Summer is when this rake forgoes his acid-tipped quill for three uninterrupted months of profuse sweating, baseball intolerance, and trips to Gotham mechanic-criminals who charge usurious rates to stare fecklessly at my car’s AC system. This summer was no different. But just because my cursor was idle doesn’t mean there weren’t a few topics de hoop that deserve a quick accounting.
Harvard For Dummies
With his April hiring of Tommy Amaker Harvard’s Bob Scalise has joined a triptych of duncery from South Orange to Ann Arbor, one that has now begun a third chapter in Cambridge. Given Amaker’s air horn loud mediocrity as both a teacher and game strategist at Seton Hall and Michigan, Scalise’s judgment deserves the harshest impugnment.
To look at Amaker’s basketball CV at this juncture and to determine it is hire worthy is, well, the province of the basketball challenged. But, as the words of another Ivy Leaguer so eloquently prove, density finds its way to the toniest of settings, the loftiest of stations.
Even modest due diligence should’ve told Scalise that Amaker is a coach who, despite recruiting rosters at Seton Hall and Michigan that were loaded with athletic, NCAA tournament caliber talent, routinely underachieved. In ten seasons as a head coach Amaker has failed to win a single conference crown and notched only one NCAA tournament bid. His 2000 recruiting class at Seton Hall (Eddie Griffin, Andre Barrett, and Marcus Toney El) was ranked second best in the nation and earned his team a top 10 preseason ranking. The season that followed was a 16-15 debacle marked by player infighting and disciplinary scandals. Sensing the heat, Amaker rode a Maize and Blue parachute out of South Orange, leaving the Seton Hall program in disarray.
His work at Michigan proved equally inadequate. Certainly, one has to grant Amaker some measure of credit for his work on the recruiting end of things. He lured routinely strong classes to Ann Arbor, rosters that on paper were NCAA tournament inevitable and were among the better hauls in the Big Ten each year. Daniel Horton, Lester Abram, Chris Hunter, Dion Harris, Courtney Sims, Brent Petway, Jevohn Shepard, Kendric Price, and DeShawn Sims were all four to five star, elite national prospects. That he failed to even threaten for a single conference title and yielded not a single NCAA bid with this kind of stud laden material is a dramatic failure of teaching, player motivation, and gamecraft.
Amaker’s few remaining apologists like to suggest he was handcuffed by the NCAA sanctions stemming from the Steve Fisher-Ed Martin malfeasance, penalties that were delivered to the program in Amaker’s second season. Such claims are specious. The 2002-03 season, the only one in which the program was banned from postseason play, Amaker’s team finished 17-13 and would’ve been a decided longshot for an NCAA tournament bid. The only other penalty that affected Amaker was the loss of one scholarship per year beginning in 2004. Neither of the aforementioned sanctions is excuse worthy.
Others have argued that Amaker’s job was essentially impossible, that a forty year history of cheating and poor facilities doomed him to failure. Loyalty to good friends is admirable, but Mr. Bilas’ arguments here are embarrassingly misinformed and journalistically irresponsible. First, it’s well documented that Amaker had no trouble bringing top flight talent to Ann Arbor. Even a casual comparison of his recruits and Izzo’s in the same period using the prevailing ranking services (Scout and Rivals) suggests Amaker was on near or equal footing from a recruiting standpoint.
If the program’s reputation and facilities were so polarizing, how was this possible? Second, Bilas’ blanket statement about forty years of irrelevance and/or cheating is reflective of an ACC-centric ignorance that is too often the rule among the so-called expert class. Johnny Orr, Glen Rice? Heard of them Jay?
No, these defenses of Amaker don’t wash and are weak covers. Amaker has a consistent record of taking well recruited rosters of great potential and rendering them disorganized, atomized, underachieving. Hearing from the underclassmen about last year’s senior laden team is perfectly illustrative of Amaker’s problem as a program leader. Daniel Horton’s and Lester Abram’s brushes with the law under his watch are further unflattering commentaries on his program control.
So Harvard gets a coach who recruits well, but routinely squanders said talent. And this in a league where vast separations in roster talent simply aren’t possible due to the commensurate academic rigor of all the representative schools. All Ivies are essentially relegated to the same crop of solid, but seldom (if ever) stratospheric high school ballplayers who are also well above average in the classroom. If there is any basketball league where success is even less about recruiting and more about pure coaching prowess, it’s the Ivy League. So Amaker’s one strength, as a recruiter, will be muted. What will fall into even starker relief is his weakness as a teacher and game coach.
A subtext to the Amaker hire might be offered, in part, by the negative scrutiny Harvard was receiving about its lack of diversity in the athletic department. The only two candidates reportedly interviewed for the vacancy, Amaker and Mike Jarvis, were attempts to answer this criticism. While the goal was admirable, both were uninspired considerations who each brought spotty and scandal tinged resumes to the table.
Of course, Harvard is a not the kind of basketball destination that will easily lure established, highly accomplished head coaches away from Division I head jobs. But it is also far from a job and conference that should be resigned to the kind of damaged goods candidates cited here. A suitable alum of the program, a well apprenticed Division I assistant coach, or perhaps a mid-major head coach from a conference or school where academics are valued (Patriot League, service academies) are just a few obvious starting points. For Harvard and Scalise to end up where they did reflects a lack of imagination and poor basketball IQ.
Bus Outta Town
Hoopraker has been fairly unequivocal, and rightfully so, in its high opinion of Matt Painter as a great hire for his alma mater. Last year’s result capped by a courageous and stern challenge of the National Champion Gators spoke highly of Painter’s skill and motivational prowess. Also auguring well is the fact that his incoming recruiting class is one of the nation’s finest.
Equally important, except for two Jucos, it is an all-Indiana class. To ink the lion’s share of the best players in the state of Indiana with your second recruiting class is the kind of coup that wins favoritism everywhere but in Bloomington. And it isn’t just a hyped, high ranked class. It’s the kind of class that will be around a lot longer than Eric Gordon. And from all reports, one of them here, Painter is bringing in talent and good character.
Because the fact is Painter could use some good public relations after a summer of player defections and/or program motivated transfers. And this week’s DUI and dismissal of Gordon Watt and the Tarrance Crump, Johnathan Uchendu disciplinary problems last spring are threatening the good vibes in West Lafayette.
From a basketball standpoint the loss of Chris Lutz has the most sting. He was a proven long range shooter, leading the conference in 3-point FG percentage. His 16 points in the NCAA tournament game against Arizona evidenced a player who was going to find an increased role this year with the exit of David Teague. The spin coming from the program was that Lutz was homesick for New Hampshire. Lutz’s transfer to Marshall says something else entirely. Uchendu’s homesickness may be why he ended up at Arkansas-Little Rock, but he and Dan Vandervieren both appeared to have been victims of overrecruitment.
When you consider the number of players who have left the program and/or run afoul under Painter’s two year tenure - Nate Minnoy, Korey Spates, Uchendu, Lutz, Vandervieren, Keaton Grant, Watt - it suggests a troubling trend that needs to be reversed. Whether the problem is the result of a young coach’s growing pains or a fundamental flaw in his approach remains to be seen. Painter needs to nip the bad trend before it mars what is otherwise a very auspicious debut and promising future.
This One Goes To Eighteen
The conference’s move to the eighteen game schedule is a welcome move for both its teams and fans. While not as definitive a tool as playing every team twice would be in crowning a league champion, it does correct some of the imbalances of the sixteen game schedule. Every team will meet at least once and the additional two games will be both a boon to the overall conference RPI and a chance for bubble teams to make stronger cases.
