Changing coaches breaks the verbals for recruits on both ends. The recruits (which are not final anyway until they sign on LOI Day) can look elsewhere and so can the school. So, there is no point doing any recruiting posts until we hear what the new coach has to say about his system and his style of coaching.
One point might be Coach Molnar's spread offense. That might not have been the best choice for a start up program in a cold climate. In addition, we didn't have the players to run it. UMass' killer OOC schedule was another problem for the spread offense. We could potentially out-quick Eastern Michigan, but it was not a good plan against Wisconsin. The Badgers were not going to get tired covering us. A spread offense three-and-out means your defense is back on the field in short order.
All the service academies run a form of the option offense. The Academies are always out-athleted (to coin a phrase) and out scholarshiped, just like UMass currently is. Navy has been very successful with it. The virtue of the option is that it eats the clock and is difficult to defense.
Mike Hodges used it at UMass when he didn't have any scholarships after Jimmie Reid left.
At the very least, a pro-set offense would probably be better choice as the Minutemen have a number of talented running backs. We'll have to see what the new coach has to say.
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ESPN Boston has an article about Molnar's firing that manages to cover the story without snark. The article says the UMass players were concerned about keeping the UMass strength and conditioning program. I think Mike Golden was popular with the players and hopefully he'll be kept by the new head coach.
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Mrs Blog and I went to the UMass-Providence game Saturday. Nice to see the place packed like the old days. We were talking about walking across campus in the cold to some of those midnight ESPN games when Calipari was trying to get the program going.
I was listening to a number of people around us at the game. Apparently it was the first trip to Mullins for more than a few. Winning is the only thing that matters to most sports "fans".
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