Gamecock basketball what-ifs...

[BigSpur]

Watching the 30 for 30 special got me thinking about when we hired Bill Foster to replace Frank McGuire. Seems like I read an article at some point that mentioned the other coaches who were available at that time. We hired Foster from Duke for the 1980-81 season . Of course, Duke replaced Foster with Coach K, who didn't exactly tear it up the first 3 or 4 years prior to hitting it big. 1980-81 was also the year N.C. State hired Jimmy Valvano from Iona. 1981-82 was the year Georgia Tech hired Bobby Cremins to try to rebuild their program that was likely worse than ours is now.

I know hindsight is 20/20 but looking back at the history books, there were others who had either just taken new jobs or could've been had at that time. Jim Calhoun had just turned Northeastern around, winning their conference in 1980. Gene Keady took over at Purdue the same year and Billy Tubbs took over at Oklahoma too.

Things would've probably worked out better for us had we hired someone else, don't you think?

 

[FeatheredCock]

I think about it this way...If we hired Bobby Cremins in 1980, the same coach who took over the WORST program in the ACC, we would have been set for the next two decades. There is no doubt in my mind that Cremins would have done here what he was able to do at GT if not more. We would have gone to a couple of Elite 8, maybe a Final Four (just like they did at Tech), and Bobby would have stayed here until he retired. It is easy to, and a little sad, to think about what could have been if we had hired Bobby in '80

 

[Extreme]