LAZEEK Posted February 16, 2014 Posted February 16, 2014 http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/10466042/lamar-cardinals-fire-coach-pat-knight-third-season Quote
coachacola Posted February 16, 2014 Posted February 16, 2014 "@avi_zaleon: Knights office today http://t.co/aLNTrWcJXQ" Quote
coachacola Posted February 16, 2014 Posted February 16, 2014 "@AshlyKBMT12: Lamar AD Jason Henderson tells me they will have a release later today on Pat Knight. He would not confirm he is fired. #12SportSETX" Quote
coachacola Posted February 16, 2014 Posted February 16, 2014 "@JackInFW: Cornell's 2-10, Southern Utah 1-22, Tenn St 3-24, Grambling's 2-19. Every school in D-1 besides these 4 has a better record than Lamar. Wow" Quote
geezer Posted February 16, 2014 Posted February 16, 2014 Well the ESPN story quotes PK so I would say it is official. Based on past history my only hope is that they have a plan is place on what happens the rest of the year and who will be the next coach. I agree that so far PK wasn't getting the job done, but unless there is a plan then making the decision known now probably doesn't matter. Quote
LAZEEK Posted February 16, 2014 Author Posted February 16, 2014 I am hearing that Tic Price will be the interim coach at LU. Quote
geezer Posted February 16, 2014 Posted February 16, 2014 I hope not. He wasn't really successful IMO at his previous stops and he left at least one if not two of his head coaching positions under a scandal. Quote
Guest quakers93 Posted February 16, 2014 Posted February 16, 2014 I wish Coach Knight and staff well. I would have liked to see him stay. I really loved the first year! The Lamar job has to be a difficult one as not much success the last 25 years or so. The expectations of some are huge on this board. I guess now Lamar can go back to a cup cake schedule and get some W's. That is probably the plan of the AD. Quote
lamar1 Posted February 16, 2014 Posted February 16, 2014 looking ahead I live in Sugar Land. I obviously have a problem becasue I went to see UCA @ HBU last night. HBU won 99-83 Really! 99 for HBU! UCA is horrible. Lu will have a chance I would thinl although it's in Conway Quote
Cplatt Posted February 16, 2014 Posted February 16, 2014 It needed to be done. Hate for anybody to lose their job but you have to perform. The bad thing is he left us with a bad roster, no good commitments and a bad rep as the worst team in the country. No decent coach will want to come take this shit because you at least need 2-3 yrs to turn in around as it stands. No very optimistic moving forward. Cplatt Quote
geezer Posted February 16, 2014 Posted February 16, 2014 If all of the current players stay next year then LU still only has one scholarship to offer. How would you like to be the next LU Head Coach with this squad? So, how many of the players will move on? More importantly if they leave will they finish their degrees or will LU loose ground toward the NCAA graduation progress requirements or will LU be short on scholarships in a few years. Will the AD's office make sure LU doesn't wind up in a position to forfeit games because of the transition years for ACU, ICW and HBU if the new coach tries to schedule some cup cake non D1 teams to get a few wins. Quote
puddin tane Posted February 16, 2014 Posted February 16, 2014 Cup cake? We have become the cupcake!!! We are the cupcake of a cupcake conference! Quote
Bruce Posted February 16, 2014 Posted February 16, 2014 It had to happen. While I agree that there are a few folks with "unrealistic expectations" on this board (the early 80's aren't coming back, folks, in a world of widespread mid-major coverage on television, far more scouting of talent outside the normal 'hotbeds' of talent, and the skewed APR system that punishes small schools for taking chances on borderline academic talents while exempting power conference schools from the same risks), the fact is that the Southland is a TERRIBLE basketball conference. I mean, how embarrassing is it for the conference that the University of the Freaking Incarnate Word came into the Southland and is winning games against established members of the conference? Any decent basketball coach, given the fan base and resources available to Lamar compared to their Southland competition, should be able to win 10-12 games even in a rebuilding year barring a horrific rash of injuries. (This is one complaint I have with some on the board who are so rough on Coach Woodard--the Southland is a VERY good FCS football conference and expecting immediate, consistent success is a very, very high bar for a coach to achieve... OTOH, it is completely *realistic* for the same fan base to expect consistent success for the hoops program out of any coach). Knight's excuses about being unable to recruit kids to Beaumont ring hollow when you look at the locations of most of their competition in the Southland. As frustrating as it was watching Roccaforte have kids who were better athletes than anyone else in the conference go 12-18 because they didn't play as a team, it was totally depressing watching a game like last night, where it was clear that a mid-conference level NWSU team had better athletes than us---by a large margin in some cases--at every position on the floor. I don't know the exact reason Knight couldn't recruit talent: perhaps his eye for talent was poor, perhaps his desire for certain 'intangibles' closed off too many players, perhaps he just didn't work hard enough, or maybe even the legendary "rant" from two years ago actually crippled his recruiting by turning off younger players. Whatever it is, to me it became clear he wasn't going to be able to build a program earlier this year--while he brought in a few transfers with talent commensurate with the league (Hilliard, Ross), he also wasted a scholarship on a kid without sufficient talent basically to get media attention and left a void in the post that has been a huge problem for the last two years. Unfortunately, I agree with Cplatt's comments: we've got 4-6 kids on the roster who clearly aren't Division 1 level players, and without some kind of miracle commitment from a quality big man, it's going to take a few years to dig out of this hole. (I do believe that the lack of any kind of big man beyond what the undersized Amos Wilson can give us is a big part of our struggles: it's hard to win any game when you never get second chances--and give up a dozen a game to the other side; our record would be several games better if we had even one additional league average big man). One thing that became clear this year was that Knight was not going to waver from his game plan regardless of the talent he had. Trying to run a motion-style passing offense combined with a strategy of virtually never shooting even wide-open three point shots with a team that is woefully undersized and gets zero second chances is a recipe for disaster unless you've got much, much better athletes than your opposition. Which, needless to say, wasn't the case. While I'm not optimistic given the hole we've dug, I've got a lot more patience this afternoon than I did 24 hours ago. Jason Henderson made the tough choice, and I'm actually interested to see if Tic takes the chains off of the offense and to see if they can play at a higher level for the rest of the season. The good news is that we actually have a few potentially winnable games left on the schedule. Moving forward, I agree next year will be rough... I don't care who is brought in as the replacement. With only one scholarship (and that one player we're losing is the respectable Amos Wilson), there's not going to be a big upgrade in what we see next year. After next year, I think we can start the real recovery process. I do ask the fan base to give whoever is brought in next year as the new full-time coach to have some patience... the hole we're in is VERY deep and will take a full roster purge cycle to completely fix. The good thing is that the Southland is still terrible and it shouldn't take more than one more season before we aren't mentioned in the short list of the worst programs in the country. Quote
LUSportsFan Posted February 16, 2014 Posted February 16, 2014 If all of the current players stay next year then LU still only has one scholarship to offer. How would you like to be the next LU Head Coach with this squad? So, how many of the players will move on? More importantly if they leave will they finish their degrees or will LU loose ground toward the NCAA graduation progress requirements or will LU be short on scholarships in a few years. Will the AD's office make sure LU doesn't wind up in a position to forfeit games because of the transition years for ACU, ICW and HBU if the new coach tries to schedule some cup cake non D1 teams to get a few wins. HBU is already DI. My understanding is that ACU and UIW will be DI counters starting next year so hopefully conference schedules will not figure into forfeiture avoidance cosiderations (unless the conference adds more transitioning teams). Still hope we continue minimizing sub DI's on the schedule. Wish things had turned out better for Coach Knight and the team. I thought he was a good hire. If it was possible to avoid hurting the program, I would have been for waiting it out for him to turn things around. I think the move is the correct one, though. I hope coach Knight has great success in the future. I'll try to concentrate on his first season here. Sent from my Kindle Fire using Tapatalk 2 Quote
bigredfan2 Posted February 16, 2014 Posted February 16, 2014 Tic is the interim coach. I think he is capable, unsure how the team will react to him. http://www.lamarcardinals.com/sports/m-baskbl/spec-rel/021614aaa.html Quote
coachacola Posted February 16, 2014 Posted February 16, 2014 Is the kid from Sweden on track to graduate early? I bet we'll see 3 or 4 new faces next year. Let them shoot some 3s, get a decent big man inside and maybe the new coach can salvage next year. Quote
LAZEEK Posted February 16, 2014 Author Posted February 16, 2014 Hear are a few names that you expect to circulate around the Lamar Basketball job.......... Tic Price (LU Interim, Former Memphis and McNeese State Coach) Terry Johnson (Asst. Coach Butler University, former Lamar Cardinal player) Steve Green (South Plains College, 2 JUCO National Championships) Ron Everhart (Asst. Coach West Virginia, former Duquesne, Northeastern and McNeese State Coach) Quote
geezer Posted February 16, 2014 Posted February 16, 2014 Good point on Norman, but I doubt it. PK recruited him so he has only been here two and a half years. Quote
geezer Posted February 16, 2014 Posted February 16, 2014 If it were me I would be looking for a winning coach from any level, not including those who have coached in the SLC. The Butler assistant might be ok, but would he leave his home state to come back to Lamar, even for the HC job? Quote
LAZEEK Posted February 16, 2014 Author Posted February 16, 2014 Geezer my source has already said Johnson is interested in job. Quote
geezer Posted February 16, 2014 Posted February 16, 2014 If he is then that would be great. Read his bio on the Butler website. If he has really been as big a part of their success as the bio indicates then it could potentially be good. Do you have personal knowledge of him other than his playing days at LU? Quote
LAZEEK Posted February 16, 2014 Author Posted February 16, 2014 If he is then that would be great. Read his bio on the Butler website. If he has really been as big a part of their success as the bio indicates then it could potentially be good. Do you have personal knowledge of him other than his playing days at LU? No I don't. But my source does. Quote
geezer Posted February 16, 2014 Posted February 16, 2014 Do you think LU has been quietly finding the next coach prior to today's announcement? Quote
LAZEEK Posted February 16, 2014 Author Posted February 16, 2014 Do you think LU has been quietly finding the next coach prior to today's announcement? Not sure. Never thought of it that way. However it would be brilliant if they have been. I was also told which is likely expected that ALL assistants will likely be gone once the season is over. Quote
geezer Posted February 16, 2014 Posted February 16, 2014 I was thinking the only way LU had a shot at a quality recruit from whom ever gets the job is if he is ready to go as soon as the season is over. Quote
.png.88e0b900f1aa353dc4be09303a3550aa.png)
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.