Fire Dave Paulsen / Hire Tony Skinn

Here's a name I haven't seen mentioned yet as a possible replacement....Wes Miller from UNCG. He's done a really nice job there in 9 seasons. Since the start of the 16-17 season his record is 117-39 with 2 NITs and 1 NCAA. Took s few season to get his footing but he's been real good over the last 5 seasons. Seems like a viable candidate, my only thought is maybe he wants to jump to a P6 league if/when he moves up. Thoughts?

his last 4 year record impresses me a ton. has 3 3-stars playing for him and has 4 transfers on the roster, so unlike our current coach he understands the need to have transfers on the team. Definitely someone I will keep an eye on, good suggestion.

Again, perhaps I'm reading too much into this, but the following is Brad Edwards's last tweet or re-tweet about the men's basketball team:

Brad Edwards Retweeted



Mason Men's Basketball
@MasonMBB
·
Jan 6

Starting 5.

MASN

http://es.pn/2MwnDSG

Miller was in the running for the Wake job before they hired Forbes. If he keeps winning like he has, he’s gonna bypass the A-10 level altogether.

Brad who?

Another mid-season firing:




Jon Rothstein
@JonRothstein
·
14m

Scott Spinelli will serve as BC's interim head coach for the rest of the season, per release.

Quote Tweet




Jon Rothstein
@JonRothstein
· 16m

Source confirms that Boston College has parted ways with Jim Christian as @PeteThamel reported. Another mid-season coaching move.

BC should be a good coaching gig.

Tons of talent in the New England prep schools, ACC affiliation, great academics and located just outside a great city.

Patrick Kraft, who came from Temple, is the new AD at BC.

should have never fired Al Skinner. been a mess since then. BC doesn't give a rats ass about sports though so until that changes it isn't a good coaching gig...

It's like Mason just they have a football team and play in a power conference.

I can’t believe this thread almost went to the second page and hadn’t been posted to in 9 days.

I think now we all see the genius that Paulsen is. He said this was his best team yet before the season started, he just didn’t want to alert the other teams so he could sneak up on them. He just guaranteed we won’t be on the PIG and is ready to run the table in the tournament.

NCAA tournament, here we come! Renew Paulsen now.

Please change the name of this thread to “Paulsen is the Greatest”. We don’t want Brad to think we want him fired since he obviously hangs on every word we post.

Love it, as the sarcasm will undoubtedly be lost on many.

Moving this discussion to the Paulsen thread to stop polluting the GW win thread.

Herndon, I agree with about 95-99% of your whole "He is Average, thus we are getting average" argument, but I don't think that is the end of the story.

As a tangent, I had argued many years ago that he can't be a horrible coach and have the worst recruits at the same time. If he has the worst recruits, then he is doing a hell of a job coaching them up. I think that is likely the situation. I suspect he is a good teacher/practice coach. He just doesn't seem to be a good game coach. He doesn't seem to be able to plan for most games and his adjustments and rotations are mind boggling at times.

Back to the "He is average" argument. Areas where I don't disagree, but think you are not nuanced enough (many of these have been addressed by others already):

• Expectations. You argue that since Mason is only average in the support of the program, we should only expect him to be average. That is logical, but, Brad and Dave have set the expectations higher. They say we have resources to succeed and have told us we will compete for championships. We should hold them to that. We shouldn't make excuses for them. If they want to come out and make this argument themselves, that is on them. If they think funding is not there, they can ask the community for money to do X,Y, and Z, otherwise we will just be average. They have not done that.
• His results should peak a little higher. He seems to peak at average but his lows are low. So I think the argument can be made that he is trending slightly below average. Additionally, his peaks have been in weak years, as well. I would expect there to be a peak near the top of the conference in his best years if his low is near the bottom. Also, I think your evaluation of average is a little too narrow. It should include other measures like NCAA tournament appearances. Even if he is truly average overall record-wise, he should get an NCAA tournament appearance occasionally, what ever the average is for A10 teams.
• Results compared to retained coaches-I haven't looked at the numbers, but, someone else made this point. Comparing him top to bottom of the A10 is not necessarily how you compare average. If most of the people finishing around him or below are getting replaced for that level of achievement (or lack thereof). He may be one of the worst performing coaches in the A10 of those that are being retained (especially if he were retained this year).

Possibly the only area where I disagree with you is your conclusion arguing that he should be extended for finishing average again this year. I think he could make that argument in his discussions with Brad (we only have average facilities and funding), but that is not our job to make the excuses for him. When you look at his recruiting issues, his in game issues, his lack of even sniffing an NCAA berth or even progressing in the A10 tournament, for that matter. Then, there are the expectations that he himself has set on top of that (A10 player of the year, two year season, best team ever, etc.), that he has not come even close to meeting. When you put it all together, I don't believe has met expectations and thus does not warrant an extension.

There isn’t a Girl Scout troop large enough that can brunt the attendance dip we are gonna have next year if Dave is still at the helm. Still can’t sell 250 seats of Rona ball. We might dip sub 3k average attendance next year. Lowest since Ls first seasons?

I agree with your overall point, but, I don't think seats sold this year is a predictor of future years. If there were decent seats available and didn't require a mask, I likely would have gone to most of the games this year. I just didn't feel like making the effort to get there and back to watch from nosebleed seats, struggle with breathing/itching issues of a mask and have noone else to talk to when I can watch it very comfortably on a pretty darn good feed in the comfort of my home.

I don’t think that the shitty seats and better experience at home this season is a uniquely mason problem though, and it seems like every other conference school that can have fans has had no issues filling out their reduced max. Who knows though, kinda a crap shoot, will be interesting to watch attendance numbers next season.

Unfortunately Paulsen will be back. Move on. Next topic

I agree that he will likely be back, but, that doesn't mean I agree with it or have to stop discussing it in the appropriate thread, which this seems to be. Dragging it into every other thread, I agree, is getting pretty old and killing any attempts to talk about other Mason basketball topics.