I do not know what you mean by "taking flyers."
Brian Gregory was a huge disappointment at GT, but he came to us with a 172-94 record and four consecutive post season trips. I do not think anyone at the AA considered that a flyer. There is risk associated with every hire. Some greater than others, but this did not seem like a huge risk at the time. Granted, people on the Swarm had differing opinions and the detractors were certainly more correct then not.
Josh Pastner had a 167-73 record at Memphis. Granted, things had cooled in his last two years, but a lot of people were pretty excited about hiring him as our new head coach.
So, let's look back at Paul Hewitt. He was 66-27 in three seasons at Siena. Was that a flyer? Or, Bobby Cremins, who was 100-70 at App State.
I am not sure what our choices were when we hired Geoff Collins, but he has also been successful at Temple. We are not likely to poach a head coach from a perennial P6 NCAA Tournament team, so there is going to a bit of risk with everyone candidate we interview. I hope our decision makers weigh that risk/reward ration carefully,, because it willl always be the toughest part of every hire we consider.
What I mean by a flyer is there was no real reason to believe any of them would have success
Gregory was barely a .500 coach in conference in the A10 and Dayton got worse after his initial year with inherited players. Dayton fans were happy to see him go, and the biggest argument for him having success here was he learned under Izzo. It's never a good thing when that is the biggest selling point (kind of like Key coaching under Saban). He wasn't a risk hire. He was just pretty much a guaranteed dud. This was by far the worst of the three hires fwiw because I don't even really see a hire based on hope. He was a hire based on not being Hewitt.
Pastner was again someone Memphis was happy to see go and even helped foot the bill. Now in this case it was a better risk for two reasons. One the financials were favorable, and there was a very real chance the issues he had at Memphis were more issues with Memphis than him. Living in memphis I know that side of things fairly well. Considering the situation it was a good calculated risk but it was still a hire made on hoping that he would have success instead of any real solid proof of it. He, like Gregory and Collins, did worse than the guy who came before him as well.
I don't blame the AD for hiring Collins. I think it was pretty much guaranteed when we hired Johnson that if we ever went away from the option we'd basically have a sacrificial lamb to eat the transition which pretty much meant a bad hire and a bad performance. But he had two years of experience as HC and those two were worse than the years before he was hired. He was hired on the hope that he could improve the roster via recruiting (which would also be helpful even in the likely event that he doesn't get it done)
Yes, Hewitt wasn't a flyer. He was a 5 year assistant at Nova in the early 90s when they were good (and ironically he was the assistant that left that sparked the downfall of the coach there), then went and built Sienna up in a very impressive stint. Cremins was similar taking a program which averaged slightly over 4 wins per year the 5 years prior and finished 1st in conference 3 of 4 years. Neither of them were flyers, both had more proven success than any of the other 3 mentioned, or Key, and as it turns out they were also the two most successful by a long shot. In football you can see it with hiring Johnson as well.
It's a obvious as a brick to the face. We need to stop with cheapness and stop hiring on hope. We could have done that in football with any of BoB, Chadwell, or Fritz and we messed that up to go cheap. If we make a change in basketball it should absolutely be to someone that has a proven record to some extent. Not a second year HC without any real notable success.
