BC needs to beat Harvard

The first public inkling that Gene might fire Al Skinner came after a loss to Harvard. Donahue reached one of his lowest points in a loss to Harvard. Wednesday night is Jim Christian's first shot at our Ivy League nemesis. The game means nothing in terms of ACC play, but it is very important for Jim Christian with regards to setting expectations going forward.

Despite their respectable record, this Harvard team is not as good as some of their more recent squads. The Crimson are favored but we have the talent to hang with them. Once again Hanlan will be the best player on the court and we have enough size to give them trouble at other positions.

Winning this game would snap the losing streak and show that Christian's guys are still on board and still competing. It would also begin to change perception locally among BC fans and casual basketball fans. Harvard had a nice run, but now BC is getting things back in order.

Reject the Amaker rejection narrative

Predictably as soon as Harvard announced Amaker was returning, the media started writing that he rejected BC. To reject something you have to be offered. Did anyone consider that maybe BC had concerns about another Ivy success story floundering in the ACC? Or maybe Amaker's inability to win big at Michgan caused some doubt?

As readers know, I was never excited about Amaker. I don't see BC fans years from now talking about letting Amaker get away.

The best news is that we are nearing an end.

A Michigan Man on Tommy Amaker

The biggest issue I have with Tommy Amaker was his mediocre tenure at Michigan. As an outsider, it always seemed like he underachieved. But to get a more informed opinion on his time in Ann Arbor, I asked blogging pioneer Brian Cook of MgoBlog his thoughts on Amaker. Brian's two cents follow:

"Amaker walked into a disaster area at Michigan and did make things better pretty much from the drop. Brian Ellerbe had filled the roster with ne'er-do-wells and many of them left either on Amaker's hiring or once they discovered that Amaker had a problem with them, say, jacking contested threes from halfcourt on the regular.

Amaker came in, nailed down a top-50 point guard from Texas named Daniel Horton, and made Michigan generally competitive except for one year where his team was destroyed by injury.

Unfortunately, that's where the improvement stopped. Michigan was perpetually on the bubble under Amaker and never got over the hump. His teams continually turned the ball over and he never got over .500 in the Big Ten except for one year where Michigan started out 0-6 with losses to Central and Western Michigan. His recruiting was wildly erratic; he was capable of getting kids to Michigan that few others would have managed but he also made crazy early offers to guys who had no business at a D-I school--a couple in fact transferred to D-II Saginaw Valley State, where they were bench players. Beilein inherited a mess comparable to the one Amaker did, without NCAA sanctions hanging over the program.

It does seem that Amaker's figured a few things out at Harvard he never did at Michigan. His time at M was seven years ago, as hard as that is to believe. He's built the Crimson into the most impressive Ivy program in 50 years. You would get an instant and real recruiting bump and he would get BC to a level where they're at least on the bubble. It's a defensible hire."

Why I don't want Tommy Amaker at BC

Even before the media started speculating, I knew Tommy Amaker was a leading candidate to replace Steve Donahue. That always gave me pause. Amaker may come to BC and do very well, but he's not who I want. I feel we know enough about Amaker to question if he would ever lead BC to an ACC Championship or Final Four.

Poison Ivy
The transition from the Ivy League to a major conference is very difficult. BC just learned that with Steve Donahue. Do we really want to replace him with another coach from the Ivy League? Everyone knows about the difference in recruiting at the two levels, but I also think the intensity of the league competition is much different, as is the expectation level. Aside from Donahue, other Ivy coaches who made the jump have either struggled or plateaued as perennial NIT teams (Carmody at Northwestern and Robinson at Oregon State).  The biggest Ivy successes are Fran Dunphy at Temple and John Thompson III at Georgetown. And neither of those situations are comparable to Amaker taking over BC (given Dunphy and Thompson's prior connection to their respective programs).

Michigan
I keep reading that Amaker had to rebuild Michigan. That's not really the case. He had a full scholarship allotment while with the Wolverines. The postseason bans he inherited didn't impact his first team (which was under .500) and probably kept his second team out of the NIT. That's it. The rest of the time, he had no sanctions or obstacles. Yet in his final four seasons in Ann Arbor, he never made the Tournament and never finished over .500 in Big Ten play. I know he's a different coach now and supposedly learned, but he couldn't win big at Michigan. That should be a big red flag. Michigan has so many things that BC does not (national following, highly appealing to recruits, the ability to recruit anyone) and the best Amaker could do was 8-8 in conference and NIT bids.

Recruiting
Amaker is a good recruiter and recruiting is how he is winning at Harvard. He just has better players than most of his competition. We need a good recruiter and we need an infusion of talent. But we also need someone who can develop the talent and out scheme the other teams. You can't just out recruit your opponents in the ACC. There is too much parity and elite talent throughout the conference.

I've been wrong about plenty of coaches before. (I was the one who thought Donahue had a tournament team this year.) Amaker may be great once he leaves Harvard. And I do think he will recruit well wherever he goes. But I think this time around BC can find a great recruiter who is also a great coach.