I don't think I'm going to get my password till March. Don't blame you though!
Posted On: Nov 24th 2013, 5:49 PM #322410

I don't know who you are…the IP address for the above post does not yield a user name to address.

Please e-mail me:

[email protected]

We'll get it handled.

Thanks,

Rick


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OwlFingers said

That last post was very hard to understand. First, you say you know a lot about basketball recruiting…

1. Name the last JUCO head coach to get a Division 1 job?
2. You do know that the best JUCO players are in Florida, then Texas, then Kansas, right? What's the benefit of hiring a NY or Baltimore guy?
3. FAU does not need to take kids with issues. CUSA and being in South Florida allows you to be picky with who you go after. Take away Jarvis, and FAU has the potential to be a very VERY good mid major school.
4. Your point of saying you have to go only for small, fast, athletic guys makes no sense. Name another D1 school that goes after only small juco athletes?

Look, everyone has to agree that Jarvis has to go. You bring in somebody that wants to be at FAU, somebody who is young/energetic/proven winner/recruiter (McCall, Rhoades at VCU, Jans at Wichita State). If you are all true fans of this program you start collecting money and telling everybody that Matt McCall needs to be the next HC at FAU.
Posted On: Nov 24th 2013, 8:51 PM #322423

+1 We did take kids with issues…and just this off season we had approximately 75% turnover of the roster…too much of a gamble in a very near future (probably after Jarvis is gone and he doesn't have to worry about it) we will pay with loss of scholarships for our embarrassingly low APR rating.  If Jarvis leaves on anything but good terms (i.e. winning, not sure how he does that now) you can say with 100% certainty that an assistant on his staff will NOT be his successor.
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Something must have happened after year three. Years 2 and 3 of this regime were very promising and there's no arguing that Jarvis was by far our best coach. He brought in talent and an exciting brand of basketball. How many 1,000 point scores has FAU had? And how many those guys were Jarvis' recruits? He brought in the schools leading scorer as well as the top two guys in assists in school history.

My question is, what the heck happened after 2010? Were Matt McCall and Brett Royster the glue holding this program together? Why do we consistently have this much turnover EVERY single year? It's a shame because this was very promising. We've been in "rebuilding" mode the past two years. Last year we should have been dominant with Gantt and Taylor being seniors but that obviously didn't turn out the way we hoped.

Winning is hard here but there's no reason why we can't consistently be competitive in conference play. There's absolutely no reason why we should be getting BLOWN OUT by Stony Brooke or Detroit.
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