Link: Weaver interview about Johnson, Wolff
I interviewed Va. Tech AD Jim Weaver about his last-place basketball teams and their coaches. Here is the link to the article:
March 9, 2013 - 12:33 AM
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March 9, 2013 - 12:33 AM
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Thursday, June 20, 2013
THE ROANOKE TIMES
We can only hope that Weaver makes no more hires before we finally get rid of him. It’s more than obvious that he is not performing his job as required, and the amount of time he doesn’t even come to work on the VT campus would be embarrassing if anyone ever bothered to publicize it.
As for his most recent hires? No surprise that he thinks they’re good hires, since he made the hires. Last place is where we’ll stay for the next several years, until we (hopefully some day) hire an AD that cares about basketball.
The sooner Weaver is gone, the sooner VaTech can begin to compete in basketball. Until Weaver is gone, we’ll stay in last place and continue as a laughingstock, both in the ACC and nationally.
When the HC is fired, there are usually some defections from the team and recruits, causing the cupboard to be bare in the first season of the next HC. JJ’s hiring was so late that there wasn’t any point in trying to find anybody to help this year and the team was woefully undermanned. Next season the men’s team will be closer to a full roster but won’t have an experienced point guard. So, it’ll be the following year before anyone knows if JJ can coach. Wolfe’s team is playing somewhat better basketball than Dunkenburger’s last teams, but they can’t score. Looking for a point guard, players who can play the inside game, teammates who can pass the ball to inside players, and players who have a clue about how much time is on the shot clock. Not to mention somebody who can put the ball through the hoop. I wonder if the players on either team (excepting Green) ever use that fancy practice facility to shoot the ball in the off-season or during non-practice times in-season?
I’d like to propose that if the coaches can’t recruit any better than mediocrity, they at least recruit mediocre Virginians. We’re a state school and most students and fans are Virginians. We can at least relate to kids from schools we’re familiar with.
What else is the committee of one going to say? And how does he get to choose his own retirement date? Somebody needs to step in and fire him before he can do any more long term damage. He has single handedly ruined both basketball programs.
Anytime anyone says “to be very honest” they’re not.
“I think” we have good leadership and “I think” we’re headed in the right direction?
What’s he going to say? I let my ego get the best of me and make a horrendous decision?
Why would anyone fire the coach of a successful and popular program?
Moron.
Thank you Mr Weaver, I wonder how long it will take for you to recognize that what you have hired are just like Stokes & Dunkenberger..
How long did it take you to recognize that “Transistion” did not work?
From the Roanoke Times:
Last year, Virginia Tech athletic director Jim Weaver hired James Johnson to be his men’s basketball coach.
Two years ago, Weaver hired Dennis Wolff to be his women’s basketball coach.
The men’s team is in last place in the ACC, and the women’s team has already finished last.
But Weaver is optimistic about the futures of both programs.
“Anytime you make a change in the head coaching position, especially of basketball and especially in the conference we’re in, it’s going to take a little time to get where we want to go,” Weaver said Monday. “We have two good leaders heading up our programs and I think they’ll get us where we want to get. I think we’ll be better next year. To very honest, I thought both programs did some very good things this year.
“[Last is] not where we want to be, I’m the first person to say that, but when you transition, there’s a lot of things that happen and it takes time. I think we have the right leadership and I think it’ll happen.”
Thank you again, Mr Weaver, for your “bargain basement coaches” and their results of putting VT basketball in the “basement.”
GO HOKIES!!! Shen Valley Hokie
Weaver is almost as good as Obama with the double talk and avoiding answering questions honestly. I cannot see him being AD for 2 1/2 more years. I understand he is lucky to work 2 hours per day now and sometimes only part of a day per week. VT needs better leadership in the athletic department.
I hope both BB coaches DO turn things around and make us competitive in the ACC, and beyond. BUT, I DO NOT want Weaver making anymore hires, in ANY sport. If Tony’s comments are correct about his work schedule, the administration needs to step in, for everyone’s sake.
Weaver says we’re going to get back to the environment we had in men’s basketball. You mean the NIT environment? Someone should frame that statement and place it in the empty National Championship trophy case for football in the Merryman Center. And then he has the nerve to excuse his basketball hires by pointing to track, swimming and softball. Except for the time Angela Tincher led the softball team in a win against the national team, I have never ever searched for a softball game on tv, or a track or swim meet for that matter. No offense but tose sports don’t generate any revenue, let alone interest. Weaver needs to get his priorities straight. Who is Weaver accountable to? Can he get fired? I, for one, would rather have a Hokie AD.
I would like to know what these good things are that the mens basketball program has done this year that Weaver is referring to. Name me just one, anyone. To articulate this level of disengenuousness he either thinks you are really stupid or he is really stupid. In his defense I think it’s the former.
I have a question, did the university President have to approve Greenbergs firing? Is there any check on this guy?
I keep reading his comments over and over and come away with one word – arrogant.
I wish he had been pushed harder on the Greenberg question. “Mr. Weaver, men’s basketball had exhibited the most success in decades, Seth Greenberg had a top ACC team more years than not despite only seeing one NCAA bid – why exactly did you think it was time for a change?” “You have the least qualified head coach in the league and this team has underperformed even the modest expectations for the year getting totally overwhelmed in the ACC what has JJ done right?” There are more questions that were never answered and it angers me that he doesn’t have to answer.
At 1st glance, thought the heading was “NO ONE SATISFIED WITH WEAVER”. But no, the article that details a history of perceived arrogance, bad hires, ill-timed/undeserved contract extensions, lack of recent NCAA appearances and apparently oblivious to any outside thought, unfortunately remains unwritten. Is it any surprise the basketball programs are where they are? This is absolutely no reflection on the current coaching staffs; they’re trying to deal with the situations they were dealt.
How long did it take for what Hendrickson built to be destroyed? How’s the “We’ve just got to stay the course and get better” thing been working for the women’s program since then? And as we all know the progress that Greenberg made, underachieving/frustrating as it may have been at times, was destroyed in one afternoon with the national embarrassment of the mishandling of his dismissal (whether he deserved it or not at some point is not the issue). Fresh off that fiasco, there was a self-appointed Director for Life announcement, and along with that it was declared “we want to be like Clemson” (which based on their recent performance I guess means, in basketball terms anyway) “about average” in our W’s and L’s and all coaching salaries thusly limited (fortunately for the program at that time meant raises because salaries were so far out of line. Btw, how did that happen?), it only follows that there would be a Selection Committee of One. Two head coaching opportunities taken right out of the 540 (Five Four O) being current or “the chair’s still warm” employees. Hasn’t that been the issue with Beamer regarding picking coaches in the past? What would have been the reaction, if Beamer’s new hires had all come from the Five Four O, not to mention from the current Employee Directory? Also, curious as to how the Committee of One apparently avoided all of the tedious HR public institution hiring processes, like job postings, formal public job announcements, forming a real selection committee, developing short lists and group interviews. My problem is in the process, not anything to do with the people hired.
Would you get the reactions of maybe Dr Steger and a member or two of the Board of Visitors as to why the Athletic Department Administration announced about a year ago their goal is “we want to be like Clemson” and basically letting it be known we will change nothing unless forced to, while the University was concluding the Campaign for Excellence and has the mantra of Invent the Future. Having a hard time reconciling the two. Maybe I contributed unknowingly to the wrong one.
Be a man, Weaver, admit you are not up to par as an AD and step down…PLEASE!
Suggestion for a follow up article. Ask those to whom the AD reports to address some of the questions/issues you posed and add a few from today’s blog. You don’t lack for material… Some direct answers would be refreshing. The questions asked by King and VTRedwolf today would be particularly interesting. Also don’t recall anyone ever being asked to comment on the outrage which always ensues when the mindboggling quotes; such as those in today’s article, are made. Thx.
#2 ML, so you’ve skipped from making baseless excuses for this season, all the way beyond next season, and you’re prepping your baseless excuses for Johnson’s THIRD season? Could there be a more than obvious reason for that? Will we be longing for ‘The Glory Days’ of a 13-19 season this time next year?
So Weaver pretends he’s not satisfied with last place in the ACC in basketball? Seriously? Just that sentence proves laughable, when anyone with any concept of the basketball programs at VT reads it.
Wasn’t Weaver the one who proudly trumpted the fact that we now pay our assistant men’s basketball coaches ‘as much as Clemson’? As though that were a badge of honor? Clemson, still in the bottom half of the conference in assistant pay? All while we’re paying our head coach less than half the average salary for an ACC basketball coach?
Really, Weaver cannot be gone too fast. I know he can use his physical disability as a legal reason to keep his job. I’d be very fine with paying him his full salary, if he would only go away. Take the financial hit, because his business ignorance is coasting the university far more than they think he is saving it. Get rid of Jim Weaver. NOW. Today, tomorrow is not soon enough. This afternoon is not soon enough. Get rid of Jim Weaver. Pay him an extra $100K to leave, instead of staying. We’d come out better financially in the long run.
JUST LEAVE, JIM WEAVER. YOU’RE A DRAIN ON OUR UNIVERSITY AND AN EMBARRASSMENT TO VA TECH.
It’s no wonder Weaver doesn’t even try to hire any serious coaching candidate. Everyone probably either laughs in his face or refuses to return his phone calls, he is such a joke.
Weaver claims he tried to interview Shaka Smart last year. Thing is – it’s rumored Weaver offered Smart a $500K pay cut to come to Blacksburg. Yes, pay CUT. Oddly enough, Smart decided not to grab that not so golden ring of opportunity. Boy, I bet Shaka is regretting that about right now…