OSU women\'s basketball: circling the drain - Printable Version
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OSU women\'s basketball: circling the drain - Sue_Ann_Duckett - 05-30-2010
Or maybe it\'s actually down the drain. This is an ugly story.
http://blog.oregonlive.com/behindbeaversbeat/2010/05/osu_coach_lavonda_wagner_built.html
Yikes! - Redrum - 05-30-2010
I think the evidence is pretty convincing that something is sick, really sick in the program. But... Bobby Knight throws a chair and he\'s Coach of the Year. Harbaugh tells players they are overweight and need to get in shape and nobody blinks an eye. [Idiotface told them, too, but his answer was the Bataan Death March]. I dunno about you, but the idea of a female coach telling female players they need to go to Weightwatchers seems pretty touchy-feely to me. Â Guess you\'d have to be there to see how the message got delivered.
But the rest of it was just creepy. The bottom line: what\'s their record and does the program attract, develop and retain the players needed to suceed? Seeing only the paper\'s account, pretty clear she\'s flunking. Two organizational phenomena evident here, too. OSU\'s failure to respond earlier has the "feel" of a person who can intimidate people above her pay grade. I\'ve worked with people who use the force of the their personality to get what they want from people who are their actual or nominal bosses. They can make interactions so unpleasant and personally threatening that people give them what they want just so they don\'t have to deal with them. The second is more prosaic. This coach would not be the first assistant ever who got promoted to a command position, only to find that that the pressures and demands revealed deep flaws in their professional competence and personality. This seems a classic case base on the evidence provided here.
Hate to see it happen to OSU\'s kids, but I\'d hate it more if they go out and hire the next young Tara Vandeveer.
Re: OSU women\'s basketball: circling the drain - BobK - 05-30-2010
They are down to 7 players and one Assistant coach. Â Doesn\'t sound like losing weight is the real problem here
I agree - Redrum - 05-30-2010
The issue of telling players to lose weight is not what is sinking this program. Which, makes my point. Don\'t load up a bill of particulars with hurt feelings about Weight Watchers when there is plenty else that she is apparently doing wrong...disastrously wrong per the results. The way these things most times go, the person in the spotlight is NOT completely crazy. They do some things that make sense and a "normal" coach (employee) would do. It\'s sorting out the weird, unproductive (destructive) things they do from the OK things they do that enables employers to build a decision case on the employee\'s fitness.
Somewhat related, a good friend of mine leads a technical team for a large networking company (rival of Cisco). He has one employee who is simply not productive and always has a well-crafted excuse. Actually, a whole phalanx of excuses. He\'s been passed from dept. to dept. and team to team literally for years. Always easier for a manager to transfer him without going through the hassle of getting him fired. My friend is doing every manager of the tech. division a favor by doing what needs to be done. The hardest thing? Isolating the true performance-realted failings from the list of rumor, undocumented problems and general gossip (which might be true, but useless) in 1) making a fair decision 2) have that decision be legally defensible...not a minor consideration these days.
Oregon State might be lucky if all they have to pay is her salary buyout. Might seem cheap compared to protracted litigation if the coach really believes she is a victim. They often do.
Re: OSU women\'s basketball: circling the drain - sheriand - 06-01-2010
OK, I\'m paranoid, but I\'d sure hate to see them recruit Kate Paye, she\'s such a big part of Stanford\'s program!! Â (But they\'d be crazy not to consider her, I think she\'s going to be an awesome head coach someday) (I was just hoping that someday would be after Tara retires and someplace would be at Stanford)
Re: OSU women\'s basketball: circling the drain - JeffInCorvallis - 06-01-2010
Hard to separate fact from conjecture on this one as we only got one side of the story. Â I\'m sure there are lots of coaches that are intimidating, not touchy-feely, and throw the occasional chair in the locker room. Â Still, when this many players and assistants have left it seems there is something to the story. Â The cynical part of me asks if the reaction would be the same if she were winning.
Re: OSU women\'s basketball: circling the drain - JeffInCorvallis - 06-02-2010
Another way to look at it: Â by all accounts Buddy was a great guy. Â Enthusiastic, engaging, encouraging. Â And clearly in over his head in the Pac 10. Â Turns out being a really good leader isn\'t as easy as it looks - you have to hit the right balance between carrot and stick.
Re: OSU women\'s basketball: circling the drain - needle - 06-02-2010
I will leave it to someone else (if they\'re really, really bored) to argue that Buddy\'s stint at Stanford was, all things considered, a worse performance than No-Fault Walt.
However, consider the entirety of their coaching careers:
Walt: 6985, last winning season 2004
Buddy: Â 691402, last winning season 1991