If he takes the job he knows early failure is almost a given. But you make some solid points.
By fail, I mean fail spectacularly. In other words, I think you need to have a big enough personality to absorb being a punchline for a while (because it's better than being irrelevant). Say what you want about Cooley, but he's leaned that role much like Hurley did when he took the UConn job. It's necessary at a job like that, because if you aren't willing to be shamed for failure, people aren't going to think you're serious about believing you can succeed.
Dan Hurley? Of course not. But he was at a different stage of his career, having already established himself as one of the best young coaches in the country.
Dude, their last 4 hires were Jerry Wainwright, Oliver Purnell, Dave Leitao for a second time, and Tony Stubblefield. They're 3-22 this season, 0-14 in the Big East and they're getting like 500 fans to their games.
That's exactly what I thought, he just described Dan Hurley. I didn't know what the willing to fail thing meant either.
I don't know, but it doesn't really change anything about the rest of my post. The program is not going to be competitive with a guy like Holtmann unless the changes start at the top. Perhaps his interest signifies that he expects that to happen, but I'll believe it when I see it. Neither the school nor the Big East has had any interest in having a competitive basketball program before.