On the day in March 2007 that most Minnesota basketball fans were celebrating the hiring of Tubby Smith away from Kentucky, CBS Sportsline.com columnist Gregg Doyel was taking the contrary view.
"I've got news for the good folks at Minnesota who clearly haven't been paying attention to the details at Kentucky," Doyel wrote. "Unless Tubby changes his ways, he'll flop at Minnesota. I mean, he'll be a complete and total failure"
Time out to give credit where credit is due: Upload doesn't have the kind of memory that can pull out this sort of thing on a moment's notice. However, a senior member at the wonderful blog GopherHole.com who posts under the name BleedGopher posted the Doyel column after Wednesday night's embarrassment at Ohio State.
"Worth reading again," BleedGopher headlined. "Gregg Doyel's '07 Tubby column which predicted this outcome."
Doyel made two main points in his day-of-hiring column, that Smith had done most of the winning in his career with the recruits of his predecessor coaches and that his coaching staffs haven't been filled with the best and brightest of assistants.
On his previous jobs: "Look at Tubby's resume. There have been times in his career when he has won big, but those times almost always were with someone else's players. He was at Tulsa for only four years, which means he was winning for most of that time with someone else's recruits. He was at Georgia for just two years, which means he won completely with someone else's players. At Kentucky he won his national championship in his first year, with Rick Pitino's roster. In the last two years, stuck with players that were signed solely by Tubby's staff, Kentucky lost a total of 25 games. That's not Kentucky. That's Kennesaw State."
About his coaching staff, Doyel said that Smith has leaned toward hiring those with whom he's had a prior relationship. "Clearly the key to working for Tubby isn't your ability. It's having worked with Tubby before," he wrote.
Doyel did get one thing wrong. Here's how he ended the column: "He'll be fired by 2012."
You can read the entire column here.
Hat tip and deep bow: GopherHole.com
