Posted by ettaexpress on 3/14/2014 11:20:00 PM (view original):
Grant did well at VCU (better than Capel) and he was on the bench at UF for a decade. I think it was reasonable to thikn he would be pretty good, but maybe the moral is not to hire someone from a mid-major with less than 5 years experience? I don't know.
I think he was primarily a recruiter through his career and you have to do more than recruit to win at Bama, which isn't typically going to get the bigtime recruits no matter who the coach is.
Agree he was THE hot name at the time Bama hired him. I don't think that was a mistake, it just didn't work out. Time to cut your losses and GTFO. Looking back, he didn't have much of a record for building, but hindsight and all that.
Frankly I get the impression he just recruits off the Rivals rankings. He always signs fairly highly rated players, but they show up looking like they've never played basketball. And he certainly doesn't sign to fill needs ever, just seems to get the "best players" he can get.
A couple years ago, Bama had 3 bigs returning--2 of which were completely useless 7-ft projects, and the other a lazy PF who could only use his left hand--and 4 open scholarships. Grant signed a local 5* SF and nothing else. One of the 7-footers then got hurt and Bama played with basically no real big man all season. Awesome roster management. The 5* SF contributed nothing and ended up transferring, like about half of his players do.