The annual coaching carousel has begun.
Long Beach St.
On April 4, 2009, Long Beach St. named Jody Wynn, head coach.
Long Beach St fired Mary Hegarty on March 11, 2009. Hegarty started off well, mostly with former coach, Dallas Bolla's players, but recruiting fell off dramatically. Good choice by Long Beach St. to let Hegarty go.
If Mark Trakh is let go at USC, don't be surprised to see Trakh at Long Beach St. Others under consideration include, Meg Sanders, assistant coach at Arizona St., Chris Danker, former head coach at Santa Clara and Colorado St. and Jody Wynn, current USC assistant.
USC:
On May 1, 2009, USC announced the hiring for former LA Laker Micheal Cooper as head coach.
The word around USC is that Mark Trakh will not have his contract renewed. If Mike Garrett does not give Trakh a new contract, he is an idiot. AN IDIOT. Trakh has done a great job recruiting, his classes are in the among the best in the nation. What has hurt Trakh is the injuries suffered by those recruits. If Trakh had those players and had this same record, he would be underachieving. But he has done a great job dealing with the injuries and still winning, 16-18 games.
Cal State Fullerton:
At Cal State Fullerton, Dr. Mary Alice Jeremiah announced that she would retire, after the 08-09 season, on October 28, 2009. Fullerton then announed that Marsha Foster signed a four year contract to replace Dr. Jeremiah.
I strongly feel that Fullerton made a big mistake by not opening up the job and seeing how good the pool of candidates maybe. Fullerton could still have included Foster in that pool. But just giving her the job is a big mistake.
This isn't a reflection of Coach Foster. But as assistant coach and the coach in charge of recruiting, she has to take some of the blame for the lack of success the past six years at CSF.
And if people don't think that Foster being black didn't have anything to do with it, go stick your head in the sand. There will be no protests by the Black Coach's Association, because Fullerton didn't do a search, because the job went to a black woman.
Cal Poly
Faith Mimnaugh, after 11 long, losing seasons, finally had a winning season at Cal Poly, going 21-11, 11-5 in the Big West. But a closer look at that record shows she padded her schedule with cupcakes.
Faith won 8 games in non conference.
New Mexico St.
USD
UM Kansas City
Idaho
USF
Illinois Chicago
Eastern Washington
Bake (a team she went 1-1, against)
Of those teams, only two teams had winning records, San Diego and Bake.
All the teams except Bake are in a conference. Bake beat a lot of other indys that padded their record.
None of those teams made the NCAA or NIT.
Overall record of those eight teams 103-135. Is that a tough schedule?
In the BW she finished 3rd in the conference. Did not beat the top two teams, UC Santa Barbara and UC Riverside, in the regular season. Beat #2 UCR in the BWT.
She lost to the #6 seed CSF.
She beat both #7 seed UCI and #9 seed LB, by a total of 15 points in the four games against those two schools. And beat #8 seed CSN by 16 points in the two games. You're telling that the 3rd seed can only beat the bottom feeders of the BW by an average of only 7-9 points a games?
Just for comparison, #2 UCR beat UCI by 36 in their two games. That is an average of 18 points a game. About TEN more points per game, than Faith was able to beat UCI.
Remember this all happened in a BW, that had four teams, Fullerton, Northridge, Long Beach, and Irvine, finish with 20 or more losses. Five teams, the previous four and Davis, over half the conference, that had 18 or more losses. Only 3 teams, out of 9, finished with a wining record.
