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Danny Manning Credibility Watch

DeacDaddy said:
I hear you, but the last five days matter. I mean they really matter.

I'm just not sure I get the position of "last year proved me right about Manning" and yet "the last five days could be an aberration; let's just wait and see." Some of you want to form your opinions based on some events and not others. I realize you may say the same about me.

I do take all the evidence into account, as I think there's enough of it by now to form the opinion I've formed.

I did not predict the team to get 20 wins this year, and glad I didn't. These three losses were historically bad, and once we lost the second, I was honestly not surprised we lost the third. This is what I mean when I say I've formed my opinion about DM, and as much as you seek to de-legitimize it, it simply isn't an absurd viewpoint. It just may have merit, and that is hard for some to accept.
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My position on Manning has always been “looks promising, not sure about his upper limit as a coach but also not worried about that at this point.”

Last year didn’t prove Manning was the long term answer for this program (which for me is someone that puts out a championship contender every 3 years or so and rarely, if ever, misses the tournament once the program is up and running) and I’ve never said he is.

Last year did prove, contrary to a whole bunch of naysayers, that Manning had the program on track (I.e. was following the trajectory you would expect from the long term answer). The last 5 games are a significant deviation from that path but not so far that it can’t be made up by the end of the season.
 
RChildress107 said:
My position on Manning has always been “looks promising, not sure about his upper limit as a coach but also not worried about that at this point.”

Last year didn’t prove Manning was the long term answer for this program (which for me is someone that puts out a championship contender every 3 years or so and rarely, if ever, misses the tournament once the program is up and running) and I’ve never said he is.

Last year did prove, contrary to a whole bunch of naysayers, that Manning had the program on track (I.e. was following the trajectory you would expect from the long term answer). The last 5 games are a significant deviation from that path but not so far that it can’t be made up by the end of the season.
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So curious, for you to answer and anyone else, what point would you be happy with what Manning has done here enough for him to walk and us find a new coach? Establishing Wake as a recruiting destination then leaving and getting a coach who is better Xs and Os wise?
 
AFTERNOON UPDATE
1️⃣ Watch out for Mercer
2️⃣ Wake will be fine
3️⃣ Niko Medved is a star
4️⃣ Patience in Houston
5️⃣ Dunleavy will win.
More from @TheAndyKatz: on.ncaa.com/2jILDUh pic.twitter.com/rNV1X3BOSx
 
DCDeac said:
This nails it, and there's definitely some humor to be found in the same folks that opened last year predicting Manning to finish 2nd to last in the ACC now being outraged when they predicted 20 wins and we look awful to start. You had to have been wrong at some point.

College basketball is more about the recruits than the coaching these days (See Williams, Roy) and of course there are exceptions. If we follow 2018 with a similar 2019 class it'll be amazing how quickly Manning will "learn" to teach defense, rebounding, and clutch shooting.

Really would have liked to have been a fly on the wall for the Woods/Manning fight though.
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If college basketball is more about recruits, how come we lost to three teams with vastly less talent than us?

I obviously don’t think we should fire him mid season, but I didn’t think that about [Redacted] either. Even so, his first two years weren’t any better than [Redacted]’s last. This year is shaping up to be worse. So, absent a turnaround, last year is looking like an outlier driven by an elite player. We are facing an extend or fire situation, assuming he’s on a 5 year contract. That isn’t an easy decision.

Of course I don’t want Wellman handling this. He has done an atrocious job of managing the basketball program, Wake’s premier program and what we are best known for nationally. His poor performance in this most important aspect of his job does reflect on Wake nationally. He botched the Dino extension / firing; he made a high risk low reward hire in [Redacted]; he executed a PR strategy of bashing the values with which Dino ran the program, and then he made another high risk hire in Manning. He did well to hire Muuss and Clawson and did get donors to throw millions at a long mediocre baseball program, but that just doesn’t offset basketball. Although, I will admit that 8 years of basketball incompetence have me now caring a lot more about football than basketball, so maybe I will feel differently when I revisit this in a few years.

Also, get out of here with the Roy Williams is not a good coach bullshit. He isn’t a tactician but he installs a system that fits his talent and develops his players within that system.
 
WFU Lurker said:
If college basketball is more about recruits, how come we lost to three teams with vastly less talent than us?

I obviously don’t think we should fire him mid season, but I didn’t think that about [name redacted] either. Even so, his first two years weren’t any better than [name redacted]’s last. This year is shaping up to be worse. So, absent a turnaround, last year is looking like an outlier driven by an elite player. We are facing an extend or fire situation, assuming he’s on a 5 year contract. That isn’t an easy decision.

.
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Facepalm

And Manning’s first two years weren’t anywhere close to as bad as [name redacted]’s first two years. I doubt this year will be either.

Here is Wake’s record over the past 30 years without an elite player:

88-89: 13-15
89-80: 12-16
97-98: 16-14
98-99: 17-14
99-00*: 22-14 (Howard wasn’t an elite player his freshman year)
05-06: 17-17
06-07: 15-16
[Redacted]: 51-76
14-15: 13-19
15-16: 11-20

Wake’s success prior to [Redacted] wasn’t built on great coaches. It was built on Rodney Rogers, Randolph Childress, Tim Duncan, Darius Songaila, Josh Howard, Ish Smith, Jeff Teague, James Johnson, Al Farouq Aminu, and John Collins.

And if we have success in the near future it won’t be because Manning suddenly learned how to coach. It will be because of Chauncee Brown, Jaylen Hoard, Isiah Mucius, etc. Manning’s ability determines the upside of those teams but not the baseline level of success.
 
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He compared Manning's first two years to bz's last two years.
 
PhDeac said:
He compared Manning's first two years to bz's last two years.
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I misread that. It’s almost as if talent matters. Most of the “talent” from an already untalented team left. You would expect the team to get worse. It stayed the same.

I also don’t know how much you can learn about what a coach will do with a team of elite talent by watching him coach a team of scrubs.
 
CharlotteDeac1 said:
So curious, for you to answer and anyone else, what point would you be happy with what Manning has done here enough for him to walk and us find a new coach? Establishing Wake as a recruiting destination then leaving and getting a coach who is better Xs and Os wise?
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This is a weird question. If I’m happy with what Manning has done why would I want him to walk? The question I’ve always had for Manning is “has he done enough to earn a fifth year?” He was always getting at least 4 and given what he took over I wasn’t expecting a program capable of winning championships until year 5 at the earliest.

If after 4 years it’s obvious that Manning can’t consistently compete for championships starting in year 5 then we should move on. After that the standard switches to “If it isn’t obvious this guy can consistently compete for championships then move on.”

After 3.15 years it’s not obvious to me that Manning can’t start competing for championships in Year 5.
 
RChildress107 said:
Facepalm

And Manning’s first two years weren’t anywhere close to as bad as [name redacted]’s first two years. I doubt this year will be either.

Here is Wake’s record over the past 30 years without an elite player:

88-89: 13-15
89-80: 12-16
97-98: 16-14
98-99: 17-14
99-00*: 22-14 (Howard wasn’t an elite player his freshman year)
05-06: 17-17
06-07: 15-16
[Redacted]: 51-76
14-15: 13-19
15-16: 11-20

Wake’s success prior to [Redacted] wasn’t built on great coaches. It was built on Rodney Rogers, Randolph Childress, Tim Duncan, Darius Songaila, Josh Howard, Ish Smith, Jeff Teague, James Johnson, Al Farouq Aminu, and John Collins.

And if we have success in the near future it won’t be because Manning suddenly learned how to coach. It will be because of Chauncee Brown, Jaylen Hoard, Isiah Mucius, etc. Manning’s ability determines the upside of those teams but not the baseline level of success.
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Fair enough on the face palm, but I do think there's a difference between have talent (Wake this year) and having one of the top 10-15 players in the country (Wake last year). The former is a lot more likely to happen at Wake Forest than the latter. And, when the latter does happen, we need to do more than sneak into the tournament.

Talent is obviously important, I am not arguing to the contrary by any means. What I am arguing is that talent isn't everything. If it was, we would be 5-0. That's kind of an obvious thing to say, but apparently worth repeating.
 
RChildress107 said:
I misread that. It’s almost as if talent matters. Most of the “talent” from an already untalented team left. You would expect the team to get worse. It stayed the same.

I also don’t know how much you can learn about what a coach will do with a team of elite talent by watching him coach a team of scrubs.
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The only major loss was McKie graduating. Cav, Madison, and Moto left, but weren't much more than depth. Devin and CMM stayed and were arguably the two best players on the team.

My point with the comparison to [Redacted]'s last season (his 3rd season actually rates out pretty much the same too) is that Manning is on track for three of his four seasons being [Redacted] grade. That's alarming. I mean, you're the trajectory guy... It's looking less like Manning is on a positive trajectory and more like he had one outlier season.
 
WFU Lurker said:
Fair enough on the face palm, but I do think there's a difference between have talent (Wake this year) and having one of the top 10-15 players in the country (Wake last year). The former is a lot more likely to happen at Wake Forest than the latter. And, when the latter does happen, we need to do more than sneak into the tournament.

Talent is obviously important, I am not arguing to the contrary by any means. What I am arguing is that talent isn't everything. If it was, we would be 5-0. That's kind of an obvious thing to say, but apparently worth repeating.
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There’s a difference between having talent, having one of the top 10-15 players in the country, and having one of the top 10-15 players in the country surrounded by other elite/near elite talent.

Wake has had three teams (97, 04, 05) in my lifetime that did anything of note with only one future NBA player on the team, and those two happen to be two of the best 20 or so players of all time.

Elite talent across the board won’t win you a championship by itself, but it gets you 90% of the way there.
 
RChildress107 said:
This is a weird question. If I’m happy with what Manning has done why would I want him to walk? The question I’ve always had for Manning is “has he done enough to earn a fifth year?” He was always getting at least 4 and given what he took over I wasn’t expecting a program capable of winning championships until year 5 at the earliest.

If after 4 years it’s obvious that Manning can’t consistently compete for championships starting in year 5 then we should move on. After that the standard switches to “If it isn’t obvious this guy can consistently compete for championships then move on.”

After 3.15 years it’s not obvious to me that Manning can’t start competing for championships in Year 5.
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Maybe I misread a previous post. I thought earlier you said something along the lines of “I think Manning is good enough to dig us out of this hole we’re in but not good enough to win us championships.” If I’m off base here I apologize - just was genuinely curious what you meant by that.
 
WFU Lurker said:
The only major loss was McKie graduating. Cav, Madison, and Moto left, but weren't much more than depth. Devin and CMM stayed and were arguably the two best players on the team.

My point with the comparison to [Redacted]'s last season (his 3rd season actually rates out pretty much the same too) is that Manning is on track for three of his four seasons being [Redacted] grade. That's alarming. I mean, you're the trajectory guy... It's looking less like Manning is on a positive trajectory and more like he had one outlier season.
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WTF are you taking about. Cav is in the NBA right now. All three of those guys were slated to start the next year and were our 3-5 best returning players. And [Redacted]’s last two years sucked but they aren’t what made him [Redacted]. Those two years and Manning’s first two were both outside of the range Wake had been in the previous 20 years but they weren’t that much worse than Skip’s last season and a half.
 
CharlotteDeac1 said:
Maybe I misread a previous post. I thought earlier you said something along the lines of “I think Manning is good enough to dig us out of this hole we’re in but not good enough to win us championships.” If I’m off base here I apologize - just was genuinely curious what you meant by that.
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He’s already gotten us 90% of the way out of that hole. I’d be shocked if we aren’t back to our consistent baseline of the 20 years before [Redacted] by the end of year 5 (I think this season will end up more like Skips last two than [Redacted]’s last two).

I don’t know if Manning can take us beyond that. I also don’t know that he can’t. For now the latter is good enough.
 
RChildress107 said:
He’s already gotten us 90% of the way out of that hole. I’d be shocked if we aren’t back to our consistent baseline of the 20 years before [Redacted] by the end of year 5 (I think this season will end up more like Skips last two than [Redacted]’s last two).

I don’t know if Manning can take us beyond that. I also don’t know that he can’t. For now the latter is good enough.
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What do you consider our baseline? 17 wins? NCAA? NIT? The last two years of Skip were tough years as well.
 
knowell said:
Wake Forest Defensive efficiency rankings in the Manning era:

2017-2018 - 262

2016-2017 - 297

2015-2016 - 299

2014-2015 - 219

https://www.teamrankings.com/ncaa-basketball/stat/defensive-efficiency?date=2017-11-21


This has been the one consistency in the Manning era.

An infusion of talented freshmen is not going to fix this problem.
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Kenpom has it at 125, 128, 176, 178 fwiw. Manning’s two teams at Tulsa were 131 and 51. And yes talent matters on the defensive end too
 
RChildress107 said:
He’s already gotten us 90% of the way out of that hole. I’d be shocked if we aren’t back to our consistent baseline of the 20 years before [Redacted] by the end of year 5 (I think this season will end up more like Skips last two than [Redacted]’s last two).

I don’t know if Manning can take us beyond that. I also don’t know that he can’t. For now the latter is good enough.
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Agree with this 100%. We’ll know a lot about how much farther we can go with Manning after this season is over. I expect a “turnaround,” or more of a “getting it together (not tourney bound, but still)
 
Talent wise Wake should be 5-0 and we're sitting at 1-4. Not a good look.

DM sandbagging?? :tard:
 
RaleighTriad said:
What do you consider our baseline? 17 wins? NCAA? NIT? The last two years of Skip were tough years as well.
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Our baseline is top 80 in Kenpom, 8.00 in SRS, making the tournament 70% of the time, Top 5 seed 50% of the time, and true contender 25% of the time. Skip fell outside of that his last season (really from the Duke game in 06 onward), but other than that that’s where our baseline has been since Odom took over.

Manning got us back in that range and then some last year. He obviously has some work to do to keep us there but it’s not that far fetched to think this team will end up resembling one of Skip’s last two.
 
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