Comments on: Maker of Creighton Named Men’s Basketball Head Coach

By: Larry George

Larry George — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 12:47:38 +0000

I’m not good with linking and deleted, rather than making this cite available: http://thecalifornian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080712/SPORTS/807120317/1006

By: Larry George

Larry George — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 12:46:10 +0000

Another article about Maker, this one from his high school hometown paper:

“Williams represents everything that’s good about college,” Maker said. “It’s a top liberal arts college, and to me its academic level makes it seem like a mini-Stanford.”

Welcome to Williams, Coach.

By: Soph Mom

Soph Mom — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:02:02 +0000

Coach Maker:
Welcome to Williams! You bring an exciting wealth of experience to the Athletic Dept. and we look forward to the upcoming season.

Go Ephs!

P.S. Ignore the one naysayer here…he is the resident anti-Williams blogger on the site…

By: Soph Mom

Soph Mom — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:53:39 +0000

hwc:
It was a loaded question and you know it. Everyone knows your m.o., so you might as well be honest.

By: hwc

hwc — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:44:30 +0000

BTW, in between your ad hominem attacks, you answered my question. I had not considered the prep school recruiting experience at Dartmouth.

By: hwc

hwc — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:42:36 +0000

Dartmouth is a pretty crap school

That’s certainly the way Ephmen viewed it when I was at Williams.

Kind of like the assessment a Sox fan makes of the NY baseball team, “Yankees Suck”.

By: Jeff Z.

Jeff Z. — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:42:11 +0000

From its context, seemed sure as hell to be rhetorical to me. But then again, my reading and writing comprehension skills are, like my Dartmouth counterparts, sadly deficient.

By: Jeff Z.

Jeff Z. — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:39:51 +0000

Good point HWC, Dartmouth is a pretty crap school; not sure why I would have thought that Dartmouth graduated were literate, my apologies. Of course, save for graduates of Reed, Swarthmore, St. John’s, UChicago, or any other self-styled “intellectual” school with a history of hostility towards athletics, no educational institution in the US is worth a lick of salt in your book, right?

By: hwc

hwc — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:37:10 +0000

Would you like to retract your ill-considered and ill-informed critique?

It was a question, not a critque.

By: hwc

hwc — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:31:40 +0000

Dartmouth is a pretty big “exception” considering that is where he spent the bulk of his coaching career…

Possible exception. I said possible exception, i.e. that Dartmouth is a possibly a place where students are expected to read and write.

By: Jeff Z.

Jeff Z. — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:30:08 +0000

Hey HWC, check out this article, which focuses in part on Maker’s relationship with his former players at Dartmouth:

http://www.thetranscript.com/sports/ci_9826816

Would you like to retract your ill-considered and ill-informed critique?

By: frank uible

frank uible — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:35:30 +0000

Isn’t it generally acknowledged here that a wide range of personal backgrounds can be the basis for one’s high performance in the future?

By: JeffZ

JeffZ — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:46:53 +0000

Wow HWC, what a shock, as usual your reflexive anti-athletic bias rears its ugly head. First, Dartmouth is a pretty big “exception” considering that is where he spent the bulk of his coaching career (over a decade) and where he was associate head coach and head of recruiting (so basically he spent ten years recruiting exactly the type of players he will be bringing to Williams, maybe plus a few inches in vertical and minus a few points on the SAT). Also, I wouldn’t say Creighton is a school where students are not expected to read and write, it’s not like that is a school where the players aren’t graduating. He also coached with some of the most respected basketball minds in the country, coaches known for very complicated systems that require a lot of intelligence to run successfully (there is a reason the offense originated at Princeton) and which rely as much on teamwork and smart decisions as on athletic ability. Plus he originally comes from a small school background. Or, to si, up in more terse fashion, you are completely clueless.

By: 1980

1980 — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:45:00 +0000

He was heavily involved in recruiting at Dartmouth for 11 years (that’s a long time to be an assistant anywhere). Dartmouth is never at the top of Ivy bball so he’s probably got a pretty good idea of how difficult it is to recruit for highly selective school. I think it’s reasonable to assume that Sheehy is a pretty good judge of his ability as a bball coach too.

By: hwc

hwc — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:24:13 +0000

OK. I give up.

What about this guy’s resume screams “Williams College”?

With the possible exception of Dartmouth, has he ever coached at a college where students are expected to read and write?

By: Jeff Z.

Jeff Z. — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:55:20 +0000

A few more links on Maker:

He is apparently a “people person” who is well versed in several variants of the “Princeton offense” (which basically involves having a lot of good shooters on the floor to spread the floor, with lots of precise passes and back door cuts to penalize an over agressive defense):

http://biggreenalertblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/princeton-basketball-stunner.html

and he was a finalist last year for the Princeton head coaching opening:

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/04/18/news/18136.shtml

as someone who spent many years as recruiting coordinator at Dartmouth, he will be looking to a very similar pool of players when attempting to lure recruits to Williamstown.