{"id":8460,"date":"2016-04-01T08:36:36","date_gmt":"2016-04-01T12:36:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=8460"},"modified":"2016-04-01T08:37:17","modified_gmt":"2016-04-01T12:37:17","slug":"jmu-hires-new-mens-hoops-coach-and-were-a-bit-worried-about-jmu-athletics-right-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=8460","title":{"rendered":"JMU Hires New Men’s Hoops Coach (And We Are A Bit Worried About JMU Athletics Right Now)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Legendary Dukes Forward Louis (Lou) Rowe was hired as the 10th Head Coach of JMU Men’s Basketball today<\/a>. An introductory press conference (not that many old-school fans will need the introduction) will be held Tuesday afternoon at the Fire Hazard<\/del> Convo. But that wasn’t the only JMU news today. Lost amidst the university’s understandable hype-blitz for the new coach was the fact JMU is really starting to show it’s true colors lately regarding its commitment to Athletics. And those colors are poo-brown, vomit-green, and bile-yellow (with maybe even a little flaming-dumpster-fire-orange mixed in for good measure).<\/p>\n

Since there is both good and bad news to cover related to this hire and Athletics as a whole, we’re going to do this football-postgame style with a \u00a0Good, Bad, and Ugly.<\/p>\n

The Good<\/strong><\/p>\n

First and foremost, we LOVE Coach Rowe as a player and all-around Duke. He was one of the all-time greats of our era and has stayed in the game his entire career. He’s also a 2x JMU Assistant Coach, including most recently under Matt Brady where he proved himself a fantastic mentor of young men and a stellar recruiter. Remember that Nation\/Cooke\/Curry\/Bessick class? Coach Rowe had a huge hand in that talented group. And with nine scholarships coming open a year from now, recruiting ability (which is largely the ability to connect with, and relate to, young athletes in addition of course to knowing how to “play the game”) is not a terrible thing for Director of Athletics Jeff Bourne to focus on with this hire. But make no mistake, giving the keys to Coach Rowe is a complete and total leap of faith as he joins the team after non-descript stints at most recently Bowling Green (OH) and before that Rider and FIU (household names of course). We love Coach Rowe too much as a Duke to even whisper the alum-turned-head-coach-who-shall-not-be-named, but we worry we’ve seen this movie before. We’ll be rootin’ but it’s a reach at best.<\/p>\n

The Bad\"turd\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well if you’re interested, it’s probably time to sit down, grab another cup of coffee, and settle in cause we’re gonna be here a while. Before we circle back to issues further highlighted by the Rowe hire, you absolutely must stop and read the excellent blog LadySwish’s Q&A<\/a> with arguably JMU’s most successful coach in any sport in its history, departing Women’s Head Coach Kenny Brooks (who also happens to be a fabulous former Dukes player). Because we’ve got to vent about big-picture items before contextualizing our feelings on the Rowe hire (which again, we’re generally ok with) and we’re starting with some nuggets from that piece..<\/p>\n

So let’s begin with the following quote from Coach Brooks, an unassailable Duke in every respect: “Madison not offering cost of attendance. That was a tremendous red flag for me. Without cost of attendance in the next few years, there’s no way \u00a0you’re going to get the Jazmon Gwathmeys or the Precious Halls or the Angela Mickens’ of the world to be able to come to a place like that because it’s such an enticing factor. One of the first things recruits are asking is, ‘Do you offer that cost-of-attendance thing?’ Here in the next few years, there’s going to be a divide between the haves and have nots.”<\/p>\n

Really kind of speaks for itself, doesn’t it? And in case you’ve forgotten, JMU’s current President Alger not only signed onto, but in fact authored, the anti-COA letter co-signed by a grand total of nine universities nationwide (including such luminaries as VMI!). So yeah, there’s that. SERIOUSLY PEOPLE THIS IS THE MAJOR ISSUE FOR JMU ATHLETICS THIS DECADE – YES WE ADMIT EVEN BIGGER THAN FBS – AND IT’S TIME TO START PAYING ATTENTION AND MAKING OUR VOICES HEARD HERE<\/a>. But even worse is when you spend 43M a year on Athletics and then get cheap on the last 200-500k max it would take you to fund the Cost of Attendance stipends that will allow you to stay competitive. Just makes no sense. Of course, neither does calling your 20k-raise offer to a guy who just told you a number that dwarfs yours “a significant counter” when you could’ve just said “thank you very much for your incredible contributions and best of luck in your new position” while moving on. Seriously, you were paying in the 200k range, one of your all-time favorite sons and a true representative of all that’s best about JMU tells you he got an offer from an ACC school in excess of 500k\/yr and you thought “well let’s offer him 20k more with no COA or more money for assistants, that’ll probably do the trick”?!?!<\/p>\n

Next, let’s move on to Coach Brooks dropping knowledge (or at least implying knowledge) on where the CAA stands in the current college athletics pecking order:\u00a0“Last summer I sat in the coaches meetings in the CAA and I got a shock. Anucha Browne came to speak about scheduling and how to schedule up and things of that nature and she pulled up our resume and said, ‘I was hoping and praying you guys were going to win because you probably would not have gotten to the NCAA tournament with a record of 29-3.’ She said, ‘You guys didn’t beat any Top 25 teams.’ We did. We beat UCLA, but when we beat them, we knocked them out of the Top 25. When she said that, I lost a lot of hope in what the NCAA considers mid majors.”<\/p>\n

Again, kind of speaks for itself doesn’t it? And it’s saying that as the Group of Five (G5) non power-five (P5) FBS conferences keep growing and consolidating power at the mid-major level and a couple of outlying hoops-only powers (Big East and A-10) keep producing high-quality products on the court, everyone else is back to low-major status. And that so clearly includes the Crumbling Athletic Association despite the hollow reassurances of the former commissioner that “we’re almost back.” No, we’re not almost back. When you replace VCU, GMU, ODU, and UMass with Elon, College of Charleston, and Albany you don’t come back.<\/p>\n

And finally, what in the name of a logger’s taint did we hire a search firm – like we paid them actual legal tender – to conduct a “national” search for only to hire a guy who played here, was a coach here, and just four years ago was sitting on our bench and our payroll?! You needed ole’ Eddie Fogler to procure a guy who should’ve been at the top of every single one of JMU’s top administrators’ “if the current Coach has a scandal and we have to have a respectable alum to take us through the ‘Interim’ period” list? JMU is like the Jelly of the Month Club to these search firms (i.e.\u00a0<\/em>The gift that keeps on giving the whole year round). And it also seems clear that Carr’s pro-ambition, pro-FBS, pro-big move (you know, Withers! Who in hindsight despite all our recent issues was likely sold the same bullshit bill of goods that Coach Brooks was in re: JMU Athletics’ ambitions) was no longer needed and ole’ Coach Fogler was told “find us someone cheap, or that loves JMU so much they won’t notice.” And how do we reach this conclusion? Well, Tony Bennett’s top assistant at UVA, Ron Sanchez, was seemingly the leading candidate throughout the process. He’s the type of up-and-coming dream candidate any in-state rival would have on their list. But if you think he was doing anything but scooting back over Afton Mountain in a hurry after hearing “no COA, CAA4lyfe, and here’s a lowball offer” then you’re delusional. And even scarier, if JMU thought he really might take the job when he heard that, than it’s JMU that’s delusional. A guy like that is not coming to a place that has now quite clearly planted it’s flag in the camp of deemphasizing the importance of Athletics even if they don’t have the cajones to say so outloud. Unfortunately, as always, actions speak louder than words.<\/p>\n

The Ugly<\/strong><\/p>\n

What, you thought we forgot The Ugly? We sorta did actually. But here’s a legit story about ODU’s chances for an AAC<\/a> call-up so you don’t feel cheated.<\/p>\n