What if OU had offered Bob Hoffman instead of Capel

[Romulus]

Wouldn't have been an incredibly exciting hire but neither was Capel. He's five times the basketball coach Capel ever thought about being.

I've had arguments with people in the past that he would have kept Kelvins recruiting class intact with Reynolds, James and Crocker.
Where would OU be today?

 

[jerry]

Wouldn't have been an incredibly exciting hire but neither was Capel. He's five times the basketball coach Capel ever thought about being.

I've had arguments with people in the past that he would have kept Kelvins recruiting class intact with Reynolds, James and Crocker.
Where would OU be today?

Joe Castiglione will never make a bigger mistake than Capel. At least, I hope not!! hehehe

 

[WTSooner]

I've had arguments with people in the past that he would have kept Kelvins recruiting class intact with Reynolds, James and Crocker.
Where would OU be today?

Unlikely imo.

 

[Sooner23]

Championship!

 

[MsProudSooner]

He wouldn't have been perfect enough for our perfect fans.

 

[Romulus]

Unlikely imo.

You're one of the people I had this argument with years ago

 

[Big Old Booger]

Wouldn't have been an incredibly exciting hire but neither was Capel. He's five times the basketball coach Capel ever thought about being.



I've had arguments with people in the past that he would have kept Kelvins recruiting class intact with Reynolds, James and Crocker.

Where would OU be today?

Five times? I'd say 500 times.

I don't think the alums would have been excited. Those who know him would have been but Joe would have caught some heat until he proved to be a good hire. However, it would have been a much better decision than the one to hire Capel. That decision is equal to Duncan hiring Schnellenberger and probably worse considering Schnelly had won everywhere he had coached.

 

[Swans]

I do believe Capel won everywhere he'd been at also.....including OU!

 

[Big Old Booger]

I do believe Capel won everywhere he'd been at also.....including OU!

You are right, he had won at VCU but was still very green as a HC. How many years was he a head coach before coming to OU? 2 or 3 right?

Schnelly had been a HC for 20 years and had sustained success at 2 previous programs both of which didn't win much before his arrival.

I compared Capel to Schnelly based on both were out of their element at Oklahoma. Away from their recruiting contacts and both were stretch hires that didn't turn out well.

 

[WaymanFan]

I don't think the alums would have been excited. Those who know him would have been but Joe would have caught some heat until he proved to be a good hire. However, it would have been a much better decision than the one to hire Capel. That decision is equal to Duncan hiring Schnellenberger and probably worse considering Schnelly had won everywhere he had coached.

You're right in that the alums would not have been excited...a "blah" hire on the surface, but I'm still not sure exactly where we would be right now if he had been hired instead of Capel. We obviously wouldn't have had three consecutive losing seasons, but not sure we would be any better off than we are now. I think we're really going to like next year's team.

As for Schnelly, I'm not sure I see a correlation other than neither hire panned out. The difference is that one probably didn't need hindsight to know the Schnelly hire was bad. His specialty was building programs from scratch, NOT taking over a rebuilding job or carrying on a tradition. He tried that with the Baltimore Colts just a year removed from the AFC Championship game and two years removed from a Super Bowl win. He failed miserably.

 

[Romulus]

Capels hiring is much closer to John Blake's hiring. At least Schnelly won something. The other two are lifetime asst coaches.

 

[JBaker]

It's hard to blame Castiglione too much for the Capel hire.

In hindsight, yeah it didn't work out. But he had success at VCU. Took them to their first Tournnament in a decade.

At the time, he was a hot name rising up the ranks. If it had worked out, we'd have a young coach who probably would have stuck around at least until the Duke job came open.

 

[WaymanFan]

I'm not much for revision history, so I'll tell you exactly what I thought about the hiring process back in the spring of 2006. I would not have wanted Bob Hoffman and I didn't want Jeff Capel. I wanted an experienced coach who was already proven at the college ranks (someone like the guy we got now). There were two glaring reasons. ONE - An "up-and-coming" coach would not be able to keep the two big recruiting catches, James and Reynolds. That certainly wasn't Capel's fault by any stretch of the imagination. TWO - At the time, OU had the nation's longest (bar none) consecutive post-season streak at 25 years. Holding that distinction would have been a recruiting coup, no doubt.

I remember meeting a couple of old friends for lunch back in the fall of 2006. The main conversation about OU was the Oregon officiating corruption and the greatness of Adrian Peterson. Then, one joked with me about OU losing another 1st round NCAA Tournament game. I joked back that OU wasn't going to be losing a 1st round game that coming year because we didn't have enough talent to go that far. I remember saying that I hope we had enough to squeak into the NIT to keep that streak alive, but we fell just short.

 

[jaymOU]

As for the question where would OU be now - that's a hard one. I know Bob Hoffman from his days at OBU, when I was a young sports reporter for the Shawnee News Star. Watched some unbelievable talent at OBU over those couple of years - they routinely scored over 100 points a game and it was Billy Tubbs-esqe basketball.

All I can say about Bob was he was very gracious and engaging. I was 21-22 years old, had, bascially no idea what I was doing, and he went out of his way to talk to me.

What would he have done at OU? Hard to know. He can coach, no doubt, the question would be could he have figured out a way to recruit? I assume he had some good OK HS connections, so maybe he could have landed some in-state talent. Of course, you'd be better off knowing the AAU coaches these days, I guess.

If he could have recruited well, I think OU would have been better than they were under Capel.

LK is a step up from Bob, I think, but Bob is still dancing and LK is not.

 

[opsooner]

Capels hiring is much closer to John Blake's hiring. At least Schnelly won something. The other two are lifetime asst coaches.

Blake had never even been a coordinator. At least Capel had a little bit of leadership experience.

 

[opsooner]

It's hard to blame Castiglione too much for the Capel hire.

In hindsight, yeah it didn't work out. But he had success at VCU. Took them to their first Tournnament in a decade.

At the time, he was a hot name rising up the ranks. If it had worked out, we'd have a young coach who probably would have stuck around at least until the Duke job came open.

I agree. I have no issues although I was hoping for Hoffman. Honestly, I think Capel's biggest mistake was not finding a way to keep Hoffman on the staff.

 

[coolm]

I wanted Bob Hoffman to stay here really bad. Hope he's enjoying things now.

 

[soonerfud]

I was dyin for OU to hire Hoffman, although I knew it wasn't gonna happen. He's one of the best coaches in the country in any league, division, or however you wanna say it. He'd have dominated recruiting in oklahoma because of the respect he has from HS coaches here. And he'd win enough and has a good enough personality that kids wanna play for him. Huge mistake for all of the instate D1 schools never giving him a chance!!!!!

 

[WTSooner]

He's one of the best coaches in the country in any league, division, or however you wanna say it.

Come on.

 

[DenverSooner]

I do believe Capel won everywhere he'd been at also.....including OU!

He was 37-43 in conference play. You have to go back to Bob Stevens from 63-67 to find another OU basketball coach that posted a losing record in conference play. Yes Capel beat up some small conference schools to post an overall winning record but it is darn near impossible not to post a winning record at OU when you include non conference games.