I feel like Hill took the wrong approach with the b-ball team

[chinngiskhaan]

Obviously hindsight being what it is, I feel like we would have been better off letting LK be basketball’s version of urban.

I have done zero research on the topic, but it feels like having a big name flash in the pan type meteoric success followed by a true loyal guy is the best way to build a program. 

I know there are probably a bunch of examples. In CBB alone I can think of several times when an unknown coach took a mediocre program and made them special over many years of great coaching.

what do you think? Where did hill go wrong outside of hiring the wrong guys?

[MDUte]

Hill went wrong by signing LK to such a long extension after the Sweet 16 run. And if LK wasn’t willing to sign a typical extension at the time because he was being pursued by other programs with better offers, Hill should’ve held his ground and let it play out. The long term extension was too big of a gamble putting the program at risk if LK didn’t live up to the bet Hill was making.

[RustyShackleford]

I agree Utah was a much more appealing spot right after the tournament success so if LK walked we could have gotten a really good replacement

[chinngiskhaan]

That’s pretty much exactly what I was thinking. Just hung onto him for way too long. If he had been lured away by another team we would have been able to hire pretty much any up and coming could sch who would have had tons of recruiting momentum.

[snafu]

Easy to say that now. LK pulled us out of the depths to a sweet sixteen. Not easy to do while trying to run a clean program. Hill had every reason to believe we had the right guy

[Central Coast Ute]

I agree with snafu. The three straight first rou d draft picks also looked nice, although those were after the extension

[FountainofUte]

I agree with those saying that it seemed like the right idea at the time to lock up LK. If you capture that very moment in 2015 when he signed it, we had literally just been to the Sweet 16 the month before. Not only that, but we had basically that whole team coming back minus Delon. (That included Poeltl who was clearly a stud, Kuzma who was looking good, veteran Loverage and Taylor, and Chapman who had had a solid year for a true freshman.)

By all accounts, our coach had the program on an amazing track. LK had successfully pulled Utah out of a decade-long slump and had the program loaded for bear in the near future. We were nearly a lock for the next year’s NCAA tourney before that season even began. The funny thing is that almost a year later the wheels would come off and the stretch of crazy mediocrity began that no one could have predicted. Knowing what we knew at the time of the extension, it was the right choice, and I’d approve of it again. The near 180 that the program took from the end of the ’15/’16 season would have been impossible to predict. It was so unlikely. And yet….

[MDUte]

Hindsight is always 20/20. But I hope the key learning from the LK extension is: Don’t sign unusually long extensions. If a coach has performed at such a high level where the coach is worthy of being rewarded and there is concern of another school poaching him, then lock in the coach with a higher salary but not with a longer term contract. Better to overpay the coach for a max of 4 years while maintaining the ability to part ways if things take a turn for the worst versus locking in an 8 year contract with increased pay.

Same mistake was made by the Larry Scott signing the 12 year media rights contract while peers negotiated 6 year deals that allowed them to lap the PAC multiple times with higher revenues while the PAC was stuck.

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