Rambling0101 wrote:
Am I the only one that feels Watson dropped the ball on this hire?
The situation reads to me that once PM turned down the Marquette overture Steve thought he’d stay put.
By know means am I suggesting that Coach Valentine isn’t the man for the job. What I am suggesting is that with a hire this fast, he either always knew Drew was his guy...or he was caught off guard by PM leaving and panicked.
Any thoughts?
Not at all. I think the bigger mistake would have been to engage in a long drawn out search for a new coach and risk losing the core of our existing team as well as many of the recruits that are already in the pipeline. If we took too long and still ended up hiring the wrong guy, the program would have essentially required a complete rebuild...and who knows how that would turn out.
Valentine is clearly a players's coach and he seems to be individually connected to most of the new recruits we have coming in.
He's young and he doesn't have head coaching experience, but he's been around winning programs for the better part of the last decade. The last 4 years under Porter have probably been an invaluable experience for him. He knows the offense and defense. He's been a part of the "culture" and knows what it takes to be successful at the highest level. Whether he has what it takes to sustain the success remains to be seen, but it's probably worth a gamble.
On face, his age and lack of experience as a head coach are the only glaring issues. Hopefully the athletic department can help mitigate that by surrounding him with some experienced assistant coaches. Some of you all have mentioned Greg Lansing. If he was willing to come to Loyola as an assistant, that would probably be a great hire!
Loyola once handed the keys to another program to a young, inexperienced coach...and that fella went on to win back to back national championships.