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Between Mike DeCourcey of The Sporting News and a college FB reporter from USA Today. The USA Today guy tweeted that he would like to see George Karl try coaching at the college level. Mike countered that Karl and Bob Thuggins were interviewed by the DU search committee that hired John Carroll in 1989. Now, while I thought Carroll at the time was a good hire (and he did have some success), how in the hell does a search committee blow that one? Between Mike DeCourcey of The Sporting News and a college FB reporter from USA Today. The USA Today guy tweeted that he would like to see George Karl try coaching at the college level. Mike countered that Karl and Bob Thuggins were interviewed by the DU search committee that hired John Carroll in 1989. Now, while I thought Carroll at the time was a good hire (and he did have some success), how in the hell does a search committee blow that one? While Karl would have been interesting, there is no way of knowing if he could have done well as a recruiter. That's the big difference between college and pro coaching. I was always led to believe that Huggins chose to go to UC which makes sense. UC probably was able to pay more, wasn't butting up against the Big East, and had a much better track record over the previous 30 years compared to Duquesne. Plus, as a big public school, it would be easier to slide marginal students through academically. Pretty much a no brainer for Huggins. The only advantage Duquesne would have had was proximity to Morgantown. My understanding of the situation was that Huggins did have a legitimate interest in Duquesne at that time. Remember that Duquesne still had a pretty good name in the 80's after decades of winning; and had won with Mike Rice Sr, in that decade. The story I have heard repeatedly over the years is that Huggins didn't think Duquesne would have given him the "freedom" to take some risks on some kids that he felt he would need to take to win. Very similar to what John Thompson was allowed to do at Georgetown in order to attract talented players that would normally never qualify at Georgetown. He was given a lot of freedom to bring in marginal students sometimes with questionable records (like A.I.).
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Interesting conversation on Twitter...
I figure duq81 will have some insight.
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Re: Interesting conversation on Twitter...
ElDuque wrote:
I figure duq81 will have some insight.
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Re: Interesting conversation on Twitter...
So, as I understand it, he didn't get the feeling that Duquesne was interested in taking those chances to win. If that is the truth of the matter, it was certainly a turning point. Duquesne would have been a winner and never sunk to the depths that it did until Ron brought us back to a level of respectability.
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