This was obviously the right move and another good sign that the status quo from the past no longer exists at Tulane. I was caught off guard because I've been around the program too long and expect coaches to be kept far longer than they should be, which was the Tulane model under Rick Dickson.
That's not the case under Dannen.
If you don't change the input, the output is going to stay the same.
TROY DANNEN
I met with coach this morning at 9 o'clock and told him. We've been meeting regularly over the past several weeks. I told him we are going to go a different direction with the program. I met with the team shortly thereafter and informed them, and that's where we are today.
"I made a statement about five or six weeks ago of support for the program, support for the coach. I thought it was really important at that time. A lot of things happen in a season when you struggle. A lot of people on the outside start trying to get to your kids convincing them that they need to go somewhere else. A lot of the kids we're trying to recruit, there's people telling them don't go there, don't go there. And really it was twofold in mind. One to address that, to take some of the pressure off and give everybody a chance without that pressure to come down the stretch and see what we can do. From that point on there was continuous evaluation of the program, and it came down to at the end, we just weren't making the progress we needed to make. The question is what do want Tulane to be and what are our aspirations and goals. I said when I go here I want to win at everything, and when I say win, I don't just mean competitive. I mean academically, I mean socially, I mean in every way I want to be successful, and we have a scoreboard, and very obviously we are a long way away from that in men's basketball right now. So it was time to make a leadership change.
"I love Mike to death. He did so much for this program that I don't think will ever be noticed because we all look at the win-loss records. He inherited a team GPA of 1.99 and turned it into 3.15, but that's important at Tulane. He has great kids who represent the university on and off the floor tremendously. All season they played hard. I told the guys when I met with them, it's really easy when things went to quit, to give up, and the last thing they ever did was quit or give up. They played as hard the last minute of the season as they did the first, and I'm very proud of that, but that also goes back to Mike's leadership and the commitment inside the program.
"It's time to start a search. Like every AD in the country I do have my list in the pocket and I've already had my first few calls this morning. We will not use a search film. We will handle that inside the department and hopefully in the next couple of weeks make good progress and clearly the next you'll hear about the search from me is when the next head coach is announced."
At what point did it become untenable to bring him back for a fourth year?
"If you don't feel progress is being made, if you're not looking forward with interest about what lies ahead, then you have to ask yourself why aren't you. I got to the point, and I know we had some injuries, and we struggled in certain areas, were we going to be able to bounce back from that, is the program going to be better off a year from now if we stand pat or if we make a change, or will it be better off two years from now. I don't know if there was a day, but that switch kicked. It was really obvious over the course of the last few weeks that we weren't in a position to get better next year and the next two years based on what I saw."
When you got to Tulane, you had to make a bunch of big hires immediately. Do you feel like you know much more about what this basketball program needs now?
"I do know a lot more about the program and a lot more about the league and what it takes to compete in this league. That said, maybe this won't come across right, but Mike was the right hire at the time. He came here with a skill set, he came in with experience that frankly, we needed a lot of fire in the program. We needed to become credible again. This is a great basketball league. I told president Fitts during my interview that it would be harder for basketball to turn it around than football. I reminded him of that a couple of weeks ago and he said, 'I didn't believe you at the time.' But we have six or seven schools in this league who are basketball-first schools who have great traditional, historical success and made great investments, and we're trying to catch them. Mike was the right guy at the right time. He got a lot of things done. The program is structurally stable. The underneath part that maybe doesn't show on the scoreboard, I feel good about that part of it, and if you don't feel good about that part, you really don't have a chance to get going on the scoreboard.
"I do understand from a recruiting standpoint, from the guys on the floor, we need to up our level of recruiting. That will obviously be a primary focus of whoever I turn to as the next head coach. We have to catch up. We've got a good young core, and it is a young core, but we need more of them and we to surround them at all five positions and make sure we have talent across the board. You see the teams in the conference tournament. We shot 62 percent most of the first half against Memphis and we trailed most of the first half. It was athleticism that was the difference. We need to get more athletic. I think we'll be in a good position and have a good grasp on what we need to do going forward."
You hired Dunleavy when he had no college experience. Will that push you towards a more traditional hire this time?
"It's easy to say it doesn't matter but whenever you terminate a coach, almost invariably you hire the opposite. I'm not saying we're hiring the opposite, but my focus is going to be on sitting college head coaches, those who have been sitting college coaches and I'm sure there will be a couple of elite-level assistants in there as well. If I have 20 guys in mind, 15 of them will be coaching in the NCAA tournament next week in one form or another and the rest will have coached in the NCAA tournament. That's my focus to start. You just never know, though. These searches that you think you might be going in a straight line and then all of a sudden there's a turn."
What was Mike's reaction?
"Mike believes the program was in better shape than I believe it's in from an ability to compete next year and going forward. Mike and I have had a great relationship together. The hardest part of all this is the personal part. He's a good man and he did everything right. He didn't win, but he was what who we want Tulane to be. I wanted a good man who did everything right and I wanted to win. Mike understands that. I'm sure he'll have some comment later today."
As bad as the season was, there are some good parts. Do you feel confident the key guys will stick around?
"You know, there were 800 transfers last year, which means about 2.5 per team, so status quo you would expect changes. As I told the guys this morning, and this I've told every team that I've ever met with that a new coach is coming in, it's easy to be emotional and get inpatient. Give it a couple of weeks and let the new coach come in and see if you like the songs the new coach sings. It's re-recruitment all over again any time a new coach comes in. Re-recruit the guys that are in the program, sell them on their vision for the program, the same way you sell incoming freshmen.
"My only job as an AD really is to empower other people's success, and I told them I want to empower your success. Hopefully that's here, but give the next coach a chance and see where it goes from there."
That's not the case under Dannen.
If you don't change the input, the output is going to stay the same.
TROY DANNEN
I met with coach this morning at 9 o'clock and told him. We've been meeting regularly over the past several weeks. I told him we are going to go a different direction with the program. I met with the team shortly thereafter and informed them, and that's where we are today.
"I made a statement about five or six weeks ago of support for the program, support for the coach. I thought it was really important at that time. A lot of things happen in a season when you struggle. A lot of people on the outside start trying to get to your kids convincing them that they need to go somewhere else. A lot of the kids we're trying to recruit, there's people telling them don't go there, don't go there. And really it was twofold in mind. One to address that, to take some of the pressure off and give everybody a chance without that pressure to come down the stretch and see what we can do. From that point on there was continuous evaluation of the program, and it came down to at the end, we just weren't making the progress we needed to make. The question is what do want Tulane to be and what are our aspirations and goals. I said when I go here I want to win at everything, and when I say win, I don't just mean competitive. I mean academically, I mean socially, I mean in every way I want to be successful, and we have a scoreboard, and very obviously we are a long way away from that in men's basketball right now. So it was time to make a leadership change.
"I love Mike to death. He did so much for this program that I don't think will ever be noticed because we all look at the win-loss records. He inherited a team GPA of 1.99 and turned it into 3.15, but that's important at Tulane. He has great kids who represent the university on and off the floor tremendously. All season they played hard. I told the guys when I met with them, it's really easy when things went to quit, to give up, and the last thing they ever did was quit or give up. They played as hard the last minute of the season as they did the first, and I'm very proud of that, but that also goes back to Mike's leadership and the commitment inside the program.
"It's time to start a search. Like every AD in the country I do have my list in the pocket and I've already had my first few calls this morning. We will not use a search film. We will handle that inside the department and hopefully in the next couple of weeks make good progress and clearly the next you'll hear about the search from me is when the next head coach is announced."
At what point did it become untenable to bring him back for a fourth year?
"If you don't feel progress is being made, if you're not looking forward with interest about what lies ahead, then you have to ask yourself why aren't you. I got to the point, and I know we had some injuries, and we struggled in certain areas, were we going to be able to bounce back from that, is the program going to be better off a year from now if we stand pat or if we make a change, or will it be better off two years from now. I don't know if there was a day, but that switch kicked. It was really obvious over the course of the last few weeks that we weren't in a position to get better next year and the next two years based on what I saw."
When you got to Tulane, you had to make a bunch of big hires immediately. Do you feel like you know much more about what this basketball program needs now?
"I do know a lot more about the program and a lot more about the league and what it takes to compete in this league. That said, maybe this won't come across right, but Mike was the right hire at the time. He came here with a skill set, he came in with experience that frankly, we needed a lot of fire in the program. We needed to become credible again. This is a great basketball league. I told president Fitts during my interview that it would be harder for basketball to turn it around than football. I reminded him of that a couple of weeks ago and he said, 'I didn't believe you at the time.' But we have six or seven schools in this league who are basketball-first schools who have great traditional, historical success and made great investments, and we're trying to catch them. Mike was the right guy at the right time. He got a lot of things done. The program is structurally stable. The underneath part that maybe doesn't show on the scoreboard, I feel good about that part of it, and if you don't feel good about that part, you really don't have a chance to get going on the scoreboard.
"I do understand from a recruiting standpoint, from the guys on the floor, we need to up our level of recruiting. That will obviously be a primary focus of whoever I turn to as the next head coach. We have to catch up. We've got a good young core, and it is a young core, but we need more of them and we to surround them at all five positions and make sure we have talent across the board. You see the teams in the conference tournament. We shot 62 percent most of the first half against Memphis and we trailed most of the first half. It was athleticism that was the difference. We need to get more athletic. I think we'll be in a good position and have a good grasp on what we need to do going forward."
You hired Dunleavy when he had no college experience. Will that push you towards a more traditional hire this time?
"It's easy to say it doesn't matter but whenever you terminate a coach, almost invariably you hire the opposite. I'm not saying we're hiring the opposite, but my focus is going to be on sitting college head coaches, those who have been sitting college coaches and I'm sure there will be a couple of elite-level assistants in there as well. If I have 20 guys in mind, 15 of them will be coaching in the NCAA tournament next week in one form or another and the rest will have coached in the NCAA tournament. That's my focus to start. You just never know, though. These searches that you think you might be going in a straight line and then all of a sudden there's a turn."
What was Mike's reaction?
"Mike believes the program was in better shape than I believe it's in from an ability to compete next year and going forward. Mike and I have had a great relationship together. The hardest part of all this is the personal part. He's a good man and he did everything right. He didn't win, but he was what who we want Tulane to be. I wanted a good man who did everything right and I wanted to win. Mike understands that. I'm sure he'll have some comment later today."
As bad as the season was, there are some good parts. Do you feel confident the key guys will stick around?
"You know, there were 800 transfers last year, which means about 2.5 per team, so status quo you would expect changes. As I told the guys this morning, and this I've told every team that I've ever met with that a new coach is coming in, it's easy to be emotional and get inpatient. Give it a couple of weeks and let the new coach come in and see if you like the songs the new coach sings. It's re-recruitment all over again any time a new coach comes in. Re-recruit the guys that are in the program, sell them on their vision for the program, the same way you sell incoming freshmen.
"My only job as an AD really is to empower other people's success, and I told them I want to empower your success. Hopefully that's here, but give the next coach a chance and see where it goes from there."
