Alright Dawgs, where's the bar for retaining Head Coach
Tom Crean?? I stated in that other post that I'm an 8. If HCTC can go 8 -10 I'm for bringing him back. Fourth year, four losing seasons but if he gets to 22-50, I say we keep him.
He'll have the "improved every year" card to play. And further, if he gets this group to 8-10, that man can coach!!

Likelihood of this happening I'd put at 40/1.
What's your # and what odds do you put on it happening?

I'm not so much on numbers as I am results. I'm still thinking NCAA or bust.

.500 in conf play maybe buys him year 5 with an NCAA do or die for year 5.

Not gonna get hyped about beating Memphis until there is a trend.

I think you have to give a lot of weight to who signs, leaves and comes back. There at least has to be a foundation.

Whew, NCAA or bust or maybe 9 - 9 will be very tough.

What about your "centrist" friend Stevie Buckets of Myerstall fame ? I'd like to hear from him. You two plus old JudgeDawg have a history as some of the fairest, reasonable posters of years gone by. You around Judge?

What about you hardliners… Driller, Monk. I'd like to hear from long lost BMD. Dawg 44 you got a number? IU/Big10 Wiki Page Kramer? Dawgleright?

Oldtimer65 said:

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I think you have to give a lot of weight to who signs, leaves and comes back. There at least has to be a foundation.

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Well recruiting is not going well and not likely to change. Eligible to come back that are key is a pretty short list of Wright, Oquendo and JAR. Losing one of those would be a huge negative. I don't think it'll come down to this. Crean needs W's in conference play to have any chance of returning. But what is that number of W's??

Haha I love that description of me. If that's what being rational and taking as many facts into consideration as possible gets me, then I'm fine with the label.

Those that said this season was "NCAA tourney or bust" related to Crean retaining his job have basically already determined that he should be canned. Again, the logic of making that declaration at a school that made five NCAA Tournament appearances in the 21 years prior to Crean taking over and has won four NCAA Tourney games since 1983 seems extremely unrealistic if not borderline absurd.

Progress with this group is likely going to be difficult to measure in raw wins. However, I'm with you in that if they can somehow equal or better last year's SEC win total, then Crean will have done a pretty impressive job given the youth and apparent lack of high-rated star power on the roster.

As someone else stated, the ultimate test is whether Crean can obtain higher talent and keep it on the roster and/or blend it with good transfers to maintain some consistency. So far, he has failed to do that, however, we're talking about a pretty small sample size. He did secure Edwards and can boast that he has far more NBA ties than many other coaches. If Georgia doesn't believe that that matters to any prospective recruits, then it can/will move on.

Sid - I am keying on that word 'stability.'

If you fire him, whatever can stick around after this year won't.

Unfortunately, what we have seen so far since he's been here is that they all tend to leave anyway.

Catch 22.

My calculus is he either is or is not a five year solution at season's end.

Based on the body of Josh Brooks' work to date, I think he is NCAA or bust, or at a minimum clear and convincing evidence of sustainable stability that we do hit the NCAA year five and beyond.

And to the comment on our NCAA appearance history, I get that. But isn't the goal to break and surpass that lousy history rather than benchmarking it?

No, you're correct. You want a coach to provide ample evidence that he can change the program into a perennial NCAA Tournament team (or something close to it). How long you give someone a chance to prove that is highly debatable. Crean's trajectory is probably far different had Claxton returned to pair with Edwards, Hammonds, Wheeler and Camara. He didn't and Crean couldn't effectively account for that.

In today's world, not many people want to wait for a sample size longer than a few years. The tricky thing is that, for the most part, the schools that exhibit consistent success are the ones with long-term coaching stability. To hire someone with recent past success and then jump ship within a few years isn't going to help matters. That is unless of course things are particularly bleak and the school has the proverbial "home run hire" in waiting.

Huzzah. No question UGA basketball is caught in a revolving cycle of fan abuse.

TKramer15 said:

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Crean's trajectory is probably far different had Claxton returned to pair with Edwards, Hammonds, Wheeler and Camara.

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This, to me, is the single biggest "what if" of Crean's tenure to date...

Calling me centrist is both fair and correct. I'm a middle child through and through. You get too high, I'll drag you right down. Too low? Come on up.

Anyway, this isn't something I've put a ton of thought into because I assumed he was a dead man walking. Is it just the win over Memphis that people feel has changed his trajectory? I hope that win is the start of something big, but forgive me if I'm skeptical. I still think we drop at least one more non-conference game, and it's hard to find more than 3-4 wins in conference (Mizzou? A&M? Vanderbilt? One hot night against a decent team?).

Combine that projection with the fact that we have 0 committed players in the class of 2022 and it's hard to see a scenario where Crean gets a 5th year.

I guess, though, that I should attempt to answer the question. As low a bar as this may seem in year 4, approaching .500 in conference play with this group might convince me he deserves another shot. That likely puts us .500 overall and perhaps even in the NIT.

I understand very well the history of Georgia basketball, but I quickly tire of any argument that we should accept mediocrity (or less) because of that history. The last time we were ranked was January of 2011 (#24). The last time we won a game as a ranked team was March of 2003 (!!!)*. How is this acceptable in any universe at a university with the resources of a UGA? Am I being impatient because I'd like to see my team ranked once per decade?

I'm not pretending this is an easy job. It's not. But it shouldn't be this hard, either. Right now, I have very little to grasp onto if I'm to argue that Crean deserves to stay. Young talent? Minimal. Wins? No. Recruiting? Seems to have stalled.

He's not going anywhere before the season is over. He has time. But my crystal ball says we've got a coaching search on our hands in March...

*Edit: I was incorrect. We won 1/2 when we were ranked in 2011 before dropping out of the polls. I felt the need to add this, but I think my point still stands...

I know full well how sad our way back history is…
I've used those numbers plenty myself.

But the fact is Crean took over a program that had their first losing SEC season in 6 years. Every single person on this board fully expected us to be better, that's why we made the change. To go back to Felton (26-59) levels is not what any of us signed on for. Georgia's not an easy place to go 77-79 as Crean's 14-40 shows.

Sid's numbers sound reasonable.
8 sec wins saves crean .
Likelihood of it happening 40/1.
I'll tweak it.
9 wins and 50/1.

I have a personnel question.
Is anyone on this team capable of being amongst the top 5 players at their position in the sec?