I just don't see it from Startford or Cedergren. As long as they are at least a top 4-5 program in the Sun Belt they will be a tournament team. NC State is now on a 4 year drought of being an NCAA team, they haven't won a game in the tournament in 29 years (1994) and have only made the NCAAs six times in that time frame (2003, 2005, 2009, 2017, 2018, 2019). For someone like NC State I think the best option is to identify a few DII coaches and interview them and pick the best one that fits what your looking for.
Why a DII coach , and not D1 coach with underfunded program who has performed well repeatedly with out all the glam of a big school? If we are being honest, NC state if they don’t already have someone picked prior are going to give ACC assistants a look if they want to save a few dollars , or need to make a play for a big timer and pay accordingly.
https://villanova.com/news/2023/11/16/carlin-to-retire-fetrow-named-head-coach-of-mens-soccer.aspx Drexel now open again by way of Villanova. Wonder what the transfer fee was!
OPEN Le Moyne - Callum Donnelly (Le Moyne assistant; 7/5-7/18 *interim) Marquette (11/1) Mount St. Mary’s (11/2) NC State (11/3) North Florida (11/6) UAB (11/7) Drexel (11/16) FILLED Drexel - Mark Fetrow (Villanova associate head; 7/19-7/28) Old Dominion - Tennant McVea (ODU associate head; 8/15) Evansville - Robbe Tarver (Evansville interim HC - 10/9) Bradley - Tim Regan (Bradley assistant; 11/2-11/2) Villanova - Mark Fetrow (Drexel head; 11/16-11/16) Reminder here, I won’t update list until (if) anything is announced officially.
The Drexel AD isn't too happy about that based on their release but who is going to turn down a jump from CAA to Big East in their second year as a head coach?! https://drexeldragons.com/news/2023/11/16/mens-soccer-drexels-mens-soccer-coach-mark-fetrow-resigns
I actually love that the AD for being so honest, so often we hear all the platitudes that we have grown numb to now in both hiring, firing, resigning posts. She is not sitting on the fence, and clearly wants someone to build the program long-term which is refreshing.
Are those same student athletes going to be committed to the program for 4 years? Or would they jump on the portal if they felt they could improve their own situation?
All scholarships in any sport is only good for one year. Each scholarship is renewed each year but can be pulled at anytime for any reason. I don't mind coaches leaving if it's done right. I do mind job hoppers and those coaches that leave other places under false pretense or those who deny deny deny until you see their press conference at the other school.
Not at all schools, it's not this way. There are plenty of schools that the scholarships have become four-year commitments, obviously, unless some major violation of some sort. Coaches can suggest or encourage ways for students to get out of the commitments, but the student can fight it and keep scholarships, one way or another.
I don't think Fetrow was a job hopper. He spent a few years at Nova prior to that and it is a Big East job on the mainline as opposed to a Colonial in the middle of the city. ... and many scholarships now are 4-year awards that can go up but not down. The way out is to tell the player he is not going to play or be on the team. You would have to eat his/her scholarship but a real soccer player would want to play somewhere else.
Any of these coaches move on for head coaching gigs? Drew Hutchins-Cornell Jukka Masalin- Syracuse Dean Johnson- LMU Mike Graczyk- Notre Dame Kevin Robson- IU (if he wants to leave) Tony McManus- Memphis
McManus is probably a top target for UAB, he played there. But he is also one of the top asst. in college soccer. UAB hasn't had a winning season since 2014. He may and should demand resources to be competitive. If UAB is unwilling to give said resources then he should probably walk away. There should be other chances for him.
No inside knowledge at all, just throwing a name out there, but I would think Paul Zazenski at JMU worth a call. I’m not sure I’d leave JMU for NC State though.
Not sure Calabrese would be interested. He has experience in the ACC as an assistant and certainly understands how difficult it is to win consistently in that conference. He also has a good thing going at UCF combined with a young family that he might not want to uproot.
NC State is not a better job than the the top 5 of the Sun Belt. Grassie at Marshall nor Stratford at WVU are going anywhere. Grassie has already won a national championship in Huntington and he is now the highest paid DI NCAA men's soccer Head Coach. He also has his team setting at #1 for most of the year and the 1 overall seed in the tournament. Stratford played at WVU from 2004-07, he had WVU as high as #2 this year and stated while at the University of Charleston that the WVU job was what he wanted. I think both of those coaches will be at their respective universities as long as they want to be. That brings me to Kentucky's Johan Cedergren. Cedergren has been at UK for 11 years and all but 2 years he has finished in the top 4 in CUSA and the Sun Belt, UK being the #1 overall seed just last year in the NCAAs. One of those years was this year as UK finished 5th. Even so he beat #1 Marshall and #2 WVU and made the NCAAs Paul Zazenski at JMU is in his 6th season at JMU and has had JMU as high as 7th in the coaches poll this year. They were the only team blow the RPI cut line to make the field and have promptly dispatched Pitt and 4 seed Georgetown. That leaves Scott Calabrease. Out of the 5 Calabrease is the only coach to actually climb the ladder to get where he is as he started as HC at ETSU (2007-13), FIU (2014-16) and UCF (2017-present). Calabrease has made the NCAAs 5 times and had UCF reach #1 this year for the 1st time in program history. The only advantage NC State has over some HCs is that they play in the ACC. And that if you just finish 6th you will be in the NCAA. I don't know if that really applies to the Sun Belt 5.
Next year an 11th place finish will likely get an NCAA bid. Stanford and SMU are joining next year, along with Cal - that's two teams that got a first-round bye this year joining a league that sent 9 teams to this year's NCAA Tournament. Not hard to imagine 11 teams in the top 36 next year. Whether that makes a job like NC State or BC more or less appealing is TBD. While there is prestige in coaching in the ACC and it probably is alluring to most recruits, I'd much rather be a top 4 team in a good league like the Sun Belt than be the 11th best team in the ACC. But, if I really believed I could make State an elite program, winning in the ACC carries far more gravitas and some coaches will want that challenge.
What is holding NC State back from being successful? If good coaches can turn around programs with worse facilities, less resources and less desirable locations, why not at NC State? The ACC competition is the best but as it has been stated you clearly don't need to win every game to get into the tournament. You just need a coach that knows how to recruit, get creative with your money, hit on your internationals and round out the roster with top domestic players.
NC State is probably a place that needs to go international in the majority. Being in the ACC, their compliance department is probably a little more thorough than perhaps the mid-major conferences as well so might not be able to get some of the internationals into school that are going to other places. If the plan is to go international then the successful move seems to be the winning D2 Coach who has international recruiting experience. The last two coaches who left after their five years were very successful D1 guys who struggled there.
And the ACC proved once again the committee puts waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to many from the ACC in as only 4 our left. Six I could see, seven maybe but eight and nine in are questionable I don't care what the RPI said. Syracuse got in because they were the defending national champs and Pitt because they had made the college cup two out of the last three year. Nothing about either team passed the eye test this year.
The longer you follow this sport, the more you'll see that the RPI is all that matters to the NCAA as it is the path of least resistance and allows the NCAA to continue spending as little time, effort and resources as possible on men's college soccer. And until the folks in college soccer figure out a way to create some revenue, that's how it will remain. Thus, reliance on the RPI will remain and teams with a good RPI will get most of the bids. If folks in college soccer want this to change, they have to come up with a product that sells. A spring College Cup would help but too many folks in college soccer were opposed to the two-semester season. So, we're looking at another College Cup played in the cold, during finals and the holiday season with small crowds, next-to-no media coverage and no TV presence. All while college sports like lacrosse, women's gymnastics and volleyball, baseball and hockey grow in popularity, especially in the postseason and soccer, as a whole, continues to grow in the U.S. College soccer is stuck and can't figure out how to get out of it. So get used to all those teams with high RPI and not-so-good records in the NCAA Tournament because that's not gonna change till there's a financial reason to make it so. And, not for nothin', for a supposed "down year" the ACC still has a quarter of the teams left in the Sweet 16. That's still a really good percentage for one conference.
Hardly any coaches on the committee to select. It's filled with Assistant and Associate ADs trying to build their resume to help their career. No accountability either where the Chair has to explain their choices. You are right about one thing... Administrators at NCAA schools don't really care about soccer and its place in the pantheon of sports. They want the coach to win but no one is there to fight the battle for the sport.