THE SPICE IS RIGHT: AVZ
It’s getting cold outside, boys and girls, so how about a little spice to heat up your life? We’ve gathered the blogger roundtable for one final time in 2018 to do a little crystal ball gazing and fiery hot take…ing for you. Each blogger has given a hot take about the upcoming spring season, and all of the other bloggers are here to sample the spice, and give their reviews. Was the take too spicy? Not spicy enough? Just right? We’ll be heading into winter mode pretty shortly, but we’ll try to start hitting up season previews beginning next week, and running a couple per week until teams are back from Winter Break. This is the final bit of spice from the bloggers for now, but it’s AVZ so you know it will involve at least some heat mixed with just a pinch of curmudgeon (it also happens to be my favorite take). If you enjoyed this series we’ll try to do something similar in the spring. Maybe even some fan hot takes with blogger reactions! We know at least some of you out there have the fire…
AVZ TAKE (aka Spice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs):
TWO TOP 15 PROGRAMS WILL HAVE NEW HEAD COACHES HEADING INTO THE FALL 2019 SEASON!
RegNEC: I’m conflicted here. I feel like there’s a lot less movement at the top in D3 coaching world compared to the speculation. Every year there’s half a dozen coaches where I’m like “Yeah they’re definitely going to be looking to move on,” and yet we don’t often see any big moves. Having no inside knowledge on this, I would also guess that a top tier D3 head coaching position is just as lucrative as many D1 positions, save for the Power 5 conferences. At that point, it comes down mostly to prestige—and I have to think that for these coaches that spend every day trying to explain to recruits and parents why D3 is just as good as D1 in so many ways, they must believe the message they are selling at least a little. So I’ll declare this take to be like horseradish—possibly super hot, possibly not hot at all, we’ll just have to wait and see for ourselves on a case by case basis.
NewRegional: It’s division 3 sports. No school is going to pull a Masai Ujiri and fire (Coach of the Year) Dwayne Casey after a 59 win season simply because he couldn’t beat LeBron and make it to the finals. Coaches of top 15 teams aren’t getting fired, so the only chance this happens is if a coach finds a better opportunity somewhere else. Shoutout to Alison Swain for landing an incredible position after USC, but I don’t see this opportunity presenting itself very often to D3 coaches. The biggest D3 to D1 move for a Men’s coach that I can think of is Coach Garner moving from Amherst to Navy a few years ago. If it’s not for a big time job, I don’t see it happening. While I’m sure the allure of a D1 program is strong, for the time being, I’m going to say most coaches are comfortable where they’re at, and are looking to win a championship and build a dynasty with their current school.
NewCentral: Middlebury. Emory. Bowdoin Williams. CMS. GAC. Chicago. Amherst. CMU. Wash U. Pomona. Wesleyan. Kenyon. Brandeis. Trinity (TX). By the end of the year, you’re telling me that at least two of these coaches will have moved on to the greener, wider pastures of the Great Valley within the next eleven months? Bet. I think that this take is tastefully placed in the last position in the series because, like Hot Ones, it might very well be our spiciest take, but it is without a doubt, our maddest one: Mad Dog 357, easy.
AS: If I had to rate takes other than my own, I would rate this one as the best one, simply because I can go back and forth on it. How spicy is it? It’s like getting your crawfish in The Boil sauce mix at the Boil in Chinatown, NY. @ me if you a true New Yorker. If not, do your best to try it. Anyways, this would surprise me and not surprise me at the same time. I think very highly of all the coaches in the top 15 (first positive thing I’ve said this whole series) and I think almost all of them would be able to handle a transition to DI for sure. Now, the question is if they want to, and that is where it whittles down to a few. I don’t want to name names, but I think we’d be stupid to say that people don’t have aspirations for their career. Don’t shield yourself from the truth. While DIII is a fantastic community, it’s not DI. Ask Alison Swain in USC. She’s probably doing alright for herself. Good call by AVZ here and I’m glad he’s earning his blog donations for once. Now if he only knew how to pick NFL games better.
RegAS: This is a great take and it really makes you think and dig deeper. It’s the perfect amount of Cajun spice in the shrimp gumbo. If you look at all the programs in the top 15, I feel like a majority of the coaches have been there for a hot second and are most likely staying put for a while. At the same time, if DI opportunities open up, these coaches would be some of the more qualified individuals to take over. I agree with most of the other bloggers that pretty much the only reason why coaches would leave would be for these DI opportunities not because of their institutions moving on from them. While I don’t think it’s likely, I’m not going to completely write off the possibility. Time for a glass of water.
DIIIWest: Whoa, I can see this as going one of two ways. Either a coach such as Tee or Doebler who has built a fantastic tennis program for their respective schools graduates from DIII to DI as they have each built a name for themselves. Or they value DIII tennis and the community it has formed and decide that there is no other place they’d rather be. From what I’ve seen the last few years, I believe that each of these top coaches see something special about the DIII landscape that they wouldn’t give up or trade to be at any DI program. I could be wrong and I know there is very little loyalty when push comes to shove, but something tells me these coaches that have built their programs from the ground up will stick it out in hopes of winning a National championship one day.
NE: This is some serious crystal ball gazing, but it’s also probably my favorite hot take in this series, because it leads to so many different conspiratorial theories. We could go a couple different ways with this take. Are people leaving for D1? Are people leaving voluntarily? Are people leaving involuntarily? There are a few coaches in the top-15 who have been at this for a LONG time and could be thinking about retirement, but my guess is that AVZ is talking about coaches leaving for the greener (pun intended) pastures of D1. There have been rumors about multiple top-15 coaches going the way of Garner, from Tee and Fried to even Doebler going back. All in all, given how rarely we see coaching changes at the top of our ranks, I deem this a spicy but palatable take, which is more than you can say for most of the recent Blog Spice.
And with that we’re out of Blog Spice. We’ll be starting season previews next week, and will do our best to get you multiple previews per week all through the winter. As always, thank you for reading, and if you’re so inclined there is a little donate button on the left side (hit the three horizontal lines in the top left corner if you’re on your phone) of our homepage (http://www.division3tennis.com/blog/). Have a great offseason!