Comments on: Prohm Is MSU’s “Primary Target” For Hoops Job

By: Homepage | MrSEC

Homepage | MrSEC — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 22:26:03 +0000

[...] was considered last week to be Mississippi State’s “primary target” to replace Rick Stansbury. Now, MSU athletic director Scott Stricklin will have to look [...]

By: John at MrSEC

John at MrSEC — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 17:28:24 +0000

Statesman…

I’ve talked to a helluva lot of Arkansas people over the years about the Stan Heath situation. Heath inherited a mess thanks to the Nolan Richardson fiasco, but he went 82-70 in four years, never finished above third-place in the SEC West, and left behind an APR mess that handcuffed John Pelphrey… despite two trips to the NCAA Tournament. Heath’s program was built on sand and people in Fayetteville knew it.

You might want to look up the academic records and drug testing issues faced by the Arkansas players Heath brought into the Razorback program.

I criticized Heath’s stay at Arkansas, but I said nothing about his USF work — as that has nothing to do with Arkansas’ hire of him — other than to credit him for making “an impressive tournament run” this year. The obvious point — or at least I thought it was obvious — Heath is probably a lot better at running a program in his 11th year than he was after just one season at the helm of a team. And that’s all he’d done when UA hired him.

As for my “praise” of Kennedy, I’d like to see your definition of praise. I said UM was wise to have kept him because he’s had five 20-win seasons in six years — that’s hardly doing “nothing” as you put it — and he’s been on the NCAA bubble many times. He appears close to a breakthrough. Why blow him out to just roll the dice with another up-and-comer who might not even be as successful as Kennedy has been?

And unlike Heath — who was coaching at a traditional basketball power in a nice arena — Kennedy is coaching a traditional also-ran with the worst facilities in the SEC.

Thanks for reading,John

By: Statesman

Statesman — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 17:06:41 +0000

Your reference to Stan Heath is incorrect. Heath took over an Arkansas program that was in shambles. Heath was fired at Arkansas after taking the team to the tournament. Pelphrey took Heath’s player to the tournament the next year and flamed out afterwards. Heath was in the process of building something good at Arkansas before he was fired. He started over and had to build at South Florida and just took them to the tournament. Heath has taken 3 teams to the tournament and you criticise, while Andy Kennedy has done nothing and you praise. John please explain?

By: nreht

nreht — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 14:57:20 +0000

Good luck with that Bulldogs. Murray St is one of those feeder schools for coaches (in football too, remember Houston Nutt and Frank Beamer coached there too) that don’t always pan out. I knew someone was going to take the bait on this one with the success the Racers had this year with a senior laden team, who was largely built by Prohm’s predecessor. He may be a solid coach, but seems like a guy with demonstrated sustained success would be a better option, then again, who wants to live in Starkville.