Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="jonson, post: 2728362, member: 6034"] As (I think) the only Oregon WBB fan on this board (albeit also someone born and bred in CT and so a Husky fan long before I arrived on the left coast), let me say a couple of things. First, only the most delusional UO fan would deny that Knight's money has made a major difference, especially in football and men's basketball. In fact that's part of the accepted lore here, beginning with "Uncle Phil" (the preferred title on message boards) asking a football coach in the early 90s what it would take facilities-wise to build on a trip to the Rose Bowl. If anything, the basic assumption among the true believers--as regards football and men's basketball, anyway--is that Nike money can solve all. But throwing a lot of money around is not the same as hiring good coaches: the ongoing fiasco called Oregon baseball is a case in point, as was the hiring by a previous athletic director of his "big name" crony (Paul Westhead), whose contract even specified that he only had to be in Eugene for five months of the year. (This was the same athletic director/donor who decided that hiring, and overpaying, a well-known baseball coach who had been successful at Cal Fullerton would be enough to justify pouring money down that drain.) Knight has not, as far as I know, shown very much interest in women's sports (women's track has been very good here for a very long time), and the recent successful hires in softball and wbb are mostly the doing of the current athletic director, with the former, especially, at a discount. As for Graves and overachieving--I think his tenure at Gonszaga has to be included here, although what he has done at Oregon (and how quickly he has done it) is enough for me, especially after watching the abysmal teams of his two predecessors. (The Ducks actually were a very solid wbb team in the late 90s and early years of this century.) He is, after all, the only coach to have led two different double-digit seeds to the elite 8, and his Oregon teams have made 2 elite 8's in a row since his arrival in Eugene for the 2014-15 season, and that with teams dominated by (for the first) freshmen and then (for the second) sophomores. Most expect he will also have very strong teams this year and next. Of course he doesn't have Rueck's record; he's only been around for a short time. But he's doing pretty well. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach