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Just so you know going in, we're not talking coaching search here. I'll have the daily Rumor Mill up after I write this and the entire board is pretty much about the coaching search, but in order to avoid doubling up on thoughts, I'm keeping this pretty much separate. We'll talk some basketball, but I'm keeping the new coaching candidates out of this specific post. Mitchell Forde is starting our profiles of potential candidates today.
1) Missouri made the move that needed to be made. I said over and over during the last few months that I wasn't going to weigh in on whether Cuonzo Martin should be fired or not. I don't view that as my job and I also have to continue to cover Mizzou so I don't find it all that useful to go advocating for someone's dismissal and then find myself in a position of still needing to do a good job covering them going forward. So I've always said that we'll cover it if they do get fired, but never tell you they should be fired. But after the fact, I can tell you Missouri made the move I would have made. The reason is simple: I've seen the ceiling for Martin and it's not enough. I could invent a world where he hits in the transfer portal and reshapes the roster and the returning players improve next year and Missouri is better. But how much better? I'd say the ceiling was sneaking into the NCAA Tournament and not really being a threat to do much once they were there. Then the next year you're losing Kobe Brown and Boogie Coleman at a bare minimum and you've got another year of recruits coming in and let's say they get better and improve to...a six seed?
Obviously that would be a lot better than it's been. But if that's the ceiling--and Martin had shown over 14 years of coaching it was--is that enough? Some will say it should be. I say it is not. I'm not saying Martin's replacement is going to take Missouri to regular SEC title contention and a top four seed in the tournament. Hell, I'm not even going to tell you I know that Martin's replacement will be better than he was. But you need to sell one of two things in sports: Success or hope. Missouri basketball isn't selling success right now and hasn't been for a while. The bigger problem is outside of a couple of blips under Martin, they haven't been selling much hope either. The move Mizzou made was the right one for this reason: Bringing back Cuonzo, you knew the ceiling. By making a change, you don't. And fans are going to buy that. They're going to get excited because they're going to convince themselves that there is hope for much better. They may be wrong, but worst case scenario you get two or three years of hope and enthusiasm before anybody knows if you made the right move or not.
This probably sounds like change for the sake of change. Maybe it is to some degree. But Missouri needs to sell hope and there just wasn't a lot to sell if they stayed the course.
2) I said I wouldn't talk coaching search and I'm not going to talk candidates, but I do want to make one big picture point. Who Missouri hires needs to be Desiree Reed-Francois' decision. That's not to say Mun Choi has no input. That's not to say what high level donors think shouldn't be taken into consideration. But Missouri's biggest problem over the last 24 years in basketball is that it has had far too many people who want to be the athletic director. From donations being dependent on hiring Quin Snyder over Bill Self to the Curators trying to decide if they were going to fire Mike Alden while Mike Anderson waited to be introduced at Mizzou Arena to a small group advocating for Kim Anderson when there is absolutely no chance he was the athletic director's choice, Missouri has simply had far too many cooks in the kitchen. Reed-Francois was hired to do this job. She (with some input from Eddie Fogler and basketball people she trusts) knows more about college basketball and coaches than Mun Choi does. The Curators should have exactly one role here: Rubber stamp the contract that Reed-Francois and Choi agree to with a candidate. That's it. No more. They shouldn't be suggesting candidates or inserting themselves into the hiring process. They should wait with the rest of us to see who Reed-Francois wants to run the program and they should approve it. Period.
The buzzword in college sports these days is alignment. Coaches want to work somewhere that has the President, the AD and the board on the same page pulling in the same direction. What you get when that isn't the case is Auburn football...or Missouri basketball for most of the the last two decades. If you don't 100% trust the athletic director to make the hire, you have the wrong athletic director. Will it work this way? I'd like to think so...but it hasn't worked this way at Missouri for a long time.
3) A major question for the new coach will be what does next year's roster look like? Missouri's better players (Kobe Brown and Trevon Brazile) are most certainly getting overtures from other programs (yes it's illegal and yes everyone does it). Javon Pickett could come back, but that seems extremely unlikely, especially now that Cuonzo Martin isn't the coach. It seems to me a foregone conclusion Jordan Wilmore is gone and I've already been told Anton Brookshire is likely hitting the portal very soon. That means you're going to have at least three open roster spots for the new coach to fill. If you're hiring the right coach, he's already got guys in mind he can bring through the transfer portal. The roster can be largely remade in one year and completely remade in two. If you hire the right guy, Missouri can be in the NCAA Tournament conversation a year from today. No pressure.
4) There was a time it seemed at least one Missouri basketball program would be playing in the NCAA Tournament. Alas, it is not. The women's field was announced on Sunday night and Missouri didn't make it. Is there an argument to be made Mizzou should have been in over DePaul? Sure. But if you're arguing "We should have been No. 68" it doesn't really matter all that much anyway. The blame should fall far more on the Tigers for losing 10 of their last 16 amid some obvious disarray on the team than it should on the committee for deciding the Blue Demons were more deserving of a chance to keep playing. The parallels to last year's men's season are obvious. Get off to a really good start with a big-time home win highlighting that start. Fall apart down the stretch and end the season with a disappointing loss in which one of your best players is sitting on the bench watching his or her teammates come up a couple of baskets short. This time Aijha Blackwell played the role of Xavier Pinson. You can argue whether the move was the right one or the wrong one and there's really no way to prove making a different move would have given you a different result, but because you lost, the scrutiny will be there over the decision. Obviously what followed for Cuonzo Martin was not good at all. It remains to be seen what follows for Robin Pingeton.
5) There will certainly be some heat on Pingeton going forward. She's absolutely going to be the coach next year because her buyout is over a million bucks and Missouri's not going to spend that kind of money to buy out the coach of a sport that loses money. That would be true even if they weren't going to have to spend somewhere around $12 million to change men's basketball coaches, but it's definitely true because they are. Will Pingeton go into next year coaching for her job? I don't know. There will still be a couple of years left on her contract and Missouri doesn't exactly have a history of changing coaches in non-revenue sports before contracts are up unless there are major issues (see Earleywine, Ehren). But the scrutiny is fair. I've actually beaten this drum for about three years now. I always thought Pingeton failed to maximize Sophie Cunningham's time here. And after Cunningham left, Missouri has gone 36-47 overall and 17-29 in SEC play despite bringing in two of the most celebrated recruits in recent memory. Missouri doesn't exactly have a decorated history in women's basketball and expectations aren't through the roof, but the last few years have been disappointing. I don't know whether Missouri cares enough (or even should) to make a move if next year fails to meet expectations, but it's at least a topic of discussion.
