nwhoopfan
hopeless West Coast homer
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2017
- Messages
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...and of course I disagree. When has Cori ever had a player as good as Sabrina? When has she ever had a player as good as Sabally? When has she ever had a trio as good as Sabrina, Sabally and Herbert? Yet Graves was able to take this team to the FF just once in three years (I of course don't count last year). Do you honestly think Close couldn't have matched that number? To me Graves has yet to prove he's a great BB coach. He's proven he's one of CBB great recruiters, and he's been a great representative for WCBB. But a great coach? The jury hasn't even been picked yet.
You didn't really expect Oregon to go to a Final 4 when they were mostly led by Fr. did you? The next year they had the misfortune of running into Notre Dame in the Regional Final, who nobody managed to beat in the Tourney, including UConn. I'm fairly sure they would've waltzed to the Final 4 last year, so that's really unfortunate that opportunity got taken away from them.
Let's just talk about how the 2 coaches have done in the Pac 12. After starting with almost nothing, Graves quickly built Oregon into a 3 time conference champion. Close has never won the league, best she finished was tied for 2nd last year w/ an absolute gift of an unbalanced schedule. Before that 4th place seemed to be about where she finished most seasons.
While Close never had a trio like Oregon's, Canada/Billings/Burke is pretty darn good as well. That it took Burke till her Sr. year to really develop might indicate something.
And then there's what Graves did at Gonzaga, a small school that had zero history before he arrived. Turned them into a perennial Tourney team w/ multiple Sweet 16s and an Elite 8. Vandersloot is the only player from GU that did any more than getting a cup of coffee in the WNBA, so it's not like he was winning only because of overwhelming talent. As far as his recruiting goes, I think he's got a shrewd eye for talent. Some of his recruits that thrived weren't highly ranked when he got them. Hebard I think was somewhere in the 40s and Vandersloot was maybe just barely cracking top 100 lists, if she was ranked at all. Sabally is a bit hard to evaluate because international recruits don't get seen as much by the scouts as players in the U.S.