MBB: Centennial Conference

[CCHoopster]

A coach from a bottom third team in an ok league at best tasked to turnaround a bottom third team in a current top league..... 6th place coaches in the A10 don’t get Big Ten Jobs. See, this is what happens when the outgoing AD is tasked with hiring a new coach while a separate division on campus is hiring a new AD. That along with the hire make no sense. Gettysburg McDaniel and Wash will now be landlocked at the bottom while FnM, DC, JHU, Ursinus, Swat stay the top 5 for the foreseeable future. GC should be the team fighting for a playoff spot. Maybe they will but if you truly believe right now that is going to happen based on the hire, have a bridge for you. I guess if you have NESCAC somewhere on your resume a school like GC, with lack of self- confidence, kind of gets off. What loyalty will the new AD have to the new coach when it wasn’t their hire? 

They would have been better off with Mike Blaine or Dan Englestadt.

[Pat Coleman]

Hiring announcement officially made today.

[CCHoopster]

Best of luck to the new coach. My thoughts are about the reasoning and approach not the coach. I wish him much successful. Do like the youth in coaching.

[wvcfan1]

I kind of find it hard to believe that choice at Gettysburg was the best option based off of past performance.  I echo the fact that this particular coach has only 1 winning season out of 5 years as a head coach.  And that one winning season came with players he did not even recruit.  You would think that a coach from a smaller division III conference would have applied that was located geographically closer then New York.  These jobs attract hundreds of applications. I scratch my head with this hire.

[CCHoopster]

Location never factored in for me... I don’t think that matters at all. The track record is a separate argument. Gettysburg, and Centennials, heavily recruit NJ, NY, New England high schools and prep schools so he’ll be ok recruiting. But he’s going to be a sitting duck for an AD that didn’t hire him when they don’t win- not a whole lot of proof in the pudding for any confidence in his winning ability- he hasn’t won and will be seeing, IMO, MUCH better coaching and players... not a good recipe. You really don’t want to be the one who follows a legend (loved, Long tenured coach), you want to be the guy who follows the guy who follows the legend. (Unless you are the coach at York who has done an incredible job).

Gettysburg is not in a good place in the athletic department. People are at odds and there WILL BE more coaching changes. They are tired of losing aside from WBB, WLAX. Football and basketball MUST win. If you can’t get out of 6/7th place in the Liberty League, how can you get out of the basement in the centennial?

[Swish3]

Coaching is a tough, tough profession...I absolutely get the comments, and I'd probably be saying the same things, but he also needs to be given a chance before being criticized too harshly.

[CCHoopster]

And previously mentioned, I’m puzzled by the hire, they resume GC chose and THEIR process without the new AD being on board.... I don’t know coach but I wish him nothing but the most success. Again, I do like the youth in the new coach but they better allow room for growth from him.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

And previously mentioned, I’m puzzled by the hire, they resume GC chose and THEIR process without the new AD being on board.... I don’t know coach but I wish him nothing but the most success. Again, I do like the youth in the new coach but they better allow room for growth from him.

Sometimes the search for a new AD takes too long and getting a coach on board needs to happen faster. It isn't that uncommon to have coaches hired while an AD position is still not settled. That said, I am told the current AD who is resigning spearheaded the search.

[sunny]

They are tired of losing aside from WBB, WLAX.

The seven-time defending conference champion women's golf team and first-place men's lacrosse team (that has won two of the past three conference titles) say, "Hello."

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

They are tired of losing aside from WBB, WLAX.

The seven-time defending conference champion women's golf team and first-place men's lacrosse team (that has won two of the past three conference titles) say, "Hello."

LOL Well done, sunny. Very, very true.

[wvcfan1]

I agree with cchoopster about location.  However, i did not mean it that way.  The Centennial Conference is a top Conference.  It is definitely a cut above Liberty.  However, there are many conferences from Gettysburg up New York.  These conferences include:  CSAC, NEAC and the MACF...just to name a few.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

I kind of find it hard to believe that choice at Gettysburg was the best option based off of past performance.  I echo the fact that this particular coach has only 1 winning season out of 5 years as a head coach.  And that one winning season came with players he did not even recruit.  You would think that a coach from a smaller division III conference would have applied that was located geographically closer then New York.  These jobs attract hundreds of applications. I scratch my head with this hire.

Not sure you have the best track record with these kinds of things...

It had been awhile since I had seen a post of yours... so I was curious why it stuck out ... then I remembered (was reminded) this nugget:

Nothing against coach Seretti, but he does not have a winning record from PSU Altoona.  He does have head coaching experience which is a plus.  Coach Csensits was a division I assistant with no head coaching experience, so that is an upgrade.  However, Dickinson is a great athletic institution.  Why cant they win?  They won the Centennial conference championship and had their last NCAA tournament appearance back in 1997.  You mean to tell me this is the best coaching candidate that applied?  I really have to wander about Dickinsons administration.  What their thought process is and do they really care about their basketball program like Fand M, Johns Hopkins, Ursinus and Gettysburg does.

[CCHoopster]

Hard to look at Seretti and Dunn through the same lens. Dunn won once with the former coaches players and then never won again. At Altoona (prior to Dickinson) Seretti led the Lions to three consecutive Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference Tournament appearances. Penn State Altoona set the school record for wins with 14 in each of his last two seasons and earned the first postseason bid in the history of the program with an invitation to the Eastern College Athletic Conference tournament in 2009.  In 2007-08, the Lions advanced to the AMCC semifinals for the first time in school history, earning Seretti Co-Coach of the Year honors." To me that shows someone who did a lot with a little. Getting more resources and a better product to sell/represent at Dickinson, there's no surprise he has renewed the Red Devils program. He clearly demonstrated that he had the goods to win games at Altoona- if you can win there you can win with the resources at Dickinson.

[victorborga]

To be fair to Dave, he is not really comparing Dunne and Seretti, he's simply pointing out that wvcfan said the same thing about Seretti that he is saying now about Dunne.  And as the kids would say these days, that message hasn't aged well, as we've seen Seretti have a dominant run.  I will say one other thing, though I'm new to posting, I've lurked for long enough to know this - Dave and Pat aren't going to criticize any coaches on here.  They do such a great job with the D3 site, and having interactions with many of the coaches gets you to know them personally.  Therefore they tend to defend the coaches when something negative gets posted, which i totally understand, just pointing it out.   

[Pat Coleman]

I think I do sometimes criticize but I'm far more likely to say nothing in the cases where it might be called for. You're probably right.