Hartwell not good at the Scotsman.

All returning players here except Koby and Hensen, probably at class.


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"I want to thank Coach Derriere..."

Freudian slip?

If this guy can’t keep a player here, no coach would keep them here.

Welp after hearing this guy I'll be buying season tickets and coming up from SLC for games.

Craig has infections energy and seems like a guy you would love to play for. I have not been this excited for Aggie basketball in some time. The community and students should be able to feed off he and his teams energy to bring back the spectrum and home court advantage

I like this hire; looking forward to next year. Thanks Hartwell

any recaps or summaries of what was said? What his plan for the future of the program is? His recruiting strategy? His style of play? Any relationships with HS or AAU coaches in the region? His assistant coaches?

Renewing my football season tickets today. Are season tix for basketball next year also on sale?

SpectrumMagic wrote: ↑

March 27th, 2018, 11:44 am

Craig has infections energy and seems like a guy you would love to play for. I have not been this excited for Aggie basketball in some time. The community and students should be able to feed off he and his teams energy to bring back the spectrum and home court advantage

I hope that he gets those infections checked out.

I was a little distracted while listening. Anybody want to recap that story about the snake and what point he was making?

Someone close to the AD told me he was likely the guy late last week and described him as "high energy." He wasn't kidding. I am really excited about this hire. Just what we needed I think.

Sounds like the complete opposite of Duryea


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Sounds like the complete opposite of Duryea


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That's some high energy right there.

Yossarian wrote: ↑

March 27th, 2018, 11:50 am

any recaps or summaries of what was said? What his plan for the future of the program is? His recruiting strategy? His style of play? Any relationships with HS or AAU coaches in the region? His assistant coaches?

He said a lot so it's hard to keep it all straight. He's an extremely high energy guy who talks a lot.

He hasn't said a lot of x's and o's or details other than his whole mantra is GATA. Get After Their "Butts" is what he said in the press conference. The play high pressure man to man defense. He also believes the game is played from the inside out

He talked about always being the aggressors and in attack mode. Said it's fun to play and fun to watch to for the fans. He wants his team getting after it in every aspect of the game. USD was 32nd in def. fg% last year and 33rd in off fg % and 10th in point differential and X in turnovers created (paraphrasing).

Hartwell and he talked a ton about recruiting. He knows how big and how important it is. He wants to recruit high character guys that the community can be proud of get behind. Nobody's perfect and guys will make mistakes but he wants to recruit good kids. He said he wants to win now but if you "take short cuts in trying to build the team then you are cut short." Though he did acknowledge USD's team used transfers and he's absolutely looking at transfers and grad transfers, building the program with kids out of high school is key. He's huge on player development and says you can visibly see each kid on his past teams come back his following year a better player with improved skills.

He's excited to build out usu's schedule. He knows big time schools have nothing to gain by coming to logan so they won't, but we'll get a chance in conference play to have some bigger teams comes here. He pointed out that in the NCAA tournament the committee basically put Quadrant 1 wins as the top resume item. He knows you have to schedule and go play big time teams.

He loves the Spectrum. He was introduced to it while at CSU on their staff and watching film of school's playing USU and thought how cool it would be to coach here. He's watched the youtube videos and cannot wait to coach in the front of the Hurd. He said he wants to body surf on the crowd and we need to make that happen.

He's really into family. He introduced his multiple times and talked about them multiple times. He also really wants a strong family atmosphere on the team and wants guys on the team being close knit and high fiving and having each others backs. He likes the family community aspect of Cache Valley. He met the team in the workout room and loved to see their energy and how they were getting after it. He thought it was funny how the sun was shining and it was bright in there, and then 30 minutes later it was snowing and he couldn't see the mountains outside.

He had a great coaching staff at USD that he knows and knows he can trust and knows their integrity so they'll get high consideration when putting together his new staff.

He did say this quote in there too. "I will work my hands to the bone to make sure this program gets back to where it belongs. And that's at the top of the Mountain West."

That's all I can remember off hand for now.

The two interesting things I think I heard (he talked really fast and I was doing other things, so I could have heard wrong):

(1) he anticipated having 3-4 open scholarships.
(2) sounds like we might be bringing in some assistant coaches from USD, but no players.

Sounds like you have some secretary skill. You covered it well swish

Thanks, Swishh. This helps those of us that couldn't be there. It sounds as if he is not walking into this position blindly - he knows the task ahead of him and what he has to do to keep fan support. It also sounds like he has Hartwell's support, which is big. Best of luck to Smith, and Go Aggies!

Smith would be a better than average stand up comedian and i dont mean that in a bad way. He seems to have an uncanny ability to keep the mood light and comes across as very relatable. Its easy to see from him how his teams become "like a family". I dont see how anyone on this forum could not be at least a little excited after seeing that Press Conference. Because of the above mentioned, I think he will be able to keep anyone on the team he wants.

Here's a clip from the conference.

Was there good attendance?

when the presser gets posted in full, can someone post the link to it? Maybe it's already somewhere. idk

I thought attendance was rather poor. Capacity of the WEC is 1,400, and maybe even less than half was available today. I'd say what was available was 1/3 full? So maybe 250? (I'm notoriously bad at estimating like that, though...I may be off by 100 in either direction )

In addition to there not being many people there, the crowd was mostly pretty 'dead'. Stark contrast to Coach Smith's energy. I think he'll light a fire under us, though. We're just still recovering from the wet blanket of the Duryea years...

So Coach Smith has energy but can he do the sweep dance as good as Stew?

Another item he mentioned was something to the effect “the administration has stepped up big” when he was answering AB question about staff. Seemed he felt good about $ available for assistants.

He also alluded to Gonzaga joining the MWC. He said something like he's excited for "Gonzaga being on our schedule a lot more" and then he looked over at John Hartwell. He told a story where his wife had to go pee at the beach and that lead to an encounter with a rattlesnake. He said he held some 1 on 1 interview with the players and will keep doing that to get to know what they're about and to built equity with them. He's holding more 1 on 1 interviews today. He said he wants to be really thorough in hiring his assistants and not rush it too fast, but, he's not against hiring someone today if it's the right person and they've done their due diligence.

When talking to Scotty and Hans, he mentioned that there is one internal hire that he is looking at (Spencer) and that lots of people had vouched for him. Scotty also mentioned that he (Spencer) would be great.


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thegreendalegelf wrote: ↑

March 27th, 2018, 11:51 am

SpectrumMagic wrote: ↑

March 27th, 2018, 11:44 am

Craig has infections energy and seems like a guy you would love to play for. I have not been this excited for Aggie basketball in some time. The community and students should be able to feed off he and his teams energy to bring back the spectrum and home court advantage

I hope that he gets those infections checked out.

Yeah. Hopefully it's only infections and not something more serious like gonoherpesyphillitis. We need our new coach to be healthy and strong so that he can be full of energy.

TheAKAggie wrote:Hartwell not good at the Scotsman.

All returning players here except Koby and Hensen, probably at class.


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Koby will be gone by the end of the month.

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NevAggie wrote: ↑

March 27th, 2018, 1:50 pm

TheAKAggie wrote:Hartwell not good at the Scotsman.

All returning players here except Koby and Hensen, probably at class.


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Koby will be gone by the end of the month.

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Are you speculating our do you have a source?

thansen wrote: ↑

March 27th, 2018, 1:53 pm

NevAggie wrote: ↑

March 27th, 2018, 1:50 pm

TheAKAggie wrote:Hartwell not good at the Scotsman.

All returning players here except Koby and Hensen, probably at class.


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Koby will be gone by the end of the month.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

Are you speculating our do you have a source?

NevAggie wrote: ↑

March 27th, 2018, 1:50 pm

TheAKAggie wrote:Hartwell not good at the Scotsman.

All returning players here except Koby and Hensen, probably at class.


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Koby will be gone by the end of the month.

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That's too bad if true. I assumed Koby and Henson were the two who had requested releases when that info came out. It'd be nice to see if a good coach like Smith could tap into Koby's potential.

By the end of the season though, this was clearly Sam's team. I wonder if that has as much to do with this as Coach Wilson getting the boot.

AggieFella wrote:

thansen wrote: ↑

March 27th, 2018, 1:53 pm

NevAggie wrote: ↑

March 27th, 2018, 1:50 pm

TheAKAggie wrote:Hartwell not good at the Scotsman.

All returning players here except Koby and Hensen, probably at class.


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Koby will be gone by the end of the month.

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Are you speculating our do you have a source?

Koby was in class this morning as was Henson ... so you can all chill for a bit good lord.

I don’t see how that matters one way or another.


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