Remembering Hewitt

mstranahan

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jbix80 said:
I can’t remember how much his shot improved over the years, but his form wasn’t very good in this 2002 game.
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Ish was a beast on the defensive end and rebounding. His dunks were awesome to watch. that said, he didn't shoot well outside the lane. He had a career year in '04, shooting 57%. (he shot 44.8% from the floor the other three years) I don't know how many of his made shots were dunks or layups, but if you assume he made 1 dunk per game on average, his FG% drops to 34% one those other three years. That feels about right to me, based on my again memory
 
LargeFO

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vadimivich said:
I get all of that, but lost in all of that was that was at it's completion one of the better seasons in GT basketball history and even now we don't remember it as such and the clouds around the program robbed us as fans (and we robbed ourselves) of just enjoying it while it was happening. We have played in a grand total of 7 ACC Championship games, it was one of them. We've won an NCAAT game in only 11 seasons, it was one of them. We've had 3 wins in a season against UNC and Duke only a couple of times and it was one of them. We've had 5 total top 5 NBA picks, that team had one of them. Etc, etc. Yes, we lost a sad game to UGa and the team stumbled at the end of the ACC season and maybe could have achieved even more ... but damn, it also had a fair number of highs we simply ignored as they were happening. I think the vast majority of fans if polled would remember the Okogie/Lammers team and the run in the N.I.T much more fondly, despite the objective fact that 09-10 was a much better team and season. The poisonous effect of expectations really can hurt us from just enjoying what we have when we have it.

Just as an example ... January 9th, 2010 we played a nationally televised game against Duke, who was ranked #5 in the country at that point and went on to win the National Championship. We beat them, and did it by out executing them down the stretch. It should really be one remembered as a great win that we still post about from time to time, but that entire year has seemingly been thrown into the trash can of history.



We have won 1 game against a top 5 team since then (the home win over Virginia in 2016 ... oddly enough another January 9th, 2pm tip-off). They don't happen often and stuff like that should be enjoyed in the moment, no matter the scenario.
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Zack Peacock was a sneaky good player.
 

RamblinRed

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YlJacket said:
I wasn't thrilled with the hire but I tend to agree with your logic. He was a guy with a good to very good pedigree that was being eaten alive in a difficult "political" situation in Memphis. I think MBob thought he could be a good front man/recruiting closer with his energy and "charm" and worked hard to backfill with a strong assistant group. The first year says there was at least a decent argument for the logic.

My personal opinion, from afar and with no data or information to back it up, is that CJP still needed a lot of "adult supervision" from an AD and needed an AD to be a lot more hands on than most like or want to do. And when he lost MBob, Todd likely didn't take the same tact. So less of presence that would tell CJP to keep someone like Bell at a further arm's length than you are. And less of an adult in the room approach to the LaBarrie decision and less hands on approach to hiring the assistants to replace the hand picked ones that left (as would be expected if they were that good). I admit I don't know the financial parameters given CJP for these hires but it seems to me that we certainly missed MBob's hands on approach to the assistants.

Now what I described is above and beyond the way most ADs think and operate - and frankly most coaches would push back hard if an AD tries to be as hands on as I describe. But if you are going to go the young/out of the box/fix a career path approach that we were taking with CJP (or any other out of the box idea) then the AD has to engage and play that role. I am not sure that happened but again am just watching from afar.
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Keep in mind that Pastner was hardly Mbob's first choice. He was probably more like 5th or 6th or 7th.
First call was to Chris Mack who had no interest in the GT job. Then it started to come down to Bryce Drew and Jeff Capel. Drew was very close to coming (reportedly had verbally accepted) but ended up at Vandy when they came at him late and outbid GT. They reached out to at least a couple of others including Cuozo Martin who never signed his contract with Cal and couldn't get anyone to bite so eventually hired Pastner.

I think Pastner's vision is similar to early Hewitt years. Good, but not great talent that plays well together. But Pastner right now isn't getting enough of the 4 star type talents Hewitt got his first 5 years.

The 09-10 team is all about expectations. I even posted on another board at the time to appreciate the 23 wins as that wasn't the norm at GT, but don't let it mask the long terms issues.
Fans had very high expectations for that team and it never really lived up to them consistently.
 

YlJacket

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I fully realize CJP was option number 5 or likely more. Out of the box was pretty much a necessity by that time in the process. My point was when you hire out of the box you have to be willing to support out of the box levels.

Like Vad I was high on Capel but would have been happy with Keats. Not sure if he was ever part of the process. Capel I assume we didn’t offer enough to get him out of Durham.
 

THWG16

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kg01 said:
It's not hard to explain. Apparently Jarrett Jack coached all his successful teams. The teams before Jack arrived and going back to Sienna too, I guess. :rolleyes:
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When we called the timeout before Will Bynum made the game winning layup , Hewitt asked the players “what y’all wanna do?” A good coach in that situation knows what to do & draws up a play ! I don’t think Hewitt was as bad as some think & yes he could recruit , but go back & look at his offenses & look at how he did at mason .. horrible
 

THWG16

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YlJacket said:
I fully realize CJP was option number 5 or likely more. Out of the box was pretty much a necessity by that time in the process. My point was when you hire out of the box you have to be willing to support out of the box levels.

Like Vad I was high on Capel but would have been happy with Keats. Not sure if he was ever part of the process. Capel I assume we didn’t offer enough to get him out of Durham.
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I wanted Keats
 
ESPNjacket

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THWG16 said:
When we called the timeout before Will Bynum made the game winning layup , Hewitt asked the players “what y’all wanna do?” A good coach in that situation knows what to do & draws up a play ! I don’t think Hewitt was as bad as some think & yes he could recruit , but go back & look at his offenses & look at how he did at mason .. horrible
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That is exactly what many good coaches do. Cremins would have done the same. The guys playing know who has the advantage in a short time scenario like that better than a coach does.

Tech fans get mad about Hewitt for all of the wrong reasons.
 
gte447f

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jbix80 said:
Speaking of Hewitt, the 2002 game against UVA is on ESPNU. Akins was a senior, Elder and Mohammed were Freshman.
I’m not necessarily saying this is the case, but does anyone think Wright could turn into a Muhammad type player? Muhammed’s shot was rough, but his athleticism was superior. I can’t remember how much his shot improved over the years, but his form wasn’t very good in this 2002 game. Obviously, his explosion was his gift.
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Not no but hell no... but he could morph into a baby giraffe right before our very eyes.
 

StingU2

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THWG16 said:
When we called the timeout before Will Bynum made the game winning layup , Hewitt asked the players “what y’all wanna do?” A good coach in that situation knows what to do & draws up a play ! I don’t think Hewitt was as bad as some think & yes he could recruit , but go back & look at his offenses & look at how he did at mason .. horrible
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You would be amazed how often coaches ask players what plays they want to run during a time out, college and professional
 

RamblinRed

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Keats was not seriously considered.

Drew and Capel were the frontrunners once Mack said he wasn't interested.
GT and Drew were closing in on a deal so Capel was allowed to do the public 'I have no interest in the job' bit. Then Kevin Stallings jumped from Vandy. They came after Drew hard after he had verbally agreed with GT (there was at least 1 asst that had already been lined up), Drew preferred the private school to the public school after watching his brother at Baylor and Vandy could pay more (rumor is it went $2.7MM yr).

At that point it was too late to go back to Capel since he had already made the public statement.
 

MWBATL

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[QUOTE="RamblinRed, post: 550405, member: 1776

At that point it was too late to go back to Capel since he had already made the public statement.[/QUOTE]
Wish we had gotten Capel....
 
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