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• Gerry, whom do you think was a worse coach- Wissel or Stewart? I think Hal was worse because he took over a good team and drove it into the ground. Stewart inherited a mess and was in over his head. Hill was probably worse than either of them. (NT) -- RAM71, Mon March 21, 2005 14:32:09
  • Wissel's problem was that he couldn't recruit. Hal was an idealistic guy, who had little relish for the down and dirty world of Big Time basketball. He was a decent Xs and Os guy. Stewart never proved he could coach and he was an unstable presence, something along the lines of Hill, i.e. one day one thing, next day another. Hill's recruiting strategy was always geared to what would get him back to the NBA fastest. He never wanted to be here, and never should have been. In Wissel's defense, he had some considerable success at Florida Southern, which I believe at the time was Division -II where he excelled at coaching non-scholarship players. (NT) -- Upstate Ram, Mon March 21, 2005 15:25:02
    • Wissel could coach Xs and Os better than most, but was an incredibly naive recruiter. One year, he spent all his time recruiting a PSAL star from Brooklyn whose coach wouldn't release the kid's transcript. When Hal learned in May that the kid's academic average was 67 -- no prayer of admission -- he acted surprised. He won a D-II NCAA title at Fla. Southern, and is a quality NBA assistant, so he does know the game. Stewart was just nuts -- a screamer who could neither recruit nor coach. I understood we had pursued Oregon coach Dick Harter to replace Hal, and got his assistant palmed off on us instead. Set us back years. When Wissel left, we were a big-time, but mediocre/underachieving program. When Stewart left, we were a joke. I think Stewart was much worse than Wissel in nearly every way. (NT) -- John, Mon March 21, 2005 15:49:59

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• Nice to see, but I can't imagine him doing anything more than filling that role for the rest of the season. Word is that the Cavs want Cleveland native Flip Saunders. (NT) -- Air Hej '02, Mon March 21, 2005 14:36:17
  • If Gund had taken Paxson's recommendation and hired Bob Hill five years ago, they'd have two rings by now instead of two coaches fired (only kidding, of course). (NT) -- RAM71, Mon March 21, 2005 14:41:59

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• Just to add -- Wissel came to Fordham from Lafayette where he had success. I knew him personally and he is a great guy who worked very hard (PJ Carlesimo was his assistant)-it just didn't work for him at Fordham. (NT) -- EC'71, Mon March 21, 2005 16:28:03

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• The above posts put things in perspective: 71-78 disaster, 2 coaches; 78-87 good to very good, 1 coach (+ 87 interim coach); 88-97 fair to good, 1 coach; 98-03 disaster, 1 coach; 03-present, promising. Total out of 34 years, 11 years were a disaster; 10 years were fair to good; 11 years were good to very good; the last two are promising. Incidentally, John, wasn't it Dick Harter who recommended his assistant Phelps to us. (NT) -- LXRF, Mon March 21, 2005 16:59:12
  • I think that's right, but there were a couple of differences. When Fordham hired Digger in '70, the AD was making the decision. When Stewart was hired some years later, the search was being run by Dean William "Creepy" Crawley, an ex-marine who was part Dean of Discipline, part Dean Wormer, and who had no business with his nose in athletics. Crawley wanted to hire a like-minded disciplinarian to cement his growing control over the Athletic Department. He wound up hiring somebody who was wound even tighter than he was. Crawley's intrusion into athletics inserted an unnecessary layer of reporting between the AD and the President, an unfortunate situation that persists at Fordham to this day. P.S. I'm not sure all of 71-78 was a "disaster". We went 18-9 with a NIT bid in 71-72. Wissel's first few teams weren't bad, but they were given unreasonably tough schedules to play. (NT) -- John, Mon March 21, 2005 17:36:59
    • who was part Dean of Discipline, part Dean Wormer, and who had no business with his nose in athletics. That sounds a lot like Jeff Gray to me! (NT) -- JóDete93, Mon March 21, 2005 18:02:23
      • Does that mean Frank's on double secret probabtion? (NT) -- V. Wormer, Mon March 21, 2005 18:26:38
      • Sadly, once the position is created, people feel it has to be filled. Other people aspire to fill it. That's why Fordham's Athletic Department needs a good organizational overhaul -- and has for three decades. (NT) -- John, Mon March 21, 2005 18:27:16
      • Many on the inside at Fordham, and many in the know on the outside(including media, A-10 officials, etc.), believe that until Gray is removed from the athletic equation and we restructure the athletic dept. to have a VP, Director of Athletics reporting directly to the President, we will not have a legitimate Div. 1 program. This is a significant problem. (NT) -- Rambacker, Mon March 21, 2005 22:12:50
        • Agreed, Fordham needs to remove Gray from athletics. This guy has no clue about athletic administration or recruiting, and has been a drag on the programs. It has become a joke that a student dean with a featherweight resume has signoff authority on athletics. We can do better. (NT) -- Rampa, Tue March 22, 2005 10:28:16
  • I have serious trouble with categorizing 88-97 as good. I do not mean that as a knock on Macarchuk who I think did very well for a while and then circumstances set him up for a bad run. You have to keep in mind though that we have not had a winning season since the 91-92 season. (NT) -- JóDete93, Mon March 21, 2005 17:44:59
    • I would call 88-92 very good and the rest of the time up to now as disaster. And the way history works unless DW completes this turnaround then 03-04 and 04-05 will be lumped into the disaster category, even though we all know the last two years have showed marked improvement. (NT) -- JóDete93, Mon March 21, 2005 18:04:41
    • I honestly think that final season of Nick's ('98-'99?) was not that bad. He had a solid base of players (Robin, Harris, Duke, Kuchinsky, TJ, etc.) to compete in the A-10. Had he gotten another solid recruit or two, we might have had our first winning season. (NT) -- Air Hej '02, Mon March 21, 2005 19:26:57
      • True, it was not that bad in relative terms, but the record was bad. As for recruits, he left late enough that he had plenty of time to recruit, yet he left the next coach with only one recruit in Phil Dupree. Historically if you look at that season it was bad, we may have been getting there, but the bottom line is that we finished below .500. Anything below .500 is viewed as bad in a historical perspective. (NT) -- JóDete93, Mon March 21, 2005 20:04:57
      • You're right except for the fact that Nick's final recruiting class was an unqualified disaster. Only Phil Dupree showed up. He didn't show much when he was here and failed out. Another kid failed to qualify and hasn't been heard from since. (NT) -- bfg, Mon March 21, 2005 20:06:16
        • You guys are right about that, his final recruiting class was brutal. How is it possible that he didn't get a single player who would have somewhat of an impact? (NT) -- Air Hej '02, Tue March 22, 2005 08:00:04
          • He had checked out of our hotel while he was still living here. (NT) -- Rambacker, Tue March 22, 2005 08:57:34
          • The days of Sasha I & Sasha II. (NT) -- '85, Tue March 22, 2005 12:33:15