Redbird222 said:
If we can't get Yak, I would suggest Dan Ryan, current Director of Basketball operations at Belmont. Along with Yak he was one of the key pieces of the coaching and managers staff in 2017. They were the primary contributors to the success of our 2017 season. DM has been exposed since their departure as evidenced by Michigan's run to the Championship game and how Dan Ryan was able to quickly help Coach Byrd develop three Belmont freshman.
After speaking to parties close to both Yak and Ryan, we have come to find out that they literally learned nothing from DM and confirmed what many have known all along ... Dan is riding the coattails of others.
1. Ward was the only person to be able to recruit and thus we now have to settle on players like Matt Hein
2. Yak as student manager actually coached Dan to be defensive player of the year during his playing days. Bringing him back to ISU reinforced those Stallings tactics which Dan continued to ignore while employed by Stallings at Vanderbilt. Yak single-handedly propelled us to a defensive juggernaut. Despite being a named a Bone Scholar, Dan unfortunately once again did not pay attention during practice and has clearly forgotten points of emphasis and drills.
3. Dan Ryan, former juco and ISU manager clearly was the catalyst to the late development (their last 2 years at ISU) of Hawkins, MM, Tony and PL. Now he has taken his 5 step plan to Belmont and with some minor modifications from Coach Byrd, they have created an accelerated player development program. It may be too late though because coach K from Duke has rolled out his version which obviously has propelled his current 3 freshman of Zion Williamson, Cam Reddish, and RJ Barrett to unprecedented levels like hammering a defenseless Kentucky team from the lowly SEC by 34.
4. Dana Ford refused to speak to us citing a conflict of interest since he coaches in the MVC. However, his current Bears are 3 - 0 which projects to a perfect season last accomplished by Indiana and Bobby Knight. This is more anecdotal evidence of DM riding the success of others.
Since none of the these coaches are currently available, I will wait it out and suffer with Dan M until they become available.
I hope this is sarcastic, if it's not it is really flawed.
1. I do believe most of our early recruiting was done by Torrey and Dana.
2. That's where the rest of this goes off the rails for me. Those on the Yak bandwagon have to realize that he had limited recruiting responsibilities when he was here until the classes of Hein, Gassman, etc. Also, outside of the senior year for Paris and Tony we never had that spectacular of defenses (see Ken Pom). I attribute that more to those two than anything else.
3. Dan Ryan graduated from ISU in 2017, was a manager, and now a director of basketball operations. He had nothing to do with the development of players. It is against NCAA rules for him to currently do any on court work players at Belmont.
4. This makes no sense. Who did Dana Ford refuse to speak to? You? ISU?
And for any of this to happen someone would have to hire Muller (not going to happen unless we go to the NCAA Tournament) or we pony up the $3.6 million needed to buy him out.