Where do we go from here?

@CoachReveno wrote:Reason I coach, and will coach again, is to help players be the best they can be and build championship teams. Its personal, it's the best.

Thank you for your ceaseless hard work on behalf of UP and it's players.

Earlier tweet:

@CoachReveno wrote:Hey, @jongordon, can you point me to that story again how losing your job was the best thing that happened to you? Asking for a friend.

Hey, @jongordon, can you point me to that story again how losing your job was the best thing that happened to you? Asking for a friend.

"We strived to do things the right way, help players be their best, and win a championship. We were successful in two out of three areas.

Class until the very end and I'd expect nothing else from him.

It just wasn't working out at Portland, and hopefully this turns out to be a positive move for both school and coach. He's going to end up somewhere, and I'll be rooting for him to succeed there wherever that may be.

Good luck Coach Rev, and thanks for representing the school and program with class and passion for the past decade.

I have to echo the sentiments of this article from the Gonzaga-centric "the Slipper Still Fits" site.

TL;DR of that article: it will be difficult to have parity in the WCC as long as a program like Gonzaga exists. Quite frankly they only ever have ups relative to the rest of us -- no downs. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Why coach in the WCC when you very little chance of getting to the tournament or making the program better relative to the big boys?

Let's look at it this way: Who makes the tournament from the WCC? Here are some parameters to make this clear: let's exclude BYU and Pacific since they are newcomers and let's go with after 1999 being the start of Gonzaga's meteoric rise. We are left with Gonzaga, who always makes it, and sometimes Saint Mary's (5 times). When was the last time that one of the other six (from the previous 8 members) made the tournament?
- 2008 San Diego
- 2003 San Diego
- 2002 Pepperdine
- 2000 Pepperdine
Two of those schools have ever made it to the tournament since Gonzaga become Gonzaga. Before that there was much more parity. Heck, in the 1995-96 season both Portland and Santa Clara made the tournament, which seems impossible today.

With the way things are shaping up in college basketball now (i.e. conference tournaments get the auto-bids, committee changes its selection criteria year to year, TV revenue streams driving the course of college sports) there is no way for any other team from the WCC to make the tournament other than winning the conference tournament. Saint Mary's not getting the at-large bid showed this year that we may be able to get wins, but you don't have any quality wins. Hard to schedule good teams when you are not a favorable opponent yourself. The power conference teams and Gonzaga might as well schedule each other exclusively since those opponents would be quality wins and losses compared to us Pilots. Gonzaga would get those games and TV appearances since they are good and recognizable.

With Gonzaga taking up the WCC's guaranteed bid every year, that doesn't leave much room for the rest of us. The rich get richer not just monetarily from tournament money, but in exposure. At least in other mid major conferences you have a change to make the tournament once in a while since there might not be a dominant program. Even ones that we see as dominant or who have their Cinderella runs are not consistently dominant. Find the Gonzaga-like team in these mid major conferences: America East, A10, A-Sun, Big Sky, Big South, Big West, Colonial Athletic, Horizon, Ivy, Metro Atlantic, MEAC, Missouri Valley, NEC, Ohio Valley, Patriot, Southern, Southland, SWAC, Summit, and WAC. They mostly have parity that we just don't experience that basketball-wise in the WCC.

I am by no means criticizing Gonzaga's success, because they have earned it. But, Mark Few's comments are just plain unthoughtful when you consider the actual environment he coaches in. If UP wants to make the tournament in the future we would have to either turn the program around to Gonzaga-level consistency or get lucky in the conference tournament to get the auto bid.

TL;DR of this post: Gonzaga's success prevents the rest of us from being successful.

IMO, the AD would be sticking his neck out a bit by hiring a "big name" and expensive pro coach....but it would cause some initial stir and excitement for the program.  As up7587 pointed out, a big name coach does not guarantee success.

I say "sticking his neck out" because, unless the priorities of the university have changed, the new coach will still have to stick to "doing it the right way".....which most would agree Rev has done.

Mark Few could hardly be called a big-name coach when he took over at GU....but he is now!

UGAPilot wrote:Gonzaga's success prevents the rest of us from being successful.

Excellent analysis, UGAPilot.....if it weren't for UP's coaching change going on right now, we should be giving what you said a great deal of thought and comment.

But I will say this, any coach coming to UP in the current UP and WCC environment is going to have to come in "eyes wide open" if he is to truly understand the challenge and bring a change to the W/L column.

Unfortunately, there are much better jobs than UP open at the same time. OSU found Wayne Tinkle, who brought some players with him, and they got 2nd year success. But they had to go through 26 years and five other coaches to get there (Anderson, Payne, McKay, John, Robinson). After they fired Jimmy Anderson and his .467 winning % through 6 years, they didn't even come close to that until Robinson basically matched it.

From the Portland Tribune:

 We have a short list to start with," UP athletic director Scott Leykam said. "We’ll work as quickly as we can. We’ll make sure we don’t miss any candidates. Hopefully, we’ll get something done in the next couple weeks.

“There are an awful lot of vacant jobs throughout the country … there are four openings in the WCC alone. The quicker we can move, the better. We’ll start the search tonight. If we identify the right person, we could act quickly and get it done before that time frame.”

Does he make the hire, or is there a selection/search committee?

“Every hire we’ve done, we incorporate people from all over campus.”  

Let the speculation continue.....

http://www.csnnw.com/blazers/best-candidate-job-terry-porter

I would think Jim Shaw would be worth a look to...he knows the university and has been very successfully at Western Oregon after several high profile assistant jobs

This news saddens me. Portland needs to decide if they are going to be a program that puts academics first and expects its players to be real students, and realistically not win any wcc titles. Or are they willing to accept kids who can play but may not be there to get a great education and may have off the court issues if it means winning. I know everyone here will say we need both, but I don't buy it. Do they want a coach Rev team or a Ken Bone PSU team that went to the dance but had some big issues off the court? Sadly, I think those are the two choices.

Since it's been so long since they've had real on the court success, either portland has made decades worth of bad coaching hires, which I doubt, or this is a extremely hard place to succeed.

I hope a new coach comes in and instantly turns around, but I don't picture that happening. The only reason Tinkle was able to turn around the tough to coach OSU program so quickly is a his son and coach Thompson's son happen to be big time players.

"We didn't finish .500 like we possibly could have. We underperformed, and I'm responsible for that," Reveno said. "I'm disappointed in how we did, and it helped make this decision possible. I'm more disappointed about the future. I felt like we were really close. Maybe a change in coaching, they'll continue on the same path, but that's hard too. It's normally a step back or two."

An excellent "exit interview" by our friend Nick Daschel:
http://www.oregonlive.com/pilots/index.ssf/2016/03/pilots_eric_reveno_on_firing_i.html

Pacific reportedly has hired Damon Stoudamire.
http://www.si.com/college-basketball/2016/03/15/pacific-basketball-damon-stoudamire-head-coach

Shaw would be a great hire but he was hired just a year ago at his alma mater. That might have been a missed opportunity.

I really, really liked Rev and I'm sad to see him go. Wish I still had a mole on the B.O.R....

jumpstop wrote:This news saddens me. Portland needs to decide if they are going to be a program that puts academics first and expects its players to be real students, and realistically not win any wcc titles. Or are they willing to accept kids who can play but may not be there to get a great education and may have off the court issues if it means winning. I know everyone here will say we need both, but I don't buy it. Do they want a coach Rev team or a Ken Bone PSU team that went to the dance but had some big issues off the court? Sadly, I think those are the two choices.

Since it's been so long since they've had real on the court success, either portland has made decades worth of bad coaching hires, which I doubt, or this is a extremely hard place to succeed.

I hope a new coach comes in and instantly turns around, but I don't picture that happening. The only reason Tinkle was able to turn around the tough to coach OSU program so quickly is a his son and coach Thompson's son happen to be big time players.

This is utter nonsense!! Since when does winning basketball mean substandard academics? I strongly disagree with this notion that we can't put a winning team on the court comprised of academically minded student-athletes. I'm amazed that Rev has been able to sell this BS for 10 years. The problem at UP is that we've had coaches that don't compete for players on the recruiting trail. When is the last time we had to "win" a recruit? Yes we occasionally get lucky with a Ryan Nicholas or Alec Wintering who plays above his scouting report, but we'd be hard pressed to list 10 players in the last 5 years (not counting the players he inherited when he got here) that could start for any other program in the conference. List 5 players on our current team that we had to beat out other schools in our conference for?

Surrounding oneself with yes men instead of assistant coaches that challenge you isn't the trademark of a great coach. That's the sign that a coach that is comfortable that his university has bought his BS that since he's recruiting athletes intent on getting their diploma (and occasionally they compete against elite teams) that somehow he's made the most out of an impossible situation.

I pray that the search committee gets over this idea that it's an either or proposition, and makes it clear to the coaching candidates that at UP we don't settle for "good enough" in any other arena, we definitely won't settle for it in our basketball program anymore.

agree with newpilotfan....UP is an outstanding institution and such a special place! However, using the academic excuse doesn't work with me. Gonzaga, St. Mary's, Pepperdine, USD...all have high academic standards and have found a way to have success in both (not necessarily pepp and USD on a consistent basis but have certainly have made NCAA tourney runs more recently than pilots).

Besides the "star power" names such as Lavin, Porter, Stoudamire, and Rambis, there is a lesser known name being mentioned on other WCC boards, Kyle Smith, the head coach at Columbia University in the Ivy League....where, I'm told, they are able to combine high academic standards and good basketball.

Coach Smith was a long time assistant at USD and at SMC, where he was essentially the co-head coach to Bennett when they really got the program going for the first time and made it to the Sweet-16.

Smith knows what it's like to go up against schools like GU and could say no to a UP offer, but he may see it as a great opportunity to turn another program around.  

Hey, from its origin in 1901 until the mid-1930's, UP was known as Columbia University....

jumpstop wrote:This news saddens me. Portland needs to decide if they are going to be a program that puts academics first and expects its players to be real students, and realistically not win any wcc titles. Or are they willing to accept kids who can play but may not be there to get a great education and may have off the court issues if it means winning. I know everyone here will say we need both, but I don't buy it. Do they want a coach Rev team or a Ken Bone PSU team that went to the dance but had some big issues off the court? Sadly, I think those are the two choices.

Since it's been so long since they've had real on the court success, either portland has made decades worth of bad coaching hires, which I doubt, or this is a extremely hard place to succeed.

piloted wrote:agree with newpilotfan....UP is an outstanding institution and such a special place! However, using the academic excuse doesn't work with me. Gonzaga, St. Mary's, Pepperdine, USD...all have high academic standards and have found a way to have success in both (not necessarily pepp and USD on a consistent basis but have certainly have made NCAA tourney runs more recently than pilots).

There is an element of truth to both of these posts. It seems to me we're looking for athletes with three qualities: Good player, good academics, fits "UP culture." This is an incredibly tall order, as Rev found out. I suspect that players fitting the first two qualifications will opt for other institutions that have either better academics or a better hoops program, or both. Who would blame them? It would take an incredible recruiter to have success at UP under these conditions, so if UP is serious about this they will take that into account during the coaching search.

I believe the numbers and the evidence justify Coach Reveno's dismissal. But that doesn't make this a happy situation for anyone. I am sorry to see him go, and sorry that he wasn't the one to take the Pilots to the next level.

I hope that Leykam's hiring committee includes representation from the basketball team. Those guys probably have a good idea as to what kind of coach can help the program get over the hump.

In addition to news on the new coaching staff, I imagine there will be news about some roster turnover before long, too.

up7587 wrote:Pacific reportedly has hired Damon Stoudamire.  
http://www.si.com/college-basketball/2016/03/15/pacific-basketball-damon-stoudamire-head-coach

Thank goodness for California Heath and Safety code 11357,

http://www.canorml.org/laws/hsc11357.html#b

I think it's unfortunate Pacific picked up Stoudamire before we had a chance to interview him (unless we reached out behind the scenes prior to publicly firing Rev). I think a big local name for a coach could improve attendance in the short term even if performance doesn't pick up. Increased $ from ticket sales never hurts and having a larger crowd could help win close games @ home.

Perhaps we did reach out and we think we have better options among other candidates we have already spoken to.

dholcombe wrote:I think a big local name for a coach could improve attendance in the short term even if performance doesn't pick up.

How's this for a big local name?

@GoodmanESPN wrote:Former NBA player/coach Terry Porter is in the mix for the Portland job, sources told ESPN.

So the Terry Porter rumours have officially graduated from message board ramblings to legitimate Twitter sources!

Hmm, Kyle Smith from Columbia University may be too successful to get an interview in time to get WCC job. His Lions team rolled over Norfolk St. tonight, 86-54, in a CIT quarterfinal game....so the season marches on for the KenPom 110th ranked team in the nation.