Unpacking my thoughts on the past nine days

A lot has happened in the past nine days, and while we’ve been waiting to drop the “Buffalo Hires X” article we’ve also been talking, a lot, around the water cooler.

Here is the 10K foot view on where I fall regarding certain aspects of the past week.

Why I wanted an insider It’s a certainty that Bryan Hodgson is not coming to Buffalo and given the nine days of hunting, and a national search firm, it’s unlikely that Whitesell will be getting the gig either.

I really, really, really wanted to hire internal because of one man.

Jeff Quinn!

When Turner Gill left we had a program that had become competitive in the MAC. Buffalo tied for the division in 2007, won the conference title in 2008, and went 5-7 in a bad year after losing James Starks to injury.

We had a very promising young Quarterback and it looked like the Bulls, at the very least, were done with living in the MAC’s basement.

Then Gill left and instead of promoting from within we hired an offensive guru from the best team in the Big East.

To me Quinn looked perfect

Though at the time a lot of people were skeptical, turns out they were right.

Quinn tried to march into Buffalo, slap a UB sticker on his Cincinnati play book, and gave no thought to how the team was built.

2010-2013 was a completely avoidable disaster.

Since then I have always favored strongly hiring from within if you like what the team has been doing. Perhaps too strongly.

To me Hodgson was the perfect hire because I’m gun shy after what Quinn did.

Bryan Hodgson, what the hell happened

The Hodgson situation played out terribly. Maybe he does not get the job no matter what happens, maybe that pissed him off and maybe that why things looked so damn weird.

He told the news he wanted the job but was completely silent on Twitter or to UB fans.

Meanwhile he was running around with Nate Oats wearing crimson and talking to recruits.

I think Hodgson was the best hire, but I also feel like he was playing both sides against the middle a little too strongly for my taste.

I get that you tell Mark Alnutt “If I don’t get the job, I’m going to Bama” but I don’t get talking to the news while running around with Oats. And speaking of Oats I don’t think he helped the situation much pushing the “hire Hodgson or I will” message.

Don’t panic about lost recruits

We’ve lost a lot of promising recruits... But the same thing happened when Hurley left.

It sucks, I’d rather have them, but a good coach will find the pieces he needs to make this team competitive.

What do I want

I’d like a coach on the younger side who can recruit, connect to players, and wants to run a fast paced bran of basketball.

I never heard of Luke Murray until a few days ago but he’s quickly running up my list because he checks most of these boxes.