Fordham’s goal in coaching search should be simple: Just win, baby

 

Jeff Neubauer’s departure leaves Fordham in search of a head coach for third time in 11 years. (Photo by Bob Dea/Daly Dose Of Hoops)

Fordham is once again in need of a coach, following Tuesday afternoon’s announcement that Jeff Neubauer was leaving the Rams’ program after five-plus seasons, the most recent of which being a 1-7 start to a campaign truncated by COVID-19 and briefly salvaged by an almost improbable win over Dayton.

After a 61-104 record at Rose Hill whose only winning season came in his maiden voyage in the Bronx, and with a roster largely recruited by his predecessor, Tom Pecora, Neubauer ultimately proved to be in over his head in the Atlantic 10 and unable to repair the ever-growing chasm between success and the current state of the program, with players transferring out at a rate almost identical to that of the two prior regimes. In fact, one could argue that if not for the pandemic and the retirement of athletic director Dave Roach, Neubauer would certainly have been a casualty of a normal offseason last March had the sports world not had its power lines severed just days before the NCAA Tournament was to begin.

Longtime assistant coach Mike DePaoli, a holdover from the Pecora years who has paid his dues and then some over the past decade, gets a long-awaited and much-overdue chance to prove himself for the remainder of the season while the new sheriff in town, interim AD Ed Kull, scours the landscape for a new leader. And before any of the ancillary goals — salary commensurate with experience and program prestige, facility upgrades that have long been clamored for, identifying and hiring a staff — can be accomplished, one single motive must be followed to the letter through Kull’s process, which may or may not entail the usage of a search firm:

WIN.

And I’m not talking about just winning the press conference. Fordham’s biggest flaw in the past quarter-century since departing the Patriot League — and Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference before that — for the more appealing Atlantic 10 has been its inability to find a consistent winner among the fruits of the various coaching trees that have been plucked since Nick Macarchuk left for Stony Brook. Bob Hill’s 10-year contract ended up becoming the Rick DiPietro of college coaching hires when he could not connect with his players or the differences from the professional game, and earned an infamous moniker among Fordham fans and insiders, of which there are more than a few. Dereck Whittenburg came the closest to getting it going in the Bronx, but could not sustain the momentum. Pecora’s five years saw losses to programs with a far lower social and athletic strata than that of the Rams, and by the time signs of life were more than just blips on the radar screen, it had been too late. Then, there was Neubauer, reduced to tabloid fodder by the national types for his exploits off the hardwood and an infamous picture from one of Fordham’s practices last season gaining more attention in some circles than his sub-.500 record. In short, the culture needs to change, and soon. That also includes a hopeful shift away from Jeff Gray and Fordham president Rev. Joseph McShane, and closer toward the more vigilant eye of the athletic department, which has not had as much free rein as it should when trying to remake the program.

As expected, the rising stars in the coaching ranks are being thrown around in the conversation, names like Bryant’s Jared Grasso — the interim bridge between Whittenburg and Pecora who is perhaps the most intimately acquainted with the terrain he would (re)inherit — and Saint Peter’s Shaheen Holloway, both of whom would be phenomenal hires, but also both business savvy enough to know that a failure at Fordham would be detrimental to their long-term prospects with both men in their early forties. Proven retreads such as Steve Lavin, with whom Kull has mutual connections, Tim O’Toole and Paul Hewitt have also been mentioned among the myriad of candidates in the 24 hours since Fordham made Neubauer’s exit official. But what Kull and whoever else comprises his search committee must understand is Fordham needs to be viewed more as a destination than a stepping stone at this place in time. A program in need of such a transformational rebuild must have someone committed to seeing the process through over what will likely take at least five years to raise back up to respectability. In that case, the candidate pool would be wise to include names such as Greg Herenda at Fairleigh Dickinson, with two Northeast Conference championships at one of the toughest jobs in the league, Tobin Anderson at St. Thomas Aquinas, whose jump to Division I would mirror the one Tim Cluess made to Iona in 2010, or if Penn State decides to pursue a bigger name this offseason, New York native Jim Ferry, who is no stranger to starting from scratch and turning coal into diamonds from his time at LIU. Rider’s Kevin Baggett, shepherding one of the youngest rosters this season, would also make sense at a job for which he was a reported finalist six years ago.

The possibilities are endless, but the object should be singular from the first meeting to the conclusion of the imminent press conference.

WIN.