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Danny Manning Credibility Watch

Since I can't edit, I would like to point out that Danny's track record on the recruiting trail doesn't give me a lot of confidence that he'll be able to make 2019 an actual harbinger for future success as opposed to the exception to the rule like 2015, which just happened to have a very shiny diamond in the rough. Maybe he'll surprise us again and do it with transfers-in as opposed to relying on finding HS talent that can be developed. But that just keeps the cycle on repeat now doesn't it?
 
Strickland33 said:
I did? Last time I brought you up, I guessed that you'll make excuses for our team's performance next year. If you don't, then great. But, I still think you'll give this team a pass if we lose Key and Craw, don't get a grad transfer, and Hoard and Mucius do what freshmen do. You remind me a lot of myself circa 2012. That's what I did until about December, iirc. After a certain point, it's impossible to try to rationalize the irrational. At some point, I realized that coaches need to consistently win basketball games or it's time to move on.
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That's establishing an incorrect position for me that I've plainly stated is not, in fact, my position (so, putting words in my mouth). The first two happening would be direct and unquestionable responsibility of Manning.
 
Why the Deac Not said:
Shit son, it's not like I don't look at stats and trends and analyze them in helping me come to a conclusion. I've seen less talented teams with my own damn eyes beat "better" teams with more talent just as much as anyone. In fact, my brother's HS team was the poster child for that when I was growing up during my formative years of learning basketball. Sometimes yes, all it takes is that ONE special player to put you over the top. But the foundation needs to be set and the system needs to be sound. As Dino proved in 2009, you can't just roll out the basketball and hope they figure it out. Sometimes you actually need to coach! Maybe football is easier to analyze from afar since it's the ultimate team game with 11 players and strategy is evident from watching formations and sussing out how plays worked after the fact. I could sit at home and analyze a game to death on a DVR and give you myriad decisions Manning should've done differently. But I've already seen enough.

Next year will just delay the inevitable if Danny has 80% (thanks to Wellman) of the success you contend he needs to have to keep his job. But the 2019 Class may be the lynch pin in all of this. As it turns out, the 2016 class is proving to be the reason for this decline probably as much as Manning's inability to extract the best out of them. To me, the risk of doing it now and hiring a better coach with a fresh start is less risky than letting this drag on another two seasons. Personally I don't think Hoard, Mucius and Wright will prove to be enough (even if Woods came back and another Austin Arians came walking through that gymnasium door) to get us to 20 wins and making us a cold lock for the post-season. It's too much to put on most freshman, even if Hoard plays like Ben Simmons (doubtful).
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This. It's not like we couldn't have recruited better players in 2016. We would have to have players other than Giles, regardless. SJM re-classified to 2016 from 2017 very late in the process, IIRC, and we signed Washington way too early to use Giles as an excuse there. At best, 2016 should have been a foundation class, providing us with role players that would help us sustain success during years 4 and 5. Well, we have Chill (who is, maybe, an 8th man on a good team), Mitchell (who is, maybe, a 9th man on a good team), and two transfers to show for it. Just like [Redacted] before him, Manning is responsible for the lack of talent on our bench, for the perpetual youth, for the inability to get our perpetual youth rotation minutes in meaningless games, for seemingly only being able to develop one talent per year, and for failing to meet almost 99% of the fanbase's expectations after spending last season on the right side of the bubble.
 
Why the Deac Not said:
Shit son, it's not like I don't look at stats and trends and analyze them in helping me come to a conclusion. I've seen less talented teams with my own damn eyes beat "better" teams with more talent just as much as anyone. In fact, my brother's HS team was the poster child for that when I was growing up during my formative years of learning basketball. Sometimes yes, all it takes is that ONE special player to put you over the top. But the foundation needs to be set and the system needs to be sound. As Dino proved in 2009, you can't just roll out the basketball and hope they figure it out. Sometimes you actually need to coach! Maybe football is easier to analyze from afar since it's the ultimate team game with 11 players and strategy is evident from watching formations and sussing out how plays worked after the fact. I could sit at home and analyze a game to death on a DVR and give you myriad decisions Manning should've done differently. But I've already seen enough.

Next year will just delay the inevitable if Danny has 80% (thanks to Wellman) of the success you contend he needs to have to keep his job. But the 2019 Class may be the lynch pin in all of this. As it turns out, the 2016 class is proving to be the reason for this decline probably as much as Manning's inability to extract the best out of them. To me, the risk of doing it now and hiring a better coach with a fresh start is less risky than letting this drag on another two seasons. Personally I don't think Hoard, Mucius and Wright will prove to be enough (even if Woods came back and another Austin Arians came walking through that gymnasium door) to get us to 20 wins and making us a cold lock for the post-season. It's too much to put on most freshman, even if Hoard plays like Ben Simmons (doubtful).
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This is why I want people to state and defend their expectations for the program.

To me, if next season is like 09-10, and Y6 is like 08-09, and his recruiting classes are like 09 and 10 (ranking wise) then Manning has met (barely) expectations, even if he does it by rolling the ball out and letting his talent do what it will.

I suspect, however, that if told this were a certainty, many of you would argue that we should still fire Manning now, because like Dino he isn’t the guy to bring us a championship (I’m inclined to agree). That would be baffling to me given who our AD is but at least I’d be able to respond.
 
Strickland33 said:
This. It's not like we couldn't have recruited better players in 2016. We would have to have players other than Giles, regardless. SJM re-classified to 2016 from 2017 very late in the process, IIRC, and we signed Washington way too early to use Giles as an excuse there. At best, 2016 should have been a foundation class, providing us with role players that would help us sustain success during years 4 and 5. Well, we have Chill (who is, maybe, an 8th man on a good team), Mitchell (who is, maybe, a 9th man on a good team), and two transfers to show for it. Just like [Redacted] before him, Manning is responsible for the lack of talent on our bench, for the perpetual youth, for the inability to get our perpetual youth rotation minutes in meaningless games, for seemingly only being able to develop one talent per year, and for failing to meet almost 99% of the fanbase's expectations after spending last season on the right side of the bubble.
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I agree Manning is responsible for the talent, and that he gets a D- for the 2016 class. But if the (main) reason he hasn’t been successful is a lack of talent, then let’s evaluate what he’s done to improve that talent.

I’d argue his year by year recruiting has been pretty good outside of 2016 but am willing to hear other people’s year by year opinions of Manning’s recruiting relative to expectations.
 
Strickland33 said:
You don't think that bad coaches post 19-12-esque records? Gott, Pelphry, and Gaudio, among literally hundreds of others, disagree.

You're putting words in my mouth. I neither think PER is unassailable nor think Kenpom is completely irrelevant. That being said, we're sitting at 90 kenpom.

The 10 teams above us? Northwestern (15-17), Temple (16-14), SMU (16-15), Stanford (17-14), Vanderbilt (12-19), Utah Valley (21-9), Belmont (24-9), UNCG (27-7), Buffalo (23-8), and South Carolina (16-15)

The 10 teams below us? Iowa (14-19), Oregon State (15-15), ETSU (25-9), Furman (23-10), Georgetown (15-14), Northern Kentucky (22-9), Northeastern (23-10), Washington (20-11), UCF (18-12), and DePaul (11-19).
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Against shitty competition maybe. But 19-12, top 40 is not a bad coaching result. If that’s your record in a given year, you weren’t a bad coach that year.
 
RChildress107 said:
This is why I want people to state and defend their expectations for the program.

To me, if next season is like 09-10, and Y6 is like 08-09, and his recruiting classes are like 09 and 10 (ranking wise) then Manning has met (barely) expectations, even if he does it by rolling the ball out and letting his talent do what it will.

I suspect, however, that if told this were a certainty, many of you would argue that we should still fire Manning now, because like Dino he isn’t the guy to bring us a championship (I’m inclined to agree). That would be baffling to me given who our AD is but at least I’d be able to respond.
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You raise an interesting point -- or dilemma I suppose -- and hence why folks are so ready to move on from Manning. He's given us reason (not just here and there but consistently) to doubt his willingness to change course...if it's all about talent for Danny (to play the way he envisions), what is to protect us from him falling into the same pattern as Dino, who brought the horses to the gate, but didn't do enough in their training to break them of bad habits (apologies for all the horse racing metaphors). I mean, at least Dino instituted the pack-line defense but wasn't that more a reaction to NOT having as much talent in 2009-10 as opposed to making Teague and JJ play more responsible basketball with a greater attention to detail??

And more acutely important right now, Strickland's point about recruiting in 2016, gives us even more reason to doubt Manning. It won't help if we lose Key as we're likely to over-promise minutes to another grad transfer, thus stepping in the way of Wright's and Mucius' development in Y5. Will it hurt them to the point where by Y6, they won't be able to overcome the loss of Crawford (on paper if he stays), Moore and said grad x-fer (think Arians if we're lucky)?? The 2019 class, like I said, and Strickland has echoed, MUST BE a foundational, building block class that doesn't just yield one useful player, one project and one transfer like we've seen in past years (Hudson, Rondale, SJM, Rick W). It's great to recruit over weaker players if you are building consistently, but so far, you can't say Manning has done a good enough job of that. And the transfers are happening anyway because he prefers experience players over minutes for development? If anything, Manning erred simply by trying to win too much too soon. Unless Wellman has told him under no circumstance will I fire you in fewer than 6 or 7 years, then perhaps Danny has done himself a disservice by making the 2019 class sort of make or break.
 
RChildress107 said:
Against shitty competition maybe. But 19-12, top 40 is not a bad coaching result. If that’s your record in a given year, you weren’t a bad coach that year.
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WERE WERE NOT 19-12!!! WHY IS THE POST-SEASON BEING DISREGARDED?? Danny is as much to blame for our flame out as John Collins checking out or Crawford playing hero ball vs K-State. Although you could argue he had no choice since Key couldn't throw it in the ocean in that game.
 
Roughly half of the Power 5+Big East teams make the tourney every year. It's not something worthy of getting giddy about. Especially when you have the best player in the conference
 
Apologies to Crawford, he had 10 assists in that game, just none of them were to Key since he couldn't hit the broadside of a barn that day. Was really more a systemic team failure due to a reluctance and really, inability, to play any modicum of team defense? I'd probably put more of the blame on Danny for that since he didn't seem to know how to fix it. It's like the better we got offensively, the less defense we were capable of playing. Guess they kept getting tired from all that scoring. ;-)
 
RChildress107 said:
I agree Manning is responsible for the talent, and that he gets a D- for the 2016 class. But if the (main) reason he hasn’t been successful is a lack of talent, then let’s evaluate what he’s done to improve that talent.

I’d argue his year by year recruiting has been pretty good outside of 2016 but am willing to hear other people’s year by year opinions of Manning’s recruiting relative to expectations.
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I am a bit underwhelmed by Manning's recruiting despite the fact that it is such a clear step up from [Redacted].

2014 was okay for what it was.

2017 is TBD, but didn't do much for us this year. Obviously by the numbers and competition, getting Chaundee was impressive. It's more or less what I expect from an established Wake coach, though. I think we can consistently recruit Top-75 players. But, we also need to be getting rotation minutes from every commitment when we take less established guys (that are relentlessly over hyped no matter how much evidence exists against that kind of position). We can't just be an incubator for the MVC/Conference USA players of tomorrow.

2015 was an outstanding class in hindsight for a number of reasons, but this is, by far, Manning's biggest recruiting achievement. 2018 looks like it could be on the same level, but who knows. The discourse around Jamie Lewis and Sharone Wright makes me nervous, though, given our past luck.

2019 has been eerily quiet and that's a horrible sign. It's looking more and more like a 2016 class every day, IMO.

My biggest problem with Manning's recruiting is that the lower ranked players are more or less who we thought they were. Perhaps Mitchell can develop into a standout rotation player, but he's more or less played to expectations thus far. That that distinguishes him from other lower ranked players on our roster says less about Mitchell's abilities and more about how bad our recruiting has been.
 
I would have to think that Coach Manning's seat is going to begin to be getting warm if he doesn't show some improvement next season.
 
400 pages of debating his creditability. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say he has NONE.
 
Looking at just the composite rankings and averaging their "stars", the 18 Manning recruits have averaged 3.5 stars...and that's perhaps being a bit generous giving Chill & SJM 3.5 stars, Hoard 5, since that seems borderline depending on whose service you're looking at, and the fact that Lewis was a 4* potential, but may actually be an alien living in Area 51 at this point.

So the ranking say we should be very much average, but by what standard? Kenpom? Is 90th average for a P5 school?? Methinks not. Avg by the ACC standard? Apparently not!!
 
Why the Deac Not said:
WERE WERE NOT 19-12!!! WHY IS THE POST-SEASON BEING DISREGARDED?? Danny is as much to blame for our flame out as John Collins checking out or Crawford playing hero ball vs K-State. Although you could argue he had no choice since Key couldn't throw it in the ocean in that game.
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if the postseason were being disregarded, the quoted record would be 18-12

but nope, that ACCT round of 32 win against BC is in there
 
Due to years of being an after thought, fans were pleased to be in the tourney last year even if it was just in what I still call the play-in game. Fast forward to this debacle of a season where even the AD is referring to Dinos and Collin's departure as the main reason this season went in the trash. If that is the case, then I feel last season was also a coaching failure. How often does Wake get a player like Collins on the roster? Are we supposed to be content or even happy that we lost in the play-in game? Is that what we hope our ceiling is next year? Is this acceptable to Wellman? No one should expect Hoard or any of the freshmen to be the caliber that Collins was as a Soph. Is it reasonable given the last 4 years to actually believe this team will make the tourney without a stud like Collins? They barely did with him. However, if the 2018-2019 Deacons (whomever they may be) in fact makes the tourney, then Manning will deserve all the accolades. However, I feel the writing is on the wall. Manning OUT.
 
ITT angry fans take out their bitterness by repeatedly trying to force differing opinions as far to the polar opposite of their own as they can...

What's funny is just about the exact same proportion of fans thought we'd get an NCAA bid in year 3 as thought we'd be this bad in year 4 - ie. basically nobody, sub 5%. This fanbase universally agrees Bz was the worst imaginable hire and destroyed the program, committing us to at least a couple years of irrelevance. Hell, some posters said 10 years of irrelevance.

And while groupthink here is clearly steering the discussion, if Manning were to be fired it'd be because Collins and Dinos went pro. Sure, he may have giant holes in his coaching, teaching, strategy - all of the above. But there's no reasonable argument to be made looking at the ACC this year that Wake wouldn't be headed back to the tournament had they stayed. He'd have gotten Wake 2 tourney bids in 4 years after Bz, a feat unthinkable after year 2 ended.

Instead he took a bad team or mediocre team or whatever you think a team is that has to rely on guys like Thompson and Wilbekin and ran them straight into the ground. It's reasonable to look at the lack of coaching and deem him a failure we should walk away. It's also reasonable to recognize early departures after year 3 of a rebuild hurt more than they do for strong programs who've had time to establish deeper talent. I'd guess the Hoard/Sarr/Moore group will be pretty good next year. At the same time for me it doesn't excuse starting Thompson all year or the underutilization of Doral or the regression of multiple guards or game management.

You can be skeptical and extremely disappointed in this year but still think Manning should get a year 5. Pretty much everyone on the boards was either wrong about this year, wrong about last year, or both. There's definitely some irony in the "admit you were wrong" callouts.
 
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RChildress107 said:
Completely agree. He’s an above average recruiter who has built back up the talent base of the program, slowed somewhat by unexpected early departures and his own mistake in 2016; unable to get his team to close out games against better opponents; more demanding of big men than guards when it comes to filing out PT; a good/great offensive game planner; a mediocre/poor defensive game planner; better at skill development than coaching execution, unable to impact team chemistry, and a great representative of WFU.

There’s some good and some bad in there. A lot that can be covered up by point #1 and some that can’t. It’s added up to two lost seasons rebuilding the shot show he took over, a season that exceeded expectations and an utter shitshow of a season due to Manning’s complete failure to adjust to adverse circumstances.

I think he has a wider variance than past Wake coaches and if he has another class like 2016 I doubt he survives it. But success at Wake worth talking about has always been dependent on talent so I’m not sure his ceiling is any lower than pre [name redacted] coaches.
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Do a lot of people think this? Outside of the good choice of game planning to "get the ball to the big man with an advantage (Collins & Moore)," I've found the offense to be basic and disjointed way too often. Not really many plays, off-ball screens, etc. You watch other teams' offenses and they just seem more intricate and fluid.
 
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