North Caroline will hire....

[Orangutan]

Mechelle Voepel doesn't seem to be impressed by Banghart: Is North Carolina really committed to returning women's basketball to the top?

 

[Go/huskies]

If only Bella Alarie would looking into becoming a transfer, she would likely be a starter at UConn she is one hell of a player.

 

[dogged1]

Sorry .. my daughter was 1st-team Daily News All-City out of Christ the King & was recruited heavily by several Ivies bcuz her grades were good .. there was no offer of money to her or her teammates .. an Ivy League degree was money enough .. she graduated from UPenn ..

Congratulations to your daughter and you. A Penn degree is a great thing to attain and have...I'm glad it worked it our for her. When was that?

However, several friends and colleagues and I have personal and semi-professional experiences where superior athletes with excellent grades were given some form of financial aid (most recently, grants). Back in the day, this primarily had a lot to do with financial situations of the family -- and with non repayable grants at many schools, even more so today -- but that situation has loosened up a lot at certain schools, as well (given how expensive the Ivies are now, most families would be really inconvenienced paying tuition!).BTW, I've got folks on another board whose family members were offered/used these grants.

Having good sports teams has become a form of immediate branding for a lot of schools primarily known as academic power houses. In particular, look at D3 programs such as Washington University of St. Louis, Emory, virtually all of the NESCAC colleges even MIT. Back in the day, virtually anyone could play on a lot of their teams. Now, they're regularly competing for and winning national championships.

Yale, Harvard and Princeton are all members of an elite group of schools pleased to call themselves "needs blind". It's not an Ivy League thing, the rest don't do it. Those 3 have the endowments to afford it.
What it means is that if you are accepted, and your middle class income parents can't afford it, you only pay what you can afford. The rest is forgiven. In essence if the coach can persuade admissions to accept a student athlete he or she will get a full ride. It just won't be called an athletic scholarship. Oh, and if you fail to make the team your scholarship is still good.
The reverse is also supposed to be true. If Dad is a multi-millionaire you pay the full cost even if you are the next Michael Jordan, because there is no athletic scholarship, only financial need.
So the coach at Princeton, she only had to get you admitted. The finance part was easy.

 

[MSSportsGuy]

Mechelle Voepel doesn't seem to be impressed by Banghart: Is North Carolina really committed to returning women's basketball to the top?

I read the article and I'm not sure what Voepel, who I've agreed with on several occasions, expects.

For whatever reason the termination of Hatchell wasn't something the school wanted to make more public than necessary. They are hiring a coach who has proven herself on a mid major level. Could they have hired a bigger name? I think so but this is the route the AD chose to take. UNC could and should be a destination job for anyone and their commitment to women's basketball is questionable. However, I feel the tone of the article was overly negative. Charlotte Smith is referenced and I figured she was Hatchell's successor yet she has a thinner resume than Banghart. She was an assistant and player at UNC but otherwise has had less success.

I have no dog in the race at all yet found her article to have a negative tone that is odd.

 

[nickp91]

Courtney Banghart is a fantastic hire Her body of work during her tenure in the Ivy League was outstanding

 

[Dillon77]

I read the article and I'm not sure what Voepel, who I've agreed with on several occasions, expects.

For whatever reason the termination of Hatchell wasn't something the school wanted to make more public than necessary. They are hiring a coach who has proven herself on a mid major level. Could they have hired a bigger name? I think so but this is the route the AD chose to take. UNC could and should be a destination job for anyone and their commitment to women's basketball is questionable. However, I feel the tone of the article was overly negative. Charlotte Smith is referenced and I figured she was Hatchell's successor yet she has a thinner resume than Banghart. She was an assistant and player at UNC but otherwise has had less success.

I have no dog in the race at all yet found her article to have a negative tone that is odd.

Well put. It's almost as if Voepel had something in her bonnet and/or gut and just couldn't get away from it, even though she acknowledges that the Banghart hire could work out very well. Don't know what the source of the discontent was coming from, but it kept sneaking out every few paragraphs of the story.

I already wrote that I think Banghart is a good hire who will have some challenges. However, I think she's as good a candidate as one could find:
- Was head coach at Princeton in her late 20's! And she's done very well.
- Remember she was a finalist for the Vandy job a few years back, competing with a pro coach (Steph White) and a top P5 assistant (Niele Ivey). And I'm sure she's been brought up in other searches.
- Along those lines, if NC should've had some P5 HC's, where was that line of reasoning for Tina Thompson getting the UVA job after serving as an assistant at Texas?
- Banghart has always struck me as someone who knows her way around. She wouldn't of taken this job if she didn't think there was support.

Will be interesting to see how she reacts to Ivey or Shea Ralph getting a P5 NC job....

 

[MilfordHusky]

I think Courtney could do very well. The UNC job is not the plum that it one was or what the men's job is. Mechelle seems to be hung up on this. Thinking down the (tobacco) road: If Courtney does well for 4-6 years, she then moves over to Duke.

 

[Plebe]

Well put. It's almost as if Voepel had something in her bonnet and/or gut and just couldn't get away from it, even though she acknowledges that the Banghart hire could work out very well. Don't know what the source of the discontent was coming from, but it kept sneaking out every few paragraphs of the story.

I already wrote that I think Banghart is a good hire who will have some challenges. However, I think she's as good a candidate as one could find:
- Was head coach at Princeton in her late 20's! And she's done very well.
- Remember she was a finalist for the Vandy job a few years back, competing with a pro coach (Steph White) and a top P5 assistant (Niele Ivey). And I'm sure she's been brought up in other searches.
- Along those lines, if NC should've had some P5 HC's, where was that line of reasoning for Tina Thompson getting the UVA job after serving as an assistant at Texas?
- Banghart has always struck me as someone who knows her way around. She wouldn't of taken this job if she didn't think there was support.

Will be interesting to see how she reacts to Ivey or Shea Ralph getting a P5 NC job....

She does have a busy and filled bonnet. She’s still grinding the ax about the UNC admins’ perceived scapegoating of WBB, so naturally she was not about to praise whatever hire they made.

 

[mudcat]

Yale, Harvard and Princeton are all members of an elite group of schools pleased to call themselves "needs blind". It's not an Ivy League thing, the rest don't do it. Those 3 have the endowments to afford it.
What it means is that if you are accepted, and your middle class income parents can't afford it, you only pay what you can afford. The rest is forgiven. In essence if the coach can persuade admissions to accept a student athlete he or she will get a full ride. It just won't be called an athletic scholarship. Oh, and if you fail to make the team your scholarship is still good.
The reverse is also supposed to be true. If Dad is a multi-millionaire you pay the full cost even if you are the next Michael Jordan, because there is no athletic scholarship, only financial need.
So the coach at Princeton, she only had to get you admitted. The finance part was easy.

My college in Iowa, Grinnell College, is also "needs blind": it's expensive and you need a large endowment to do it, but several do.

 

[Jim R]

Ok, I WILL TAKE THAT BET! Contact me on the private chat and we can talk dollar amount.

I too like the hire but let’s temper the enthusiasm as 1. The ACC has some already proven top programs in ND, Lou, NC St, Miami and FSU who have proven they can do well. Add in Syracuse and VPI as well so Top 10 in the country is a bit of a stretch and especially in 3 years-she can’t even recruit her own players until 2020-21.

Will do

 

[DefenseBB]

I think Courtney could do very well. The UNC job is not the plum that it one was or what the men's job is. Mechelle seems to be hung up on this. Thinking down the (tobacco) road: If Courtney does well for 4-6 years, she then moves over to Duke.

So...you’re thinking the next coach at Duke will only last 5 years?

 

[sivad40]

Barnhart is somewhat familiar to the area because she has a sister that lives in Chapel Hill.

 

[Bonpland]

Yale, Harvard and Princeton are all members of an elite group of schools pleased to call themselves "needs blind". It's not an Ivy League thing, the rest don't do it. Those 3 have the endowments to afford it.
What it means is that if you are accepted, and your middle class income parents can't afford it, you only pay what you can afford. The rest is forgiven. In essence if the coach can persuade admissions to accept a student athlete he or she will get a full ride. It just won't be called an athletic scholarship. Oh, and if you fail to make the team your scholarship is still good.
The reverse is also supposed to be true. If Dad is a multi-millionaire you pay the full cost even if you are the next Michael Jordan, because there is no athletic scholarship, only financial need.
So the coach at Princeton, she only had to get you admitted. The finance part was easy.

From my experience your explanation of the Ivy financial support system is quite accurate.

My daughter played at an Ivy and we could not pay the full cost of that kind of education and we were only asked to pay what we could afford. The rest was drawn from a variety of funds and it continued for the full four years.

As you point out however her teammate, an All-Ivy performer from a very comfortable California family, paid all or close to all of their daughter's college expenses. Her father told me so during warm-ups at one of their games.

It's not just the Ivies that employ this practice. My second daughter attended a "Little Ivy" here in the northeast and received similar treatment. She played four years and her financial aid was never tied to her athletic involvements.

I still recommend to high school students to "aim high" if they have the grades because the more elite schools have money to help support a worthy student's college experience. It . certainly made a difference for us. Without that generous support we would not have been able to consider those kind of academic institutions.

That said it was a constant sideline rumor at the games that Harvard and Princeton did more than help only the athletes who demonstrated true financial need in order to entice top talent into their locker rooms.. Maybe that was true or maybe it was just the kind of rationalization that provided comfort to the parents of the kids who had just been beaten by one or the other of those two traditional Ivy powers..

 

[HuskyNan]

If only Bella Alarie would looking into becoming a transfer, she would likely be a starter at UConn she is one hell of a player.

North Carolina is an excellent academic institution. No, it’s not Princeton, but it’s one of the most highly regarded public universities in the country. Might be worth looking at, anyway

 

[Vowelguy]

North Carolina is an excellent academic institution. No, it’s not Princeton, but it’s one of the most highly regarded public universities in the country. Might be worth looking at, anyway

Haha. No way an ALARIE is going to UNC.

 

[clbabson]

Congrats to hometown girl Courtney. Have followed her progress since she was in high school.

That's too funny. I was the manager for the girls basketball team in HS and we played against her at Souhegan! They used to kill us, but it was fun to watch her play (and there was another girl on that team that was very good but I can't recall her name...)

 

[triaddukefan]

I see that Cinnamon Lister (twin sister of Jasmine) was an assistant on Banghart's staff at Princeton. Any chance of her landing a job on the bench in Chapel Hill? Asking for a friend.