MBB: NESCAC

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

Expected in that the job is apparently going outside the Amherst coaching tree?

Yeah. I am not surprised in the least. For anyone who has read my thoughts, heard them on Hoopsville, or even heard the interviews on the show with Hixon ... I think there was enough information and comments made that an outside the family hire was going to happen.

Put it this way: I was going to be more surprised if it was a family related hire outside of one guy (who I am not even sure applied).

[daddyhoops]

They're all in shock..as they should be!

[ThumannsOwn]

I don't think any of us, including a lot of Amherst alums and/or former players, thought a hire outside of the family was a certainty to happen, presumably with some more inside information than a lot of us had before this decision was made.

D-mac, is the family guy that you are not sure applied Adam Hutchinson by chance?

[nescac1]

I'm guessing he meant Flockerzi ...

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

I don't think any of us, including a lot of Amherst alums and/or former players, thought a hire outside of the family was a certainty to happen, presumably with some more inside information than a lot of us had before this decision was made.

D-mac, is the family guy that you are not sure applied Adam Hutchinson by chance?

He applied. By all accounts, he was a finalist.

I'm guessing he meant Flockerzi ...

I have no idea if Luke applied, but I think he would have been a difficult resume to turn down. I have not seen nor heard his name at all during this process.

I know some may think an outside hire wasn't a certainty - while I never will say it was absolutely going to happen, there were enough hints and enough information out there that made that signal pretty clear. I think Amherst likely did a good job keeping both inside and outside interests in mind, but I have had the sense for at least a year (if not longer) that the institution was looking to go in a different direction. One of the biggest hints should have been Dave Hixon's own words: the school told him he wasn't going to have any role or input in the process. That never changed.

The one wild card I think was Mike Maker. Almost a hybrid choice if he had been it. That said, that might have been the first time I've seen Maker's name in the mix for any significant job in DIII or otherwise.

Larry Anderson was also a solid choice if it would have come to be, though who knows if Anderson would have wanted to ultimately leave MIT (before anyone says: be he was a finalist, so he had to have applied and thus was thinking about it ... many times search companies are involved that bring names in of people who didn't officially apply, other times schools reach out to candidates who haven't applied, and sometimes coaches apply to jobs for varying reasons not intending to leave their current one).

I think Marlon Spears is a heck of a hire. He did good things at Montclair State and he has experience being at Cornell and Columbia to know what kind of student works for Amherst. I think he has a heck of an opportunity and Amherst is clearly changing the culture. I look forward to seeing how the new era will work out.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

The big question now is where Toomey might end up.  Hard to believe it would work for him to stay on as an assistant.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

The big question now is where Toomey might end up.  Hard to believe it would work for him to stay on as an assistant.

It might. Who knows.

That said, I do see what you are saying. I hope he lands somewhere (Springfield and WPI have openings last I checked). I think he has a good future ahead of him. Good head for the game.

[Colby Hoops]

Sears will be familiar with at least some of his Nescac foes... Him and Damien Strahorn were assistants together at Columbia in 2009-10 (Sears' first go round at Columbia).

[JEFFFAN]

For those of us who know of Biddy Martin's ways and goals, the person getting this job was 100% going to be a person of color.   There is not one candidate of non-color who had a remote chance of getting this job.   Zero chance.   So we get someone unexpected with a mediocre track record, also consistent with recent hires in men's lacrosse, squash, and women's volleyball.    Feel free to go onto the Amherst site to check out the extraordinarily mediocre track records of the coaches that were hired for those sports.  As they say, just look it up.

We will wish him all the best knowing with certainty that he competed for the position not against the "best of the best".    Such is life as an athletics fan - a former athletics fan - under the dictator of diversity, Biddy Martin.

[nescac1]

Well, that's certainly a reaction!

[ThumannsOwn]

And a reaction that I am guessing (in a very educated way) echoes the sentiment of many in the Amherst hoops community.

[nescac1]

I don't know enough (aka anything) about the Amherst athletics / Biddy Martin situation to offer an opinion on this, including whether Amherst would have been better served by another choice.   I had not heard that Larry Anderson was interested.  He would have been a very interesting pick because I think the talent he has brought in at MIT, despite recruiting constraints that are tougher even than any NESCAC school, is really impressive, and damn his offenses are fun to watch (he, Maker and the Swarthmore coach to me stand out as the true offensive gurus in recent D3 memory). 

I will say in Amherst's defense that, while there may or may not have been stronger candidates, I do think that at least on paper the men's lacrosse and men's hoops hires seem like they were at worst very well-credentialed candidates (women's volleyball, yeah, that one seems more questionable, squash, I have no idea about what counts as strong credentials in that sport). 

Basketball: top assistant and lead recruiter for two different Ivy League schools, and a fairly successful (albeit not enormously so) D3 head coach, in a top-tier D3 conference.  (Speaking of which, why did he leave Montclair, is that something that was made public?).  That's a more accomplished resume, on paper, than Kevin App had when Williams hired him, and I'd say he worked out OK!

Lacrosse: NESCAC assistant, coach of the year in a smaller D3 conference, and most recently, head coach of a small D1 program.  Again, on paper that certainly sounds like an extremely strong coaching resume ...

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

The big question now is where Toomey might end up.  Hard to believe it would work for him to stay on as an assistant.

It might. Who knows.

That said, I do see what you are saying. I hope he lands somewhere (Springfield and WPI have openings last I checked). I think he has a good future ahead of him. Good head for the game.

I suspect he'll still be able to get a HC job somewhere.  Just because Amherst didn't take him doesn't mean there aren't a lot of other schools who would love to have him.  There will probably still be dominos to fall in all this that would create interesting openings.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

For those of us who know of Biddy Martin's ways and goals, the person getting this job was 100% going to be a person of color.   There is not one candidate of non-color who had a remote chance of getting this job.   Zero chance.   So we get someone unexpected with a mediocre track record, also consistent with recent hires in men's lacrosse, squash, and women's volleyball.    Feel free to go onto the Amherst site to check out the extraordinarily mediocre track records of the coaches that were hired for those sports.  As they say, just look it up.

We will wish him all the best knowing with certainty that he competed for the position not against the "best of the best".    Such is life as an athletics fan - a former athletics fan - under the dictator of diversity, Biddy Martin.

This is an opinion you're allowed to have, for sure.  It may even be true that Amherst is hiring less traditionally qualified coaches in service of diversity.  I can't speak to the qualifications of the other coaches, but it's not true for Marlon Sears.  He's a good coach, proven recruiter, with the kind of resume that always gets considered for big time D3 jobs.  While I'm sure the Amherst folks would like to think candidates that blow Sears out of the water were begging to be hired - I'm very confident his resume was competitive with the best applicants for this job.

What's more trouble, to me, about your post, is that even if it's true for Amherst (which I doubt, but have to real way of knowing), is that it reinforces all the incorrect, negative stereotypes about considering race in hiring and other affirmative actions plans.  The detractors, from the beginning, touted those policies as lowering the standards for candidates of color.  That did happen some places and initially, but those standard-changing affirmative action policies were largely eliminated decades ago.

Affirmative action and race-consideration now apply only to candidates with similar qualifications.

I suspect on athletic teams at an elite school like Amherst - that has worked for diversity, but is still not there yet - having black faces in positions of power in the athletic department is a real asset.

I don't know you.  I'm not accusing you of anything.  I'm just saying maybe those specific concerns could be worded differently or backed up by actual details you believe support them.  Just saying "look at their records" is not effective or very helpful in the larger scope of this issue.

At the very least, if you really stand by an accusation that Amherst is hiring sub-standard coaches because of race, you should make an effort to point out (if true) that this is an aberration as to how race-based selection happens in the country so as not to perpetuate false, unhelpful narratives.

[nescac1]

Regarding Toomey, he's only 28!  He will have plenty of opportunities down the line.  Extraordinarily rare for anyone his age to become a college head coach, I imagine.  Although I think Goldsmith was the same age when TCNJ hired him ...