VolFan4life24
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Fulmer's decision
- Thread starter Darth_Vol
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I think anyone with sense if given a chance to go back in time would have handled Fulmers firing totally differently. Knowing what we know now. If we had waited one more year to fire Fulmer we never go through the whole Kiffin thing and they'd have had time to seriously think about/vet his replacement. Instead each time they fired a coach on a kneejerk with the attitude this is UT coaches will be beating down our doors.. but none were.
We have to get over the fact that everyone thinks UT is so great. Our best history is decades ago in all sports. None of the players were born back then and most of the coaches were maybe in high school. 24/7 "news" cycle is ruining sports imo along with everything else. Any hick with an opinion can post a "news" article as a blog or even a tweet. So now everyone thinks their opinion about everything no matter how uninformed it is should matter. Researching stories now is a matter of checking tweets and texts instead of actually doing research and talking to actual people who know. Journalists no longer have to be responsible or even journalists. They just have to feed the frenzy with clickbait.
I totally agree on your assessment of Barnes. but a quick search of these same forums less than a year ago will point you in those folks direction. I guarantee if Grant leaves and we dont come out hitting on all cylinders next season they will quickly appear again. If we don't win the east this football season there will be calls for Pruitts head. Our fanbase has lost its mind. and it is not just us its a nationwide thing. I just care about UT though.
Anywhere outside of UT or Uconn (maybe Notre Dame) no fan base would be calling for a coach with Warlicks record to be fired. Has the program declined? Yes, but they have made the tourney every year. We need a new coach but we need to do it the right way and stop acting like a rabid mob. I have seen posts both in WBB and FB over the past year and for football the past decade with supposed fans hoping the team lost so we would fire the coach. I am sorry but the whole reason I love college sports over the pros is that tanking isn't a thing here. If the AD finds someone to replace Warlick then they should move on. Until then they should stand pat and let her do her job and we should support them period. Trust me doing that will help the program more than firing any number of coaches. Building a positive fanbase will attract better recruits and better coaches. We fire her now and we will get some no name coach trying to make their mark in the world.
How's that any different from what's there now? Except the mark Holly is making is a messy one.
Assuming the players stay, it would be hard pressed for even "some no name coach trying to make their mark in the world" to come into Knoxville and do a better job than Holly...provided said coach is vetted more carefully than how @PG1 believes Holly scouts recruits (i.e. looks up their ranking). Not hard to put up the record she did when you have the best high school players lining up to wear Tennessee orange. If anything, that record should have been MUCH better. If she repeated her three years, you'd have some people complaining that they aren't winning championships, but not like the disaster going on now.
Bigorangefaninga
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Please let me know any other program in women's basketball history that has mattered more to womens basketball compared to UT? Besides UConn there isn't another program with a storied program and that includes Notre Dame, USC, Stanford or any other program out there! You continue to let this fester and we can join the other program ranked in the top 3 of all time womens wins, which actually sits second with La Tech! If this was the mens team maybe that record would be good enough, but this is the womens program, this was the gateway to the school for females(and even some males) to enter into the sports world and watch them win National Titles! If we had reached down and picked up Wes Moore instead of promoting Holly to begin with i would almost guarantee you we wouldnt have had this 10+ years in the desert of no NC or even final fours. She needs to go as she has had 7 years to prove she can make the team worse instead of better!
As far as Fulmer not being fired, yes he should have been fired, he had gotten fat and lazy living off his laurels(one thing he surely didnt learn anything from Pat about). Also the hire of Lane Kiffin wasnt a bad hire, he led that team to a 7-6 record starting at least 2 if not 3 OL that were walk-ons and almost beat Bama, NO ONE and I mean NO ONE could have forseen Seahawks canning jim Mora after ONE season and Pete Carroll taking that job and opening up USC. No one could see that happening but it did AND after that the panic hire was made(you know being so close to signing day and unlike this Lady Vol job there were slim pickings and Kippy should have been named Interim for the year). However that is revionist history and it has NO BEARING at all on firing Holly today because I guarantee you there would be some good resume's sent to Fulmer within hours of the announcement being made!
The sad reality is that as important as Tennessee was to women's basketball, it is still a niche sport. No one mourned the loss of La. Tech or ODU when their recruiting dried up and they became just another team. It's actually kind of embarrassing to see schools like Kentucky that have great men's teams, and hardly anyone comes to see a pretty decent team with the NFOY. So people will talk about equal exposure and equal opportunity, and tweet about it and virtue signal to no end, but at the end of the day, only a tiny amount of them will buy a ticket or actually watch a game.
If Tennessee followed La. Tech or ODU to the pits of insignificance, it won't matter. It's been three years since Tennessee was in the 2nd weekend of the NCAAT, and no one even notices anymore except the Tennessee fans and a handful of snarky UConn fans.
Coach Jumper
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Coach Jumper
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The hyperbole is real....making the NCAA tourney is not a disaster. Just making it barely is bad and needs addressing but its not a disaster. Being so bad you don't get an NIT invite is a disaster. WBB is getting more competitive. There is a lot more talent out there but also a lot more teams competing for it now. gone are the days when recruiting was a race between UT, ND and Uconn and everyone else got the scraps. Trust me even Pat would have a harder time coaching in this climate. It would still be UT and Uconn on top just not by as much. I think what will be interesting is when Geno retires. Him and Pat are Legends, when u reach that level the actual job is simpler.
Recruiting is more you show up and let them sign. Players for the most part are gonna listen by default. At that point its more about the pressure of maintaining vs building. Sabans disciples do well when they get their own programs but wait till he retires.. whoever gets that job is doomed.
Coach Jumper
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Schools that struggle to make the NCAA tourney or don't get a WNIT invite also don't have a roster full of HS AAs. That's the issue. Either she's not recruiting well in spite of the lofty HS credentials these girls come in with OR she's getting the right players but doesn't have the skill to make them good players. So comparing Tennessee to a school like Ohio is kind of pointless. Sure, they'd love to just make the tournament. They'd also be absolutely thrilled to have a player like Meme Jackson on their team that they could build the team around, let alone an Evina Westbrook or Rennia Davis.
Would Pat struggle to coach in today's environment? Maybe according to the old standards, where she wouldn't be able to routinely take her team to the FF. But she wouldn't be taking all these other losses and getting blown out by every good team she stumbled across. THAT'S the problem. Holly's getting a lot of her target recruits, so the recruiting race isn't the problem. It's what she does with the pieces once she gets them.
Orange_Mamba
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Bigorangefaninga
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There still isn’t parity with the top teams, it’s prrtty close to the same every year and yes the sweet 16 has some surprises and Cinderella’s but none of them are making the final 4, this isn’t the men’s game and it doesn’t have anywhere close to that parity. And no, making the NCAA tourney this year was a gift because it’s UT, there are a few teams in NiT or at home that beat this UT team and I keep hearing the SEC is the top women’s conference but it seems the PAC-12 has taken that mantle. Go out, get a coach, one that can X and O and let’s get it on, because Lord knows Holly learned absolutely nothing under Pat and I could find a few high school coaches that would out-coach her out of the gym so filling her shoes won’t be very hard at all!
OrangenSC
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Boy you've got this right. And I'll add, the usuals will start harping as soon as the coaching search starts. Well, I guess it's already started. Some will have the default position of "well, he/she is better than what we have now", regardless of who the prospective coach is. As if that will solve our problems. Others are ready to criticize Fulmer if it looks like he's not hiring who they think he should hire. Oh, and if he doesn't hire someone as quickly as they think he should, oh my. "He doesn't care about the Lady Vols", "all he cares about is football", "he doesn't have what it takes to be AD". Get ready for it, it's coming's and it's gonna be fun. Shoot, they've already starting because he hasn't fired her yet.
You just summed up internet chat forums. There's the harpers and then there's the harpers about the harpers, who never fail to tell us how smart they are because they saw the harpers coming. All us keyboard warriors choose our roles I guess.
I know its local urban legend that all UT fans have crazy wild unfair expectations of instant championships but that is not true. I'm battered, worn, and wounded and I quit thinking about nattys 5 yrs ago. Hell I just want watchable again.
You'd have to be delusional as CHW to think this mess can be instantly repaired. Haven't even seen what the roster is going to look like when all this shakes out, could be using managers and ball girls next year. All, I expect, even with a star hire, is stabilization, improvement, progress, and renewal of the culture.
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