Sunday, April 24, 2011

On Mitch Henderson's Hiring at Princeton

William of Ockham would have been proud of the university.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Henderson may very well have been Ockham's choice but, to many observers, there were more complexities involved. Henderson has many more years of coaching experience but one could argue that Earl and Brennan had more exposure to the liberalized Princeton offense which seems to be succeeding at Georgetown, Richmond and Princeton itself. Carmody seems to be treading water at Northwestern with the orthodox Princeton offense.

Henderson was asked at his press conference whether he was committed to the traditional offense and answered that he was open to all variations.

If Henderson can keep Earl on his staff, that would be a very promising combination.

SportsProf said...

Good points, but Earl hasn't coached as long as Henderson has and Brennan (unfortunately for him) was part of the Joe Scott regime. My sources told me that the university didn't treat him well after Joe Scott left. To me, it was Henderson's turn, and I'm sure he'll do fine. It's far from an "out of the box" solution, but you know that Princeton wasn't going to stray from the family line. The powers that be might one day, but not now.

I'm sure that the powers have to wonder about how long women's b-ball coach Courtney Banghart will stay. She's been even more successful than Sydney Johnson was, and there's probably a bigger payday awaiting her. Relatively speaking, she'd be an even bigger loss, because she was the first Tiger women's coach ever to take the team to the NCAA tournament and did it two years in a row. To paraphrase from Captain Reynaud in "Casablanca," the Tigers should not dispense so easily with women like that -- they could become scarce.