Quote Originally Posted by daveinop View Post
Actually, he kept 8 out of 9. Seth ran off DFS.

Seth lost the team and his staff last year with his "until the morale improves, the beatings will continue" management style. Then he basically gave the leadership the finger.

Johnson was brought in to clean up the mess. He appears to have hired a good staff and has already brought in a decent transfer. If you believe the message boards, the staff and players are happy. People look forward to coming to work.
I don't have inside knowledge, but, at least publicly, DFS stated that the firing of Greenberg was the final straw in his decision to leave, but that he was unhappy even before that. He didn't make it sound like Greenberg ran him off, but rather that there were other reasons to leave. If Seth had been the problem with DFS, it would seem like the firing would have had the opposite impact. Virginia Tech is a great place and most of us loved our time in Blacksburg. However, Virginia Tech and Blacksburg just are not for everybody, and it sounds like it didn't turn out to be a good fit for DFS for reasons beyond the basketball coach.

That said, turnover and depth issues are generally pretty common with a coaching change, so I would agree that Johnson did a good job keeping most of the team together. Despite Harrell's public comments to the contrary, it sounds like he was privately looking for a way out before Greenberg's firing, so there's probably not much Johnson could've done there (Rev has a ton of credibility here, so I'll take his word on that).

I think that Seth Greenberg did a lot for the program, and I was disappointed to see him go, although I'm not privy to the insider reasons the propted the late April firing. That said, I'm also looking forward to seeing what the program can do with James Johnson going forward. Hopefully we'll be able to build on the success that Greenberg had in resurrecting a dead program in order to take it to the next level where we all, former Greenberg supporters or former "fire Seth" crowd, aspire for the program to reside.