I've heard on this board that Coach Grant cannot manage in-game, use timeouts effectively, design a simple offensive play, make adjustments at the half and uses substitution patterns that don't make sense. Did I forget anything? I'm not here to advocate for Coach Grant necessarily- rather courtesy of DaytonFlyers.com- thought I'd briefly remind everyone of the backgrounds of our coaches:
Coach Grant- "Grant was most recently on the coaching staff of the NBA's Oklahoma City Thunder, working with athletes such as Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. He spent the last two seasons on Billy Donovan's staff after nine seasons as head coach at Alabama and VCU and 13 seasons as a Division I assistant coach.
In nine seasons as a head coach, Grant took his teams to three NCAA tournament appearances and six postseason tournament berths. He has a career record of 193-110 (.637). Prior to becoming a head coach, Grant spent 13 years as a respected Division I assistant coach. The last 10 years were at the University of Florida (1996-2006) where he served under Donovan. Grant helped lead the Gators to their first national title in 2006, and Florida won the national title again in 2007 with players he recruited and developed".
Anthony Solomon- "Solomon’s 29-year college coaching career also includes stops at Virginia (his alma mater), Notre Dame (twice), Clemson and Georgetown. He then coached at Bowling Green (1989-92), Manhattan (1992-93),
Richmond (1993-94) and Virginia (1994-98). He then took an administrative position at Clemson as Assistant Athletic Director for Basketball Operations for two seasons before returning to the court as an assistant at Notre Dame (2000-03)".
James Kane- primarily a tech guy but also a seasoned recruiter and developer of talent, less X's and O's.
Ricardo Greer- primarily a player development guy, less X's and O's.
Darren Hertz- again less X's and O's and more technical, running the basketball operations.
So it seems basketball tactics are largely the domain of Coaches Grant & Solomon. Together they have 50 seasons of coaching experience at the D1 level.
I am not going to buy into the growing criticisms and will continue to give these coaches the benefit of any doubt. Just using only the Jordan Pierce lack of playing time/no red shirt topic as an example where something unknown behind the scenes later fully explained coaching behavior that was widely criticized.
The new coaching team deserves an opportunity to prove themselves. Can they really all be as incompetent as some here suggest? The only objective & honest answer is No. Other things are at play.
