Greenteam said:
Great hire? The proof will be in the results. Will hold back judgement till then. Speaking of resume. We are his 4th school in four years. Felt Coach Laird was the best and right hire. If you want a comparison look at the job he did this year. Compare those to the new hire's first year at Riverside. Hands down Laird's year was better than his first at Riverside under much more difficult circumstances. As a matter of fact we won as many conference games as Riverside did in his second season. But I am not posting to debate the merits of who should have been hired.
Time will tell. Not sure why anyone is anointing Laird after this subpar year. Was he not the lead recruiter? Did these players not drastically under perform? Roster talent was incredible weak this year. Why was it so bad for a long tenured coaching staff? And don’t get me started on the awful situational awareness this team had in critical situations. That unpreparedness comes from Laird. Laird was a solid assistant/associate HC, but he showed he is nowhere near ready to be a D1 HC. As they say, ball don’t lie.
As for a blast of emails I have only received two. If you have spent any time around Coach Laird and Coach Katz you know they are two of the most sincere, well respected coaches you will meet. They along with their staff put their heart and soul in this program.
I’m grateful for what Katz and his staff built while here, this program just lacked consistency. The BSC is a garbage conference, we should have been battling for the 4/5/6 spot in the BSC, not the 8/9/10 year in and year out. The defensive side of the ball improved dramatically under Laird and he gets all the credit there. I wish Katz, Laird, and the rest of the staff best of luck at whatever they decide to pursue next.
The administration can hire whomever they choose. However a true professional, who cares about people, would have personally contacted Coach Laird to let him know he was not getting the job, and also reached out to his long tenured assistant coaches. Instead all of the coaches and their families had to start hearing on social media that they were losing their jobs and then receive an email from human resources to turn in in their work computers etc. That is unacceptable! How would you and your family feel if your receive an email tonight from your company to turn in your things in the morning and your boss/supervisor did not talk to you first?
Agreed. Nelsen/Orr should have handled it better, but these guys were contract staff. Once that contract is up, the University doesn’t owe them anything.
If Orr and Nelson had no interest in hiring Coach Laird they should have been straight with him at the end of the season. Instead Coach Laird, Coach Riding, Coach Smith and Coach Kirby and their families were left to wonder for three weeks what their future was. It is unfathomable, unprofessional, and disrespectful to them that they had to first hear on social media that they were hiring someone else and then not hear from Athletic Director Orr. No excuses.
Meh. Nothing is outside of the contract is owed to these coaches. This is the nature of coaching collegiate athletics, not knowing what happens when that contract expires is part of the gig…and truth be told, none of these coaches should be surprised at what was coming. If any of them were truly surprised at not being retained, then they were just living in a different world this past season.
I’ll close with thanking Katz, Laird and this staff for an overall solid program that they built. The graduation rates speak for themselves, and although the on-court results were well below expectations at times, these players played their hearts out and delivered some memorable moments that will go down as some of the best ever in the D1 era. I’m grateful I got to see a lot of games in person, and be a long time season ticket holder while they were here.
Having said that, it's time for a change and I look forward to what Patrick and the new staff will bring to the Nest as we embark on a new era of Hornet MBB. More importantly, I look forward to seeing how Nelsen/Orr support this program so that it can reach new heights. This is an exciting change and given Nelsen/Orr's track record of coaching hires, I'm optimistic it's the right move.
Stingers Up!
