Men's Basketball March 2025

[rss77]

Meant Princeton grad.  He was fairly successful at American.

[mountainred]

That's a shame. Great coach. Never should've left here. Could've been a Shaferesque institution. Went for the lottery ticket.

Hate to hear it, but you knew he wasn't surviving this season.  

It packs less of an emotional punch, but Engles is out at Columbia.

[jjanow99]

Hey who can blame him , he was cashing in on a huge pay day.

[scoop85]

That's a shame. Great coach. Never should've left here. Could've been a Shaferesque institution. Went for the lottery ticket.

I wonder how sustainable his success would've been after the Wittman-Dale-Foote-Jaques class graduated. His best late recruits were Wroblewski and Peck, but clearly the talent he left behind wasn't anywhere as strong as the great senior class of 2010.

[George64]

Donahue out at Penn

As I recall, it wasn't like Donohue was an ace recruiter.  Whittman wasn't recruited heavily because of an injury; Dale wasn't recruited, he sought out Cornell; and Foote transferred from St. Bonaventure after his mother, a nurse, met the Cornell team who was visiting a seriously injured player (Khaliq Gant, I think) in the hospital. Foote certainly developed, however, during his time on the Hill.

This is it: it was luck.

Wittman's dad played in the NBA (and is currently the head coach of the Wizards) and he was expected to play above the Ivy League, but he got hurt his senior year. One of the advantages of having a dad who is the coach of (at the time) the Timberwolves is that you don't need a scholarship. Donahue got him, which was a great get, because he was an amazing Ivy player.

Louis Dale was a 5'9" guard out of Birmingham. There is no reason he shouldn't have been recruited by all of the Ivies but Birmingham is a little off of the recruiting trail. He sent a tape to Cornell and Donahue and staff couldn't believe that nobody had heard of a kid that good with Ivy academic credentials. Snapped him up.

When Khaliq Gant, Cornell's best player at the time, broke his neck during a January 2006 practice, he ended up getting treated at an upstate NY hospital. One of his nurses was very impressed with the sense of camaraderie she saw in the Cornell team and coaching staff, who were regular visitors during Gant's recovery. She mentioned that her son, a 7'1" center at St. Bonaventure, was unhappy with his school and wondered if Cornell had a place for him since everyone seemed much happier. Donahue said yes, fed the kid like he was foie gras, and taught him how to improve his footwork.

And then when all of them were seniors, the NCAA tournament committee looked around the room, nodded silently, and put the Red in a bracket as a 12 seed with two plodding, low-scoring teams as the 4 and 5 seeds. Cornell destroyed both of them. Then faced a Kentucky team who took about five minutes to figure out that they actually had to try, but once they did try, the game was over.

This Cornell Chronicle article about Khaliq Gant is worth reading.  A young man with a great attitude! — https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2009/03/gant-steady-presence-big-red
.

[ugarte]

I didn't even mean that as an insult to Donohue. It is also true that the pieces fell together in an insane way: we made the Sweet 16 because our best player almost died. If there was ever a time for a man to sell high on his own reputation, it was Donohue going to the ACC. If there was ever a time for a man who may have Peter Principle'd to return to his level of success, it was Donohue taking the job at Penn.

Donahue didn't kill the Penn program, Jerome Allen did. After replacing Allen, and before the last two years that led to his firing, Donahue had Penn in the top half of the conference every year but his first, and went to the Big Dance in 2018.

In the end, though, Donohue was a ~.500 coach in 9 seasons at Penn. He was a ~.500 coach in 10 seasons at Cornell. But we'll always have those three years, no matter who gets credit, even if it's "kismet."

[upprdeck]

A ton of schools have that 1-2 yr run.  You just have to hope one of your schools gets to do it.

extended runs are for those 20 or so schools and often those schools have that run hit a drought and hope to have another.

[rss77]

We also forget that there was tremendous depth on the 2009/2010 season.  He had a couple of transfers in Max Groebe from UMass and Mark Coury from Kentucky.  Errick Peck, Adam Wire, Geoff Reeves, and Alex Tyler were also excellent players and athletes.  Coury was a great backup to Foote as he was starting center at Kentucky for a year.  Yes Dale, Foote, and Wittman were great players but they would not have made the Sweet 16 without the excellent supporting cast.  According to the late lamented Cornell Big Red Fan of old Cornell basketball blog-he stated that Donahue's assistant Zach Spiker initiated a change in Cornell's offense that was key to Cornell's success.  Spiker left before the 2009/2010 season to take the head coaching position at Army whereupon he moved on to Drexel where he is now head coach and has been moderately successful.

[ugarte]

ILT final is a sellout! I had already decided I couldn't go but anyone waiting for the results of the Dartmouth game will be checking stubhub (if necessary).

[upprdeck]

It will be like most of these Tourneys. Once the team you root for loses people try to dump tickets.

[ugarte]

It will be like most of these Tourneys. Once the team you root for loses people try to dump tickets.

of course. you think i didn't sell my finals tickets in buffalo? *stares wistfully at nothing in particular*

[upprdeck]

I blocked that game out of my mind forever.. Stupid replay judges

[chimpfood]

Game day, let's get this done

[ugarte]

Yale not fucking around, Princeton's late-season doldrums: Yale 10-0 after five minutes.

[ugarte]

Yale not fucking around, Princeton's late-season doldrums: Yale 10-0 after five minutes.

Yale escapes 59-57.