A few thoughts about Greenberg, coaching, and ACC basketball...

[VT73]

I came by to see what y'all were saying about our upcoming game, found a ton of disappointment with Greenberg, and thought I might offer a few thoughts.

No doubt I haven't watched Hokie basketball as closely as y'all (C'villeHoops appears very knowledgeable, BTW), but from what I've seen from Greenberg, he's competent. The team you had with Deron Washington was very solid and very entertaining. So Greenberg can get it done on floor.

The question is, as is always the case with ACC basketball (more below), can he recruit? Again, I'm on the outside looking in, but my impression was that Greenberg had taken recruiting to a new level in Blacksburg. Witness Delaney and Allen from (???) the 2006 class and Finney-Smith and Barksdale from last year's class.

This gets really difficult when either (or both) of UNC or Duke want the same recruit you do.

IMO, this leads to multiple dilemmas:

1. How much time is enough for your coach to install his system and get his recruiting network up to speed? (Greenberg has been in Blacksburg for 7 years and garnered 2 ACC COYs?) Is it so much time that it can lead to a bad perception of the program?

2. How much of the program's success (or lack thereof) is attributable to the institution and much to the coach? (Much easier for a basketball coach to succeed at UNC with a bench full of Burger Boys than at VCU which has never (???) had one.

3. Every coach in the country knows going head to head with Kryzyzewski and and Williams is going to be a long tough slog, both on the court and the recruiting trail. (I think this may have been where SugarDaddyVT Awesome might have been heading, below). How do you convince them to take that on when--by definition--they've been successful where they are?

Personally, I think the coaching piece comes down to competence (IMO, Greenberg demonstably has that) and the recruiting piece comes down to patience and more than a little bit of luck, unless you're UNC (we'll have to see what happens to Duke at the changing of the guard). In point of fact, when Dean Smith retired, UNC changed coaches as often as most of us change our socks and--AND!!!!--ended up taking Williams from Kansas, which has won its own national championships.

The bottom line: here is what you have to work with if you're UNC: first rounders (NBA draft) are denoted with a parenthetical:

Al Wood (1st round)
Pete Budko
Mike Pepper
James Worthy (1st)
Jimmy Black
Chris Brust
Jeb Barlow
Jimmy Braddock
Michael Jordan (1st)
Sam Perkins (1st)
Matt Doherty
Cecil Exum
Buzz Peterson
Brad Daugherty (1st)
Warren Martin
Steve Hale
Kenny Smith (1st)
Joe Wolf
Dave Popson
Curtis Hunter
J.R. Reid (1st)
Rick Fox (1st)
Pete Chilcutt (1st)
Hubert Davis (1st)
George Lynch (1st)
Eric Montross (1st)
Jerry Stackhouse (1st)
Rasheed Wallace (1st)
Jeff McInnis
Serge Zwikker
Antawn Jamison (1st)
Vince Carter (1st)
Shammond Williams
Brendan Haywood (1st)
Joseph Forte (1st)
Marvin Williams (1st)
Raymond Felton, (1st)
Sean May (1st)
Rashad McCants (1st)
David Noel
Brandan Wright (1st)
Reyshawn Terry
Tyler Hansbrough (1st)
Ty Lawson (1st)
Wayne Ellington (1st)
Danny Green
Ed Davis (1st)

Ain't hard to make a contender outa that material.

At the end of the day, it comes down to this (again, IMO): did you give your guy a fair turn at bat, considering the competition, or did you yank him out of the game prematurely?

I'm fairly convinced that Bennett would not be coaching at UVa if we'd not given each of Gillen (particularly, Gillen, who arrived with a bit of an air of mystique about him and his squads at previous hires) and Leitao a good turn at bat.

Best of luck down the road, just not this Sunday or on similar dates. ;-)

Greenberg is our Al Groh - a lot of mouth and little in the way of results - always griping and complaining, but seldom delivering anything - we loved Groh - enjoy it.

[AHBHokie]

Please take your intelligent, insightful comments elsewhere...this board is no place for that right now.

Well, comments like this certainly don't improve the dialogue here.

[3Up3Down]

If he was such a good recruiter we would have had one of the Curry kids. He missed the boat period. Our offensive coaching is terrible. Seth can coach "D" but our offense is pass around the perimeter until there is 5 seconds left and shoot a jumper.

[Hokiefan5]

As are most of yours lately. Kettle? Meet Pot

[Hokiefan5]

You're clueless about the Curry's. There never was a boat to miss. Stick to baseball sonny

[Hokiefan5]

Terrific post!! I think Hoos win by 20 but that's because Bennett has your kids playing light outs. Please come back here often. I like your insightful posts.

[AHoo]

Boy, that's tough.

Not fundamentally sound basketball??

And then this: "I think Greenberg has done an extremely admirable job breathing life back into what was a foundering VT basketball program. He's an excellent defensive mind, a great ambassador to the university, and a clean, extremely hard working recruiter. But as much as he's done, I think he's elevated VT basketball as high as it's going to go."

That's exactly--I mean EXACTLY--how I felt about Terry Holland. We had nothing before him. Good defensive mind. Great ambassador. Took UVa basketball as far as he could.

But--and maybe this is where he gets differentiated from Greenberg in a way that favors Greenberg--I never thought he had "fire in his belly" when it came to recruiting. (You seem to think that about Greenberg.)

He had the one and only 3-time National Player of the Year grow up in his back yard (which he managed to pry from the clutches of Dean Smith and UNC), and he could not convert. He recruited Craig (Stonehands) Robinson to run with Lamp, Jones, and Sampson. Not much else.

It was a pretty sad squandering of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Anyway, good luck with this.

There are many coaches much worse than Greenberg.

[AHoo]

Many thanks, but I don't make a habit of writing on other teams' boards unless I think I have something meaningful to offer.

In this connection, I always thought Greenberg was "solid." Not spectacular but definitely not second-rate.

That said, I would consider AHB's comments elsewhere in this thread. If, after the team's roster is composed entirely of the coach's own players, the team is not playing "fundamentally sound" basketball (to echo AHB) you have to start thinking about a move.

I haven't reached that conclusion about Greenberg. But I'm not watching his work with the interest y'all do.

I will offer this before bowing out: I'm not taking this Sunday's game as a foregone conclusion and I sure hope UVa's team is not either. If they are, we'll get punished.

[Groff]

So you give him a fair chance to fulfill the institution's ambitions. If you've done that, there's nuttin' wrong with moving on...

It's very much an uphill fight and you want the next guy to think he's going to get a fair shot.

Fundamentally, this is the root of the disagreement. Some of us think that ~10 years is a "fair shot." Others think that anything short of (this is an exaggeration) two decades is a raw deal.

[AHBHokie]

Boy, that's tough.

Not fundamentally sound basketball??

And then this: "I think Greenberg has done an extremely admirable job breathing life back into what was a foundering VT basketball program. He's an excellent defensive mind, a great ambassador to the university, and a clean, extremely hard working recruiter. But as much as he's done, I think he's elevated VT basketball as high as it's going to go."

That's exactly--I mean EXACTLY--how I felt about Terry Holland. We had nothing before him. Good defensive mind. Great ambassador. Took UVa basketball as far as he could.

But--and maybe this is where he gets differentiated from Greenberg in a way that favors Greenberg--I never thought he had "fire in his belly" when it came to recruiting. (You seem to think that about Greenberg.)

He had the one and only 3-time National Player of the Year grow up in his back yard (which he managed to pry from the clutches of Dean Smith and UNC), and he could not convert. He recruited Craig (Stonehands) Robinson to run with Lamp, Jones, and Sampson. Not much else.

It was a pretty sad squandering of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Anyway, good luck with this.

There are many coaches much worse than Greenberg.

I have a lot of nice things to say about Greenberg as I do negative things. I think, for the most part, I've been pretty even-handed in my evaluation of him throughout. I certainly agree we could do much worse than Greenberg, as he is a solid coach. But I think solid is all he'll ever be and if VT wants to aspire to more and better they will likely need to replace him at some point. But again, it's about program expectations and what we're happy with being. It's hard to complain too much when you consider the past 20+ years of VT basketball.