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AggieSox

Craig Smith Deserves a ton of Credit

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IMO SDSU has a ton of talent on that team, quite a bit more than USU.   Somehow Craig Smith has gotten this team to play above their talent level. 

USU played Friday night late just 16 hours before the tip off, very tired team, etc.... Smith has found a way to out coach and get the most out of his boys. 

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2 hours ago, renoskier said:

Where will Craig Smith be working next year?

Minnesota 

There are only two things I can't stand in this world: people who are intolerant of other people's cultures and the Dutch. 

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10 hours ago, sdsuphilip4 said:

Craig Smith is a hell of a coach, one of the 25 best in the country. But i think you are underrating your teams talent level. 

I agree. Queta, Merrill, and Bean would start for every team in the conference except maybe SDSU and even there would see a lot of playing time. The weak points are Brito and Porter who are below par guards for most other MWC teams. 

Smith is a great coach and very personable. The Aggies need to boost his pay to P5 level to keep him. Even then I’m not sure he wants to stay in an out of the way small college town like Logan. 

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12 hours ago, AggieSox said:

IMO SDSU has a ton of talent on that team, quite a bit more than USU.   Somehow Craig Smith has gotten this team to play above their talent level. 

USU played Friday night late just 16 hours before the tip off, very tired team, etc.... Smith has found a way to out coach and get the most out of his boys. 

He also deserves more money his current salary is around $700,000 plus bonus money, his buyout is $2.2  which puts him around the middle of the MWC. Even with a extension that does not guarantee that he stay's however with a bigger salary, and buyout that helps us in a search for a replacement.

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13 minutes ago, soupslam1 said:

Doing a little research the average salary for a D-1 coach that takes his team to the Dance is $1.5M. USU needs to double Smiths salary. IMO that would be a wise investment. 

They probably won't get a chance to now. 

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8 hours ago, soupslam1 said:

Doing a little research the average salary for a D-1 coach that takes his team to the Dance is $1.5M. USU needs to double Smiths salary. IMO that would be a wise investment. 

Won’t be enough of a school like Minnesota comes calling.  I don’t think they keep Richard Pitino.

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On 3/9/2020 at 11:14 AM, soupslam1 said:

I agree. Queta, Merrill, and Bean would start for every team in the conference except maybe SDSU and even there would see a lot of playing time. The weak points are Brito and Porter who are below par guards for most other MWC teams. 

Smith is a great coach and very personable. The Aggies need to boost his pay to P5 level to keep him. Even then I’m not sure he wants to stay in an out of the way small college town like Logan. 

Especially Brito. It seems for every good play he makes, he’ll do a handful of things to hurt the team with his poor decision-making. His no-look pass to press row in the SDSU game with about two minutes left could’ve been disastrous. Not to mention his other errant passes and turnovers each game. Just seems to be so much more of a liability than an asset when he’s on the court.

The emergence of Anderson over the weekend might be the critical third option that USU needs to drive them to victory in the big dance, something they didn’t have in last year’s matchup with Washington. Hopefully Anderson sees a lot more time on the court than Brito or Miller next week because I think provides a greater chance of a W. I don’t think it’ll bode well if Smith decides to rely more on Brito and Miller. 

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Does he? Does he really??? Coached a top 25 team to a 2nd place finish could have easily been #4 or #6.  Barely got by in the conference tournament. 

I mean congrats on going to the Dance but to say a coach deserves a ton of credit for something that should not have been in question is a bit of a stretch, no?

Now if he was coaching Air Force or SJSU and won the conference tournament then yes. But???

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14 minutes ago, UofNPackFan said:

Does he? Does he really??? Coached a top 25 team to a 2nd place finish could have easily been #4 or #6.  Barely got by in the conference tournament. 

I mean congrats on going to the Dance but to say a coach deserves a ton of credit for something that should not have been in question is a bit of a stretch, no?

Now if he was coaching Air Force or SJSU and won the conference tournament then yes. But???

Do you remember the dumpster fire he inherited two years ago? Under Duryea, USU never finished higher than 7th in the MWC. And it looked like he had maybe one MWC-caliber player on his roster (namely Merrill) when he took the job. The most optimistic fans on the USU board thought maybe he could get us into the top 3-4 in the MWC within a couple years. Taking over that mess and getting two consecutive NCAA bids was beyond anyone's expectations. Yes, this year's team didn't quite live up to the preseason hype, but I think that has more to do with the fact that last year's team overachieved. (And having our second best player hobbled for most of the season didn't help.) I said myself that I thought last year's team got a little lucky and that we were overrated coming into this season. Nevertheless taking over an 8th place team and getting two consecutive conference championships is pretty good in my book.

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4 hours ago, StanfordAggie said:

Do you remember the dumpster fire he inherited two years ago? Under Duryea, USU never finished higher than 7th in the MWC. And it looked like he had maybe one MWC-caliber player on his roster (namely Merrill) when he took the job. The most optimistic fans on the USU board thought maybe he could get us into the top 3-4 in the MWC within a couple years. Taking over that mess and getting two consecutive NCAA bids was beyond anyone's expectations. Yes, this year's team didn't quite live up to the preseason hype, but I think that has more to do with the fact that last year's team overachieved. (And having our second best player hobbled for most of the season didn't help.) I said myself that I thought last year's team got a little lucky and that we were overrated coming into this season. Nevertheless taking over an 8th place team and getting two consecutive conference championships is pretty good in my book.

Here's the thing... the OP didn't say anything about 2 years ago or taking over a dumpster fire.

The OP seemed to be talking about this tournament.   The talent level is about par for both teams. SDSU had an amazing season, but everyone who has watched the last few weeks of the season, saw a SDSU team that struggled offensively for large stretches and if not for that elite defense would have lost a couple more. 

UsU just plain underachieved this season. No shame in that since Aggies still made their Tournament goal.  

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2 hours ago, UofNPackFan said:

Here's the thing... the OP didn't say anything about 2 years ago or taking over a dumpster fire.

The OP seemed to be talking about this tournament.   The talent level is about par for both teams. SDSU had an amazing season, but everyone who has watched the last few weeks of the season, saw a SDSU team that struggled offensively for large stretches and if not for that elite defense would have lost a couple more. 

UsU just plain underachieved this season. No shame in that since Aggies still made their Tournament goal.  

Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say that "the talent level is about par for both teams." I would say that SDSU is definitely more talented. I'm not sure whether coaching helped offset inferior talent or if SDSU simply had a bad night. I do think that Smith is a good coach for the reasons I listed earlier. I'm not sure if he is the reason we beat SDSU, though.

I also would not say that USU underachieved this season unless you are saying we underachieved relative to the preseason polls/expectations. I think USU was simply overrated coming into the season. USU returned almost everyone from an NCAA tournament team, so the expectations were sky high. (Not unlike last year's Nevada team.) But nobody remembered how many close wins USU had last year and that some of USU's success last year was simply due to luck. Ken Pomeroy ruffled some feathers on the USU board by ranking USU outside of the top 50 in his preseason rankings because he said USU was lucky/overrated last season. (I think. I forget the exact rating, but I know a number of USU fans were upset that Pomeroy ranked USU so low when we were a preseason top 25 team in the polls.) If Pomeroy's ranking is your basis for comparison, then USU actually overachieved this season. Maybe we lost a few games we shouldn't have lost and we underachieved in that sense. But I certainly don't think it's a case of a talented team that underachieved due to coaching or chemistry problems or whatever. I'm not sure that any of our players other than Merrill, Queta, and Bean would start or get significant minutes for any other top-tier MWC team. I'm quite pleased with USU's performance given our talent level this season.

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