Who is our next coach?

[sbu83]

Keep in mind, it will take at least two more sorry seasons like this one to bag Slo - so think ahead a few years;

Brian Nash? He would have a few seasons as a head coach at St. Francis(NY). Ideally one good season there (ala Baron at SF-PA), and some nice NYC recruiting connections would make him an ideal choice, besides the link to Bonas as an Assistant on the NCAA team, he married Larry's daughter!

Garland Mance?Garland has boucned around as an assistant. Would have to prove he is head coach material somewhere first?

Dennis Wolfe? Former Bona assistant under O'Brien, great success at Boston U. as a head coach. Obviously a great bench coach. Could he recruit A-10 caliber players here?

Joe Mihalich? Former long-time LaSalle assistant, current head coach at Niagara. Took them to 'the show'. Again, great bench coach, can he recruit A-10 caliber players? Also, note: LaSalle passed him by this past off-season.

Pat Clarke? Let's not waste our time.

After that, it is off into the world of mid to major school assistants - from which Slo was picked. Slo's selection mirrors Gregg Williams selection as head coach of the Bills. Bills could have had Marvin Lewis or John Fox, and instead were blown away by a great interview from Williams. He proved he isn't a head coach. Apparently, the wonderful search committee decided Slo's interview put him over the top of Nash, Mance, Hopkins, Daugherty, and Kareem! (that one would have been a joke, but interesting none the less!)

My vote? Nash. Let's get the bumper stickers going - 'Nash for SBU in 2008!'

[Chuck]

A rising star among division 1 coaches is Lebron James high school coach. Since leading little St. Vincent-St. Mary to national prominence Keith Dambrot became the new coach at Akron University. Prior to Dambrot Akron had 4 consecutive losing seasons. Last year his first year at Akron, Dambrot led the the Zips to a 19-10 record. Currently he is 9-1 in the Mid-American Conference and 16-4 overall.

Another quality coach is Jim Christian of Kent State. In his 3 years at Kent State he has led his team to at least 20 wins in each season. He had 22 wins in his first and second season and last year he had 20 wins. So far this season he is 9-1 in the MAC and 15-6 overall.

Keith Dambrot bio
gozips.collegesports.com/sports/m-baskbl/mtt/dambrot_keith00.html

Jim Christian bio
www.kentstatesports.com/index.php?s=1079533828-176741736&change_well_id=2&url_article_id=92

[OceanStateBonnie]

What the he11 is wrong with you people. I am fed up with your negativity. Anthony Solomon is the head coach at SBU. And he deserves support and our patience. The task he undertook is huge and we have come so far from the dark days of March '03.

Wake up. I'll even get the coffee for you to smell.

Our beloved alma mater had a basketball program that imploded and was nearly killed less than three years ago. I won't even get into a rant on the egregious actions of the slime bellied duo responsible (past president and ex-coach).

I recall reading a national sports pundit's comments at the time that it takes five to 7 years for most programs to recover from such circumstances. Those with larger budgets and more national reputations will find it easier (read Georgia and Baylor who were in the gutter at the same time as us). We are less than three years from disaster and are on the cusp of success in a competitive league. Better FT shooting and a bounce here and there and we could have three, possibly four conference wins right now. We have a great core of players on which to build future success, but we are not deep and still very young relative to the field.

If you love the university and Bonaventure basketball, the best thing you can do right now is to support the school and the program.

I applaud and support Coach Solomon. He's brought back respectability to our program and will soon bring back the winning tradition we long for.

I hope all those who are bringing a negative tone to the table and calling for the coach's departure are also providing a healthy dollar contribution to the BAF.

A forum is a forum, but I think you are undermining the efforts of our staff when you lay out a future scenario assuming the coach is gone after two more seasons (recruiting is our future lifeblood).

Go Bona's! Beat the Hawks!

[bva]

sbu83 - why rehash names that didn't make the cut previously.

For those so high on G. Mance, he had a lousy interview; didn't espouse the Franciscan values. Just b/c one played for the Bonnies does not make them a Bonaventure Man!

[Bona3550]

oceanstatebonnie said:

I hope all those who are bringing a negative tone to the table and calling for the coach's departure are also providing a healthy dollar contribution to the BAF.

And also everyone who agrees with OSB's remarks.....can't have an opinion unless you give big $ to the BAF.

[kcSBU03]

Im with You OSB. Last i checked we didnt have a head coaching vacancy. Its absolutely ridiculous to be looking at other coaches when we have one. OSB is right, it takes at least 5 years to recover from something like this and with our budget we cannot do what the Georgias of the world can do. Stay the course, the Bonnies will be ok in the future. Considering where we were 3 yrs ago i cant complain about the current situation. Go bonas, i hate St Joes. Id love to see the look on Martelli's face if we could pull the upset.

[hnk373431]

With the head coaching vacancy three years ago, I was pulling for Brian Nash to be hired. Not sure we would be any better off now if he had been the pick. For St. Francis (NY) this year, he had almost everyone back from last years team and is currently 6-13 for the season in a conference which Central Conn. is leading. Agree with OSB ..... to be talking about a coaching change at this time is ridiculoous. Sol deserves at least 2 more years. Still have confidence that he can get the job done and that this team will have marked improvement next year and the year after. When he interviewed, he was upfront that he would need time. Two years from now, if the Bonnies are not competitive, then it will be time to talk about new coaches. For now, like it or not, Sol is our coach and deserves our support.

[orangehater]

Board of Directors, administration = careful consideration before discussing replacing a head coach you've committed enormous money to.

Message board = Discuss whatever the he11 you want, regardless of contribution. Last I checked opinions did not come with a price tag. Get over yourself

[BonniesFan]

hnk37343 said:

Agree with OSB ..... to be talking about a coaching change at this time is ridiculoous. Sol deserves at least 2 more years. Still have confidence that he can get the job done and that this team will have marked improvement next year and the year after. When he interviewed, he was upfront that he would need time. Two years from now, if the Bonnies are not competitive, then it will be time to talk about new coaches. For now, like it or not, Sol is our coach and deserves our support.

Agree!!

[bona89]

No disrespect intended to posters with other opinions, but I feel this coaching staff is doing a very, very poor job with this team on the court. The game today really showed a team that was not ready to play. We had a non-existent offensive strategy to play against man to man defense. It was a joke. Particularly in the first half there was no movement, no plays no offensive sets and no court awareness. Again, particularly in the first half, it was not about players not executing on the plan, there was no plan or a very poor one.

I was at school during the DeCarli era and it was terrible. He was a great guy with high morals and a great attitude, but the basketball program was a disaster. Bona hoops became an afterthought to the students. It wasn't that people thought we stunk (which would have at least meant that basketball still mattered), it was that people just didn't care anymore. I think our coach today is very similar. He seems to be a quality person with high morals and a positive attitude (a bit of a finger pointer though). I am concerned that our team is on the verge of not mattering once again.

I don't want to continue to live through another DeCarli era. Where we were as a program was horrible three years ago, but that can't continually be our response to allowing this program to underachieve. We were not a totally outmanned team today. We weren't!! We were a team with either no plan or a very bad one. For our sake, I hope it was no plan.

[BonniesFan]

Bona89, I somewhat agree, but then I look at the roster and all of the young, potential filled players we have in Lee, Relph, Hawkins, and Benson. Give these players as well as coach time to develop and become more experienced and the program will hopefully be back to where it once was.

[sbuSTUDent2005]

Can I just ask why everyone is so high on Tyler Benson? Granted he's a freshman and was injured for a bit of the season, but he's only got 4 points on the season, he's very undersized, looks nervous when he plays, and like David Fox, I'm not so sure he's an A10 caliber player. We can't base our support for him on his high school record. Willie Morse was a great 3 point shooter in high school but he didn't make it at this level.

[BonniesFan]

It's hard to get a good feel either way for a player when he is averaging 2.4 mpg (before today). He is a young player who until proven otherwise can't be ruled out of the future.

And very undersized? He's 6 foot 7, 205 and is listed as a G/F. Not sure how much bigger you want him to be. Going by that, Ahmad and A.J. must be midgets.

[LumsdnA10Academc98]

Bona89, I agree. Can't keep referencing the scandal as an excuse, which is what people on here do practically every discussion. It's an excuse, plain and simple.

To anyone who disagrees, I ask them to recall glory days of December 2005. We were 2-1, eventually 5-2, and things weren't going so bad. Allegedly, and this is according to and basically quoting Coach Solomon, a strength of our team was our depth. We were a team, as he said on one of his first radio shows, that will go 10 deep almost every time out. That's what a quality roster we had. The 5-2 Bonnies of 2005-06 were really that good, and their coach knew it.

Fast forward to the misery that is February 2006, with the same up-and-coming Bonnies mired in a _ _ (insert number here) game losing streak. With that team of surprising depth only lacking one player from two months prior, Ivan Kovacevic, whose playing time was spare from Day One, the Bonnies are now only seven or eight deep. "All of the young, potential filled players," as BonniesFan said above, aren't seeing much time anymore. Two-time A-10 Rookie of the Week AJ Hawkins is no longer a starter, and in the case of Tyler Benson and David Fox, both once parts of the 10-man rotations of two months prior, quality minutes are an afterthought.

My point is simple. By admission, Anthony Solomon has the ingredients. By evidence of the lastest nationally televised disaster, today's thumping at Hawk Hill, he has failed to make a meal out of those ingredients.

Never was I, or any other reasonable Bona fan, looking for a 24-ounce Porterhouse; I wasn't in position to order that. Chef Solomon, however, has failed to feed hungry mouths of Bona nation anything more than a midnight snack, something to hold us over until the morning known as 06-07. I realize roles have been reduced due to the stiffer competition of the A-10, but if the ingredients were once good for a blowout of a first-place CCSU team, they must still be useful in some capacity, unless our staff doesn't know how to use them.

CCSU's coach, Howie Dckenman, said Bona would win a lot more games; he guaranteed it. Howie was wrong. We might not win any more games. It's not because the ingredients to a 10-win team aren't there. It's because our staff has implicated an offense that emphasies standing around, operates from a minnimun of 30 feet from the goal, is void of cutters and runners off-ball, produces as many poor, rushed shots as possible, with the occasional production of a shot clock violation (3x today). It's because our staff continues to let our players get out-hustled and hammered on the boards and is content with one OK half every time out.

I'm not okay with that, and I know I'm not alone. Is it time to start searching elsewhere? I don't know. However, the same mistakes with the same results are getting old.

[sbuSTUDent2005]

bonniesfan said:

It's hard to get a good feel either way for a player when he is averaging 2.4 mpg (before today). He is a young player who until proven otherwise can't be ruled out of the future.

And very undersized? He's 6 foot 7, 205 and is listed as a G/F. Not sure how much bigger you want him to be. Going by that, Ahmad and A.J. must be midgets.

By undersized, I meant his build, not his height. Also, the roster heights and weights are never right, they always list people bigger than they actually are. There's no way he's 205.