I see the distinction, I was also really pulling for him. He seemed like a good guy who couldn't get out of the giant shadow Calipari left behind at Memphis. After his first season here, I was hoping we found the right coach. But the progression hasn't been there. This season, to say that he has underperformed is an understatement. He said we could make the tournament with the talent we have, but we aren't any closer than we have been in years past. It's is similar to his second year when we had Okogie, Lammers, and Tadric (veteran group of players that aren't being put in the best position to succeed as well as lack of depth - which we can now chalk up largely to poor recruiting). Is the offense better? Sure. But for every improvement, there's a setback - eg turnover rate this season.
Has there been weird **** under his watch? Definitely, but some of that may be his own fault. I understand he was trying to help out his friend, but having Ron Bell close to the program was clearly a very poor judgement call given the way things unfolded. It's hard to say exactly how much Pastner knew about the DLab situation and NCAA violations we're facing, but one could reasonably conclude he wasn't totally in the dark. If he was, then that is also a problem. As head coach he is responsible for oversight. So there has to be at least some accountability with regards to this point.
It may be that the AD wants to wait for a more financially advantageous time to fix the basketball program. But at some point there is no perfect time, and we are also losing money by keeping him around. With the amount of funds we do have, it seems like we could feasibly make a change but it may cause some reallocation/strain/flexibility with our athletic fund. Seems to me that the bigger issue is that our program is facing NCAA violations next year. No good coach will want to walk into that. Fine.
But what if we have a successful appeal? Or what if the sanctions stay in place this year? At that point, if the AD decides the finances can be rearranged, I think it's fine for us to commit to turning this program around. I won't pretend to know all of the in's and out's, as that is what we have an AD for. But at some point, I would like to believe we can get ourselves out of this decade-long hole we've gotten into. And I'm not sure that one additional year which would save us $2-2.5M makes that big of a difference - If the right coach is out there, I would love to see us go for it and commit to rebuilding the program to a competitive level that we all want it to reach.
If the candidate pool is not up to par, then yes, save the money and ride it out so we can get a quality coach who has a proven record.
