Ollie lands a new job

[huskymedic]

 

[Hans Sprungfeld]

Hope he does well and sways a UConn recruit to play in their league so that those on here suffering from Ollie Derangement Syndrome can have a flare up

Cancel "Derangement Syndrome." It's among the fakest of "Fake News."

Otherwise, no super strong opinion either way on your overall wish.

If OE/KO combo works & works out, NP. Same as if not.

I'm reminded of another Kevin who said, "CLERKS wasn't as good as everybody said it was, and MALLRATS wasn't as bad."

There's something for everybody in this thread, even wildly conflicting opinions that aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. Solid Gray Monday fare.

 

[auror]

That sounds great in theory. But these kids are dropping out of high school at 15/16 years old to enter this league. If they don't make it and they want to go back to college, these kids will be applying to college based on their academic profiles (no longer an athletic recruit). No real institution is going to accept them as an applicant after dropping out of HS and not having real grades/academics for 2-3 years. So the whole "league will pay them up to $100,000 towards college tuition" is just PR.

100k pays for 2 years at any community college in the country and then probably a lot of the subsequent school you transfer into for the last 2 years. This assumes the academic counseling they receive gets them a GED as part of it.

 

[ClifSpliffy]

Wait, are you saying Willimantic got that way on its own?

i was in willimantic yesterday. big fan. why? after having just stopped earlier in taxachusetts, for a break on our way home from bunkport up in downeast, i learned that menthol smokes are now verboten in massholia. wait, whut?
driver! get thee hence to willimantic, where the folks have less braindamage, and u can buy menthols to your hearts content!
ps. i learned that in bushtown, even babies in strollers wear masks outdoors. heck, the maitre d at pedros made us all mask up at the entrance just to walk a few feet to our table, where we then could take them off. it wasn't like he was a normal person just doing their job, like the lady in the 'no menthols' story. he was a crusader, adamant and virtriolic, so i had to whip out the phone and immediately take his pic (i rarely take pics, mebbe a handful a year). freaked him out- 'why u taking my photo?' freaked my pals out, 'u never take a pic!' some bosso saw all this, flew up to the table, and immediately offered free drinks, cuz, he's el bosso, and remembered that we were there a few days previous, and the house and the staff made some nice bank from our gang. times are tough in the food biz. no 'drinker' nor alcohol expert am i, but i had the titos vodka for the first time. tasted like vodka. what's it supposed to taste like?

 

[CL82]

That sounds great in theory. But these kids are dropping out of high school at 15/16 years old to enter this league. If they don't make it and they want to go back to college, these kids will be applying to college based on their academic profiles (no longer an athletic recruit). No real institution is going to accept them as an applicant after dropping out of HS and not having real grades/academics for 2-3 years. So the whole "league will pay them up to $100,000 towards college tuition" is just PR.

OE will give them a HS degree as well. I'm not sure if they've worked out accreditation yet.

 

[August_West]

It did. You’re just giving way too much credit to Ollie.

Nah. Ollie coached his ass off for that title. It’s just not debatable. You want to talk about later shortcomings, ok. We’ve already rehashed them a million times. But there is no doubt Kevin Ollie could coach players. He was a very good bench coach.

 

[Madmannsucks]

That sounds great in theory. But these kids are dropping out of high school at 15/16 years old to enter this league. If they don't make it and they want to go back to college, these kids will be applying to college based on their academic profiles (no longer an athletic recruit). No real institution is going to accept them as an applicant after dropping out of HS and not having real grades/academics for 2-3 years. So the whole "league will pay them up to $100,000 towards college tuition" is just PR.

Except they are NOT dropping out-they will be pursuing their diploma as part of the program.

 

[Hans Sprungfeld]

Kevin Ollie Op-Ed: I still rise — and I took the stairs

An Op-Ed from Kevin Ollie about the next step in his career: The head coach of Overtime Elite, a new alternative to college basketball.

theathletic.com

His verbal expression has dramatically improved during his time out of the limeight.
I especially appreciate that after highlighting the self-development habits of his former 3OKC teammates and Ray Allen, he remains silent on Iverson's practice habits.

 

[Hans Sprungfeld]

How many National Championships does Hurley have?

Do you keep asking because you keep forgetting, or what?

 

[BPT2Storrs]

Being a head coach takes a lot of different skill sets. You can be the best at recruiting and not know X’s and O’s. You can have an eye for talent but have no idea how to manage that talent. You could be a great public speaker, but not know what should be said and/or when to say it at a particular moment. I think KO was great at some things but not at everything that is needed to be a successful head coach at a dominant program.

With that being said KO also inherited a program that had tremendous success and almost instantaneously continued that success with a National championship, all of which came as we were no longer in the conference that we called home. Had he had some struggles early on it might have motivated him a bit more to work on the things he needed to work on. It might also have tempered expectations of our fan base. He had no time for failure even though this was his first ever stint as a Head coach.

I understand that KO has to take some ownership of what happened during his tenure but we need to be a bit more understanding. I’m not sure how other coaches would have faired in similar circumstances. Look at places like Indiana and UCLA - these are prominent programs that have money, facilities, etc. behind them and they even struggled with coaching hires. Even Kentucky had down years before Calipari.

You can’t expect to follow up a Hall of Fame coach who won three National titles with that level of success immediately. The problem for KO is that it did happen, but we need to attribute some of that teams success to the dominate leadership of Bazz. No matter what he was not losing. He had that tough UConn mentality. I think that team was able to overcompensate for some of things Ollie lacked, we just didn’t realize it until after. It made it seem like Ollie “gave up”. Maybe we as fans just didn’t see clearly that KO was a new head coach and had huge shoes to fill after Calhoun stepped down.

 

[Ajs120102]

Overtime Elite, which will feature up to 30 players ages 16 to 18 who will be paid a minimum salary of $100,000 along with bonuses and equity, is slated to begin in September 2021. If an Overtime Elite player doesn’t ultimately pursue a pro career, the league will pay them up to $100,000 towards college tuition. Overtime, which includes Durant, Carmelo Anthony and late NBA Commissioner David Stern among its investors, was founded in 2016.

So $100k salary to play, at a minimum and another $100k for college if the kids doesn't make the league... per player. Did anyone see where this money is going to come from? If kids make the league do have pay back the OE? Does OE get a percentage of the kid's salary? Something seems off about this.

No, this is a money maker for OE if they get this right

 

[CL82]

Nah. Ollie coached his ass off for that title. It’s just not debatable. You want to talk about later shortcomings, ok. We’ve already rehashed them a million times. But there is no doubt Kevin Ollie could coach players. He was a very good bench coach.

He was during the NCAAs. I've said it before, and will again no doubt, but I don't think anyone else gets us that Natty, not even 2014 Jim Calhoun. But as much as he was the right guy in 2014, he was the wrong guy 2015 forward.

 

[CL82]

No, this is a money maker for OE if they get this right

Yeah, I'm just not sure how. Where is the cash coming from?

 

[August_West]

He was during the NCAAs. I've said it before, and will again no doubt, but I don't think anyone else gets us that Natty, not even 2014 Jim Calhoun. 2015 forward, not so much.

He was still a good bench coach after. Runner of program? Probably not.

 

[Storrs South]

Yeah, I'm just not sure how. Where is the cash coming from?

Sounds like basically they get a percentage of money from NLI / sponsorships. The question I have is if this only while associated with league or if this is something that continues when they become a pro. If this is a long time partnership type deal, that's basically what record labels do for music artists and the artist usually loses out big time.

 

[CL82]

He was still a good bench coach after. Runner of program? Probably not.

Yeah, he didn't look quite so good after Miller left. (Yeah, I know you aren't a fan of Miller.) But I agree his biggest problems weren't during the games.

 

[uconnfan68]

Nah. Ollie coached his ass off for that title. It’s just not debatable. You want to talk about later shortcomings, ok. We’ve already rehashed them a million times. But there is no doubt Kevin Ollie could coach players. He was a very good bench coach.

It was that resting beotch face that did him in.

 

[Huskybass]

Maybe if he did it in 2013 with players from super 2012 team, but the 2012 team with Andre was never nearly as good as the parts, 2013 was mass exodus of players. Winning it all in 2014 was the best "how did they do that" story of the last 25 years; coaching had to have a big impact. Jay Bilas picked UConn to lose each NCAA tournament game so wasn't like it was a walk in the park by "UCLA of Walton and Kareem" type talent.

Compare the talent on the 2020-21 Hurley team vs. the 2013-14 Ollie team and doubt you find Ollie had a team with lot more talent, or even more talent. If Ollie got too much credit for the championship, did Hurley get enough "non credit" for the team performance in the 2021 NCAA tournament?

Are you really this dense? Bazz and Boat were the best backcourt in the country, and Bazz was THE most clutch player in the country. Without Bazz, Ollie would have never come close to winning a National Championship. Anyone who is being honest can see that.

 

[nomar]

Alternate access link here <-

You don't go through life, you grow through life.

-nomar -August_West -Kevin Ollie

 

[nomar]

Glad to see KO get a position that will allow him to do what he is passionate about

I was going to make a joke about him taking a job at Hinge . . . and then I went ahead and did.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Well, to piss you off specifically.

BigErn, pissing people off since 1977. Seems about right.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

The program went into a ditch because the conference situation was untenable. We were lucky the program was not completely wiped out by the stupid decision to join the AAC.

None of that was Ollie’s fault.

 

[JimCtheGOAT]

As expected. You seem to have no problem makin fun of people. Unfortunately, that seems to be the extent of it. I asked you directly if you disagreed with me, but of course you ignored it. And yet here you with more jokes. Humor is an effective way of deflecting. I'll give you that.

Cue up another joke in response to this in 3, 2, 1...

 

[Kwfan111]

Good for him. Hope he does well !

 

[gampelcrazies]

The program went into a ditch because the conference situation was untenable. We were lucky the program was not completely wiped out by the stupid decision to join the AAC.

None of that was Ollie’s fault.

It wasn't just the conference. From 2014-2016 Ollie had great recruiting classes. He couldn't develop talent and struggled in game. Thus leading to the teams we had in 2016-2018 and what the state of the program had become.

I get people like him because he was a solid UConn player but he was an awful coach. We all fell for it at the time but it was an awful hire.