Vandy hires Shea Ralph as next head coach.

#52
#52
KrazyVolFan said:
No idea whether this is a good hire or not time will tell but if she can bring in some talent quickly from who cares where it will be worth it to them.
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If she can get Crystal out of Tennessee to a dairy farm in Connecticut she can recruit players to one of the coolest towns in the south.
 
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#54
#54
NeedOrange said:
If she can get Crystal out of Tennessee to a dairy farm in Connecticut she can recruit players to one of the coolest towns in the south.
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Yea but crystal was also playing for a multi time national championship coach too. She has. short amount of time to get a Jaloni, Tyler Jones, or Madi. what she has going for her is by then she may build a good enough relationship to do so.
 
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#56
#56
She has some decent players transferring in to the program and the incoming freshmen class has a couple of top 100 players. If she could get two or three off the UConn roster to come with her could have a much better team at Vandy than what they had last season.
 
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#58
#58
1reVOLver said:
For the amount of attention being paid to a former Uconn assisstant, one might think VolNation had been (temporarily, we hope!) turned into a satellite office of the boneyard.

If Ralph is able to resuscitate the Vandy program, her hiring just might have some impact on our Lady Vols three or four years down the road.
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Kellie suddenly has a potential recruiting threat locally, with a lot of great local talent coming up. And she hasn't exactly been tearing up the recruiting trail to begin with...
 
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#59
#59
Darth_Vol said:
Kellie suddenly has a potential recruiting threat locally, with a lot of great local talent coming up. And she hasn't exactly been tearing up the recruiting trail to begin with...
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Not just locally. Shea has contacts throughout the country and in Europe. She will recruit nationally.
 
#62
#62
Border Vol said:
A lot of Negavols are turning this into a Shea Ralph and Vanderbilt appreciation Society

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Yes agreed.... don't know Shea from Adam.... other than as former player and coach at UC.... but no reason she should be anointed to Queen of the Hop..... she has done nothing in terms of track record as head of her own program....

having said that i think it is maybe yes maybe no as to future success.... but people love to prognosticate
 
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#66
#66
I think it is a weak hire. Wouldn’t you expect Vandy to have hired someone with head coaching experience? I guess Vandy folks can take solace that at least she was not the “hold back” coach for Geno. That poor woman....
 
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#68
#68
Lucy said:
I think it is a weak hire. Wouldn’t you expect Vandy to have hired someone with head coaching experience? I guess Vandy folks can take solace that at least she was not the “hold back” coach for Geno. That poor woman....
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What makes it a weak hire? MSST hired someone with head coaching experience who everyone thought was a great choice, and NMP took a top ten team to 9th in the SEC in just a season.

I'd take Shea over NMP any day.
 
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#69
#69
Argonaut said:
What makes it a weak hire? MSST hired someone with head coaching experience who everyone thought was a great choice, and NMP took a top ten team to 9th in the SEC in just a season.

I'd take Shea over NMP any day.
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I just think a power five program could find an up and coming mid major HC who wanted to get to the “big time”. If you want a cautionary tale, let me introduce you to a gump named Pruitt who not only embarrassed UT every time he opened his mouth, drove a spike through the heart of a program already on life support AND managed to cheat on a large scale and freaking couldn’t even win cheating!!!!
But I digress.
 
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#71
#71
Lucy said:
Who is NMP?
I just think a power five program could find an up and coming mid major HC who wanted to get to the “big time”. If you want a cautionary tale, let me introduce you to a gump named Pruitt who not only embarrassed UT every time he opened his mouth, drove a spike through the heart of a program already on life support AND managed to cheat on a large scale and freaking couldn’t even win cheating!!!!
But I digress.
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Who is the head coach at Mississippi State? Nikki McCray-Penson? The Lady Vol herself that so many UT fans wanted hired over Kellie...

She was a successful mid-major head coach who also spent time on the bench at SC during their title run in 2017. She was the CUSA coach of the year in 2020 before she took $750,000/year to dismantle MSST.

There’s really only one way to go for that Vanderbilt program, so hiring an assistant coach who has established top tier recruiting connections and will bring in a husband that not only has been a head coach but has coached at Vanderbilt before seems like a decent game plan.
 
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#72
#72
Argonaut said:
Who is the head coach at Mississippi State? Nikki McCray-Penson? The Lady Vol herself that so many UT fans wanted hired over Kellie...

She was a successful mid-major head coach who also spent time on the bench at SC during their title run in 2017. She was the CUSA coach of the year in 2020 before she took $750,000/year to dismantle MSST.

There’s really only one way to go for that Vanderbilt program, so hiring an assistant coach who has established top tier recruiting connections and will bring in a husband that not only has been a head coach but has coached at Vanderbilt before seems like a decent game plan.
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I realized NMP right after I posted. Cleaned it up.
Still stand by my point.
 
#73
#73
Lucy said:
I just think a power five program could find an up and coming mid major HC who wanted to get to the “big time”. If you want a cautionary tale, let me introduce you to a gump named Pruitt who not only embarrassed UT every time he opened his mouth, drove a spike through the heart of a program already on life support AND managed to cheat on a large scale and freaking couldn’t even win cheating!!!!
But I digress.
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On the other hand, there's Adia Barnes at Arizona (she was an assistant at Washington), who in a few years has transformed a program that had no history of success into the team we saw in this year's final 4. I think Ralf will get Vanderbilt back to where the program was under Balcomb and then some.
 
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#74
#74
No one brings up Barnes at Arizona has her husband on staff. It's clearly not always a bad situation. UT may not be WCWS good this season in softball with only one elite pitcher, and basically nothing behind Roger's. In general the Weekly's have made UT relevant for a decade plus. They deserve credit for that.
 
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#75
#75
I wish every first-time head coach success, and Shea Ralph is no exception. It’s obviously a scary, stressful situation, so I do hope she’s able to settle her family soon and get to work making the SEC even stronger. Naturally I hope she loses every time her team plays Tennessee, but otherwise I hope she has the ability to coach her program back into prominence.

It isn’t lost on me that Kellie and Shea played college ball at the same time. I think Kellie is a year older, but those two extremely competitive women are bound to have some kind of “sump’n-sump’n” in the backs of their minds about each other.

Could this become the type of rivalry that reminds people of the great Pat/Geno days? Time will tell.
 
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