Possible for Fox to be fired in season

donm

@mlee said:
Fox has a good recruiting class coming in but those two 5 star players would only stay one year and things would be the same again.. Being a basketball coach has to **** bc you never have experienced players... All the good players bounce after the first yr..

they wouldn't necessarily be one and dones. I don't think all 5* jump right to the league.

CoachRob16

Fox can't win with 5* players either. Had KCP and I don't think he made the tournament, did he?

SIlverCreekDawg

Add to all this that Andy Kennedy is expected to step down at Ole Miss effective at the end of the season.

MinnesotaDawg

@Bigcalidawg said:
According to everyone’s logic, UGA basketball is irrelevant, and it’s ok.

Same logic that dictated that Georgia football fans should happily accept 8-9 wins a season as the standard, because that's kind of where Georgia belongs historically. This whole "can't be because we haven't been" attitude is so defeatist.

At this point, why NOT change direction of basketball program? There's a ton of upside and little downside. What's the worst that can happen...we go from boring and bottom-half of SEC to very bad? Does anybody really care about THAT difference? Probably not. Certainly not enough to justify keeping the status quo. Only valid argument concerns 2019 recruiting class. Even if we got those guys eventually to campus (big "if"), Fox hasn't shown ability to develop such players or win with talented players that do join the program.

Betheredge

Ole Miss has beaten UGA to the punch with Andy Kennedy out at seasons end. McGarity needs to get on the stick and make a decision sooner rather than later about the future of the program. Whatever the decision, this is not the year for his standard cookie cutter answer that he while review the program and discuss the future after the season. With 8+ years of working with Fox he knows whether or not the program is heading in the right direction.

It's difficult enough to find coaches in years with normal turnover. Add in the ongoing FBI and pay for play scandal, finding and getting the best coach is going to be even more difficult this year.

sethemerson

I think everyone understands where this is heading, barring a drastic turnaround by the end of the season.

That said, a couple points on the idea of doing something before the season ends:

• That generally only happens when an administration doesn't want the coach to have a chance to save his job. That's why the plug was pulled on Dennis Felton midseason in 2009, rather than give him a chance to have another miracle turnaround. This time, it's ben clear the administration, whether it was Jere Morehead, Greg McGarity or influential boosters, like Mark Fox a lot. That leads me to believe they will let it play out, just in case. I've been wrong before, of course.
• Firing your coach midseason doesn't really give you much of a head start in college basketball. Remember, Felton was fired in January, and it still took until well after the season for Georgia to hire Fox. Ten years ago I covered South Carolina when Dave Odom retired in January, and it took the Gamecocks until very late March to hire Darrin Horn. Unless you're going after a coaching free agent, you have to wait until coaches are done with their season to interview them. Yes, you can back-channel, but you can also back-channel when your coach is still in place.