I hate to be so blunt, but when Ivey took over at Notre Dame there was only one atypically-abysmal season between a national championship and a coaching change.
By the time Kellie took over at Tennessee, the Lady Vols had, sadly, become the punchline to many WCBB jokes. The program had set dozens of negative records and lost its place in all but one of the positive records after suffering the death of THE most iconic figure to ever grace the sport. Helen Keller could have seen that replacing someone who was arguably THE gold standard of natural-born LEADER/TRAILBLAZERS with someone who’d been quite happy to play the subdued role of supporter/soother for her whole career was unlikely to end well.
NOONE should have been surprised when perusing coaching resumes that someone of Holly’s nature looks far better, in hindsight, as a loyal, dedicated ASSISTANT to much stronger, more headstrong head coaches.
I’ve said more than I should have already.
lv, you and I have been on the same page before and on opposite ends of the spectrum as well...here we are on the same page.
The perfect ending to a new beginning for the program would have been for CHW to step in and run things as they had been run, but, CHW was a follower who was in the position of a leader...Leadership is a character-makeup that only a few can have. In corporations as well as in the military, a single leader can lead hundreds or even thousands...The leaders have sub-leaders who carry out their directives, but in the end, the sub-leaders are in fact followers....True leaders are of the rarest breed.
Even though Kellie has significantly less number of years and experience at the SEC level leadership, she was/is in fact in a position to lead where she was arguably accomplishing "more with less"... The only question I have with Coach k is,,, "Can she do more with more?"
She has already assumed the role, in that she has positioned herself in the spotlight and taken the focus off of the players...She has in her first real year of recruiting gotten 4 of the top 100 players...She has strengthened the present team at its spots of weaknesses (shooting-scorers and backup PG)...Now the only things left in question are:
- Will she grow in "in-game" coaching (e.g..subbing with purpose, using timeouts wisely, holding players more accountable for on-court flubs and getting in their grill when they need to be addressed, elimination of stagnation in offensive flow,, etc).
- Given only 1 or 2 spots in 2022 and beyond, will she fill those spots with consensus all-american recruits
- Can she take the mantle of "The legend, Coach Pat Summitt's program" and make it "Coach Kellie Harper's program" and not be intimidated by the leadership that preceded her
It will be intriguing to find out,,,
I will do what I have always done here on VolNation...I will focus on the coaching and defend the players who need defending and not-defending the players who should be performing at a higher level.
I look forward to seeing how things progress