SI's Pete Thamel -- who is pretty connected at BC -- reported that Donahue is staying one more year. Even if you don't fire your coach, Brad Bates will have to make some statement on Donahue and his future. It was that kind of season. He'll also have to explain the move to some angry boosters. I think this is the wrong move for many reasons. But ultimately the record says it all.
Once there is an official statement and I know more, I'll explain why this is a mistake.
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I dont think there even needs to be an explanation for why this is a terrible decision... its pretty obvious at this point
Also.. god this Clifford excuse is maddening ... the guy isn't Hakeem Olajuwon or Patrick Ewing.
He averaged around 4.7 rebounds a game his frosh year.. oh wait Donahue didnt realize rebounding was important till this year.. at least he knows now
I was on the fence about renewing my seats. This might cement that decision.
Don't want to say I told you so,... but I told you so a few weeks back. Admin. likes this guy, and that's all there is to say. He is not going to recruit the type of player we need in order to appear competitive, and the institution is willing to let another year, or more, go down the tubes. I am tuning out too quickly from BC athletics as most of our sports are consistently at or near the bottom of the pile.
Ever to excel never felt more ironic than right now.
Thamel knows better than to be parroting these bullshit excuses. Just say they didn't want to buy him out.
Bates better have a pretty clear definition of what success next year looks like.
Is winning 16 games success next year? what is it even compared to.
Thamel looks like he knows nothing about college hoops writing those dumb excuses
There is no justification for this. Dumb, cheap, stupid move.
Ry:
I don't think you'll need season tickets. Can probably walk up day of the game.
I don't know what the expectations are for next year. Say they ease up the schedule and double their win total. That's 16 wins and a borderline NIT team. Is that fireable?
Ry:
I don't think you'll need season tickets. Can probably walk up day of the game.
I don't know what the expectations are for next year. Say they ease up the schedule and double their win total. That's 16 wins and a borderline NIT team. Is that fireable?
1. FOOTBALL
2. Hockey
3. Basketball
BC is clearly cheaping out on this, and I'm sorry for bball fans. It's just not the most important sport on the Heights.
Another buyout was probably not palatable for this administration. Clear this guy can't recruit at an ACC level, so I doubt next year will be much better. It's amazing, you take most of Skinner's teams at BC and they'd wipe the floor with the current version.
As for attendance narrative - that BC basketball has always struggled to draw fans. I was at school from 2004-2008...and for three of those years, you had great crowds at most Big East/ACC games, and so/so in non-conference home schedule, which often sucked. If you win, people will come. I remember Patriots, Celtics players sitting courtside at games during the Smith/Dudley era - BC can draw for basketball.
Bruce Pearl would have made BC basketball relevant again. That ship has now sailed.
jjS
The 15 win team that got Al fired would have blown these guys out. The unjust firing of Skinner keeps getting worse.
fire the puppet Bates!
I hope he wins 30 games next year-- for no other reason than to see Superfan crybabies STFU....
Dear Brad Bates,
You are now more disappointing than Steve Donahue.
this is disappointing and surprising, but not shocking. with Spaziani, during his last season the "connected" BC people i talked to all were on the same page - he was done. with Donahue all this season, BC people i have talked to have been like "well i don't know if he gets fired" or "his contract is too much to stomach." i never heard anyone who has ties to the AD or the administration say anything along the lines of what has been the consensus opinion of BC fans - this guy stinks and HAS to be canned after this season (i did hear a lot of "this guy stinks" but not the "he's definitely fired").
with respect to expectations for next season, how can they be anything but what they were this year? this year was a disaster, but next year its the same story - we have all the same guys coming back, and we should be going to the tournament. i don't want to hear talk of winning less than 20 games or making the freaking NIT.
i hope Leahy (who i assume is pulling the strings) realizes how potentially detrimental this decision could be. for all of the talk parroted by the terribly annoying Cornell BBall Blog and even Pete Thamel about giving Donahue time to build a program and the "monumental rebuild" he faced (um, this is college, players can't play more than 4 years anyway, every coach needs to rebuild pretty much continually), this team next year is going to have 7 seniors (assuming Clifford doesn't get a redshirt) and 2 juniors. we don't even have anyone committed for the one scholarship right now (although we will get Daryl Hicks as a redshirt freshman coming off an ACL injury). the point is - this team faces ANOTHER rebuild after next season! 6-7 NEW players are going to be freshmen in 18 months, all learning the system for the first time.
the best case scenario for next year is Clifford gets a medical redshirt (which is up in the air only because a desperate Donahue played him for 33 minutes over 2 games when the season was already lost). that would give us 6 seniors (Anderson, Jackson, Heckmann, Odio, Dragicevich, Caudill), 3 juniors (Hanlan, Rahon, Clifford), 2 sophs (Owens and Magarity), and a freshman (hicks). that team is still gonna get crushed on the boards, be poor defensively, and have no size.
man, talk about a disappointing way to start the day. this team is so frustrating to watch, every possession Donahue whistling at the players and micromanaging, nothing on the interior, getting dominated on the glass, a "shooting team" with a bunch of guys who aren't good shooters.
also, for the excuse that Donahue's contract (allegedly a 5-year deal that gets renewed every year) is unfireable or too much for BC to stomach, at what point can this guy get fired? as explained in the few articles which discuss his contract, it sounds as if its essentially a lifetime contract. is this guy coach for life?
and for the excuse of the "monumental rebuild" Donahue faced, are we going to be hearing that in 4 years when the new 7-player recruiting class is underachieving and the announcers say "well, he had to start a season with 7 freshman so he deserves some leeway."
this guy is like the curse of Gene D, an unfireable, perpetual rebuild. i wonder if Gene D would have given him an extension after beating Syracuse?
final note - Steve Lavin at St John's had the same situation in terms of class make up - their 2011 recruiting class had 7 incoming scholarship players, same as BC. in year 1, BC went 9-22 playing 7 freshman, SJU went 13-19. the next year SJU lost Moe Harkless to the NBA but still went 17-16 while BC, who didn't lose anybody, went 16-17. this year, St Johns is 20-11, and BC is 8-24.
funny, i didn't hear announcers making excuses about St Johns "only" winning 20 games and saying Lavin faced a monumental rebuild AND lost Harkless to the NBA.
if Hanlan leaves for the NBA, or Rahon transfers, will next year's excuse be "well, if only BC hadn't lost so & so, they wouldn't be the worst team in the ACC." also, Donahue better freaking pray neither of those guys leave -- as much as people say Rahon regressed this year and have been down on Hanlan, this is a guard-dominated offensive system with only 2 legitimate guards (Jackson as the main ballhandler doesn't work). if we lose either of those guys, we'll be even worse than we were this year, even if Dennis "the Dream" Clifford comes back. (h/t HARIO - as if Clifford is college version patrick freaking ewing)
So basically, it's Al's and Spaz's fault that the Don wasn't fired.
Just checked the calendar and we're 18 days from April Fools. WTF!
But the schedule that Donahue came up with is was too hard! And the roster wasn't deep because of all the recruits Donahue drove away! Poor Donahue. Let's give him an extension and proclaim we'll get to the Orange Bowl while we're at it.
Lets hope they make some under-the-table, back-alley deal with Bruce Pearl so that he waits around until his sanctions blow over and we can pick him up after next year's inevitably terrible season.
Completely agree with Miz.
Jeff Goodman tweeted that the initial contract was 6 years, so we would've been buying two.
If the reason is solely based on the contract buyout it is very short sighted. If you figure that 2,000 more fans show up per game with a new coach (this year's attendance figure was 4,007/game) at $20 per ticket, for 15 home games that's $600k in extra revenue -- not to mention potential increase in Flynn Fund donations, etc. For a university with a ~$850mm operating budget, a delta of less than $500k is a rounding error. Plus the immeasurables of negative vibe, lower school spirit, etc. I just can't buy the notion that the reason was solely based on not wanting to buyout his contract.
Forgive me if I let off a little steam here. If this is true - I now want both Bates and Donahue out of BC. Bates is proving nothing other than we will tolerate pathetic performance (this was worse than mere mediocrity), wasting university assets on huge salaries for people who do not perform and seriously damaging the university's national reputation by solidifying BC as the Temple of the ACC.
He already retained a baseball coach following a 22-67 pathetic conference record over three years. That was a very bad sign. We need to remove all of these losing turds from BC (including Leahy if he is behind all of this) with the wallet. No attendance, no Flynn Fund donations, no nothing. Unfortunately, the ONLY thing these losing turds understand and give a crap about is your money. Stop being a bunch of saps - stop donating and stop attending. Don't even renew your alumni membership.
We deserve to be dropped by the ACC. We have taken their money under false pretenses. We are not even trying to field competitive teams here. It has to stop.
Dumb, small and cheap
Opened up the local (Mobile, AL) paper this morning to see Bruce Pearl at the top of the list of possibilities to replace Barbee at Auburn (which wiped the floor with BC in a game I attended.) Barf.
Could not agree more with all the sentiment here
Was attendance really 4K per game last year?
How low does it have to get before they decide to can this guy?
Is that all there is left to root for at this point?
The fact that he will be able to recruit 7 new scholarships for the future now is whats most worrisome in the long term.
Are 16 wins next year a success that will bring him back? -- then we start over again with an all Frosh team to win 7-8 games.
Is that program he is "building" Single digit wins till we get experience than maybe some low teen win high mark years?
If a team that won 16 games returns the whole team and wins 8 games the next year isn't worthy of being in fired, will there ever be a reason to let him go?
If the school didn't want me to care about the BBall team anymore -- they are likely to succeed now
I have never been big on the look back to the past on Al Skinner -- but after the utter disaster this is turning into I have no choice but to wish we never let him go.
Really excited to see Donahue's next rebuilding-mega class. Who's with me? Anyone? Any one?
It takes special character to run the top of the key weave for 30 seconds. Teaches our young men patience and that just as in life, good things don't always come to those who wait. Important life lessons from the Jesuits.
In a sense, SD's system is the basketball version of Purgatory on Earth. Always weaving, always catching up, so close, yet still so far. Only a prayer at the end may result in success.
The good news is that the recruiting budget is shrinking. No open scholarships and apparent multiple trips to the Plex to rack up the talent.
It's too bad you can't trade with another school open scholarships for actual major conference talent.
Wealthy booster anyone?
There is big money involved. Unfortunately, you have to honor the contract. BC is trapped into an untenable situation. Donohue works hard but doesn't have the skills for this level.
Well I know what I won't be doing next winter. Frees up my schedule quite nicely. Just stop donating money to this sorry excuse of an athletics department.
Nappy Bravesbill
Couldn't agree w/ u more.
I just emailed Bates to let him know I'm boycotting anything to do w/ the basketball team as long as Onahue remains the coach. I have been a donor of time and money to the school every year since 1977. This will stop too. I urge any and all of you to do the same. Maybe if we can create enough of a groundswell they'll reconsider.
Braden.bates@bc.edu
Tom Crean is now available...
Indiana was 17 - 15 this year a #1 seed last year under Tom Crean. And he got fired. Meanwhile Donahue cannot even get us close the NIT. But Brad Bates & Co. feel it is acceptable to pay him 1mm+ per year to further run the program in the ground.
Correction
Brad.bates@bc.edu
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