college-basketball/ten

Well, it finally happened. Michigan fired Tommy Amaker after a very disappointing season this year, capped off with a 20 point shallacking by FSU in the second round of the NIT.

http://sports.espn.go....



Some highlights of his career include:

1. No NCAA Tournament appearances with Seton Hall or Michigan over almost 10 seasons.

2. The ability to take solid (maybe not great... more

So I'll take a shot at hypothesizing the only possible reason Michigan could regret firing him. Now Amaker is headed to Harvard, where he will build a tradition of Ivy League championships that will be the envy of D1 basketball.

This is a school whose sole athletic highlight outside of hockey and the major prep school sports (fencing, crew, etc.) has been the year its women's hoops team became the only 16 seed ever to beat a 1 (Stanford). The bar for athletic excellence is set very low, rig... more

I loved the quote from the AD that Michigan is used to winning Big Ten and national championships. Is he talking about all sports or just basketball? Tommy inherited a disastrous program that cheated. He cleaned it up, still recruited pretty well, had 3 20 win seasons and fell victim to a ridiculous amount of injuries. Don't tell me that Ohio State hasn't loosened standards in football and basketball to get where they are.

Tommy has his faults and he's too nice a guy but to fire him beca... more

I'm sort of glad it finally happened. I really like Tommy Amaker a lot, but that program was not going to win any time soon with him at the reigns, and I think a better coach could get them to the Tournament regularly....even with those miserable facilities.

Bill Martin's winning tradition comment was a reference to 3 runs to the championship game from 1989 through 1993 and some NCAA appearances thereafter. I agree with you that the program was dirty for all of those teams, so it isn't someth... more