Rank the five coaches that left us

GameFAQSAggie · Post by **GameFAQSAggie** » March 28th, 2024, 11:34 am

How would you rate the five coaches across both sports that left us?
I would go
1. Gary 1.0
2. Sprinkle
3. Wells
4. Odom
5. Smith

Obviously, all five have their pros and cons in comparison to the others. And of course, some people are going to be more into football caring more that we finally started winning in football, and others are going to care more about basketball.

1. Gary 1.0.
If you completely disregard the debacle of his second stint and only look at the body of work of his first stint, he arguably did the best job as a whole. Of the five, he took the job when it was most viewed as an uphill battle, taking it when USU was known as a graveyard for football coaches careers. Even though Wells, Sprinkle, and Odom took over the jobs after we were winning and just trying to keep it going, while Smith took over when the program was down, there was still a somewhat strong history of USU basketball and the Spectrum and the job when Smith took over wasn't quite the uphill battle when Gary took over. And we were all pretty excited to even just have a winning season in Gary's 3rd year, being all the more excited in his fourth year when we got a conference championship and previously unimaginable appearance in the AP polls, along with a win over Utah. Even just getting the win over BYU in year 2 made us barely care about losing some of the other games we did that year.

He also did leave a foundation for Wells the following year, something that is now a thing of the past, and we can't give him any credit for not gutting our team cause he didn't have the ability to back then. In today's era, he would have cherry picked our best players to go to Wisconsin, out of necessity cause of Bielema cherry picking the best Wisconsin players to take to Arkansas.

But of the five, He is the only one that went as far as to issue a press release saying he is staying. He didn't know that Wisconsin would open up, but he could have just said he was withdrawing from the search at each school he would not be interested in if there were jobs he would be interested in but didn't anticipate opening up.

2. Sprinkle.
The big one that puts him head and shoulders above Odom and Smith is the tourney win. There also is of course the beaten to death narrative of having 0 returning points, and maybe that narrative is what costed us getting him for at least 1 or 2 more years. But that will be the new reality for new coaches moving forward, maybe not as few as 0 returning points, but at least a good chunk of the roster gone. Especially cause schools losing their coach are also still going to lose players to no more eligibility along with the portal. Gone are the days of coaches having the foundation Wells had when he took over or at least taking over with Sam Merrill to build around like the case with Craig Smith.

Even though we lost him after 1 year, I'm not going to look at that as any differently that getting, say, 3 years out of him with an NIT one and done the first year, an NCAA one and done the second year followed by a third year with an NCAA second round appearance. The leak of him going to Washington probably shouldn't have happened, but you can say he did stay more invested than Matt was his last two games where he was in negotiations with Texas Tech.

We also can't pretend to think that him cherry picking our best players is any different than what he did to Montana State, or what any other coach we have leave us(in both sports) will do to us, nor what any coach who leaves does in today's era, or what coaches we hire will do to their old school.

3. Wells.
For what we were happy about getting out of Gary, arguably the one thing we got out of Wells that we never got out of Gary was wins over BYU in Provo. We also got an appearance in the polls and wins over ranked opponents, like we got out of Gary.

We never got a conference championship out of Matt, but we did get a division championship and were in a tougher league that we were under Gary. We'll never know if Gary would have been able to lead us to conference championship and a league that Boise is a part of.

The funny thing is he was probably the one coach of the five we were the least sad to see go, simply cause he was the one we did NOT go around thinking it will be fine if we can hold on to for 20 years. After 2 years of us thinking he was great, he took enough of a nosedive to be on the hotseat, improved from 2016 to 2017 arguably just enough to save his job before using the 2018 season for the bigger offer. But the 2018 season was fun.

4. Odom.
I put Odom above Smith simply because of the school he left for not being a hated rival. Even though he had to start over from scratch to an extent after Smith, there was more of a strong culture and a perception of Aggie basketball and the spectrum being "back" when Odom took over.

5. Smith.
The program was a mess, but he did inherit Sam Merrill, the type of thing that will likely become a thing of the past. I do have to give Smith an incomplete grade cause of having the 2020 NCAAs taken away, but there was still the 2019 and 2021 trips to the dance where he was unable to get a win.

Naked Bull Rider · Post by **Naked Bull Rider** » March 28th, 2024, 1:40 pm

Baketball:

1. Craig Smith

Three (3) straight appearances in the MW Tourney Championship with 2 wins.
Three (3) straight qualifications to the NCAA Tournament.
Dude batted 100% during his time in Logan.

2. Danny Sprinkle

Regular season conference championship
Appearence in the NCAA Tournament
Coached the Aggies to their first NCCA Tourney W in 20+ years
Dude also batted 100% during his brief time in Logan.

3. Ryan Odom

One (1) appeareance in the MW Tourney Championship
One (1) trip to the NCAA Tournament

**All three coaches were phoenominal during their brief 3-year, 2-year, 1-year stints at USU. While I can't blame anyone for cashing in on a payday, I know a small part of them will always be haunted by their inner-narrator's question of "what if I'd stayed and continued building?"

Football:

1. Matt Wells

Most impressive W/L record
Wins (plural) against byu
Coached the most outstanding QB Aggie fans have ever seen in Jordan Love.

2. Gary Andersen

Will always have his place in Aggie history for restoring a winning culture in Logan
Did his legacy no favors during his brief second stint

QuackAttackAggie · Post by **QuackAttackAggie** » March 28th, 2024, 1:46 pm

Gary took what was one of the worst products in division 1 sports for a very long time and made me think we could be good. We went from hoping we would win games to making bowls to winning conferences. Everybody else started with much much more. Gary 1.0 is the best thing that happened to USU sports in the last 25 years.

I would then go with Smith, sprinkle, wells, and odom.

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Blue Sage · Post by **Blue Sage** » March 28th, 2024, 2:00 pm

How do you not have Blake Anderson in there? He owns my favorite season of all time coming out of the worst season ever or close to ever. In any case, I'm going with BA. What he has done under the circumstances he has and didn't leave us after his magical season. I really appreciate him for that.

sam tingey · Post by **sam tingey** » March 28th, 2024, 2:04 pm

Blue Sage wrote: ↑
March 28th, 2024, 2:00 pm
How do you not have Blake Anderson in there? He owns my favorite season of all time coming out of the worst season ever or close to ever. In any case, I'm going with BA. What he has done under the circumstances he has and didn't leave us after his magical season. I really appreciate him for that.

He's still with us. This is about coaches that left

Blue Sage · Post by **Blue Sage** » March 28th, 2024, 2:13 pm

sam tingey wrote: ↑
March 28th, 2024, 2:04 pm

Blue Sage wrote: ↑
March 28th, 2024, 2:00 pm
How do you not have Blake Anderson in there? He owns my favorite season of all time coming out of the worst season ever or close to ever. In any case, I'm going with BA. What he has done under the circumstances he has and didn't leave us after his magical season. I really appreciate him for that.
He's still with us. This is about coaches that left

LOL, I just need to learn to read.

Hoot · Post by **Hoot** » March 28th, 2024, 2:51 pm

sam tingey wrote: ↑
March 28th, 2024, 2:04 pm

Blue Sage wrote: ↑
March 28th, 2024, 2:00 pm
How do you not have Blake Anderson in there? He owns my favorite season of all time coming out of the worst season ever or close to ever. In any case, I'm going with BA. What he has done under the circumstances he has and didn't leave us after his magical season. I really appreciate him for that.
He's still with us. This is about coaches that left

This is the sad truth.

Aggie formerly in Hawaii · Post by **Aggie formerly in Hawaii** » March 28th, 2024, 3:22 pm

Id rank Odom last. He was the most "meh" coach ever

Imakeitrain · Post by **Imakeitrain** » March 28th, 2024, 8:23 pm

Sprinkle can’t be determined due to length of time.

But Smith, Odom, Wells, Gary 1.0

Sprinkle was on track for #1

We accepted a lot of bad seasons under Gary 1.0 because we were so bad prior- and only won the WAC when it was us, SJSU, La Tech, NMSU and a bunch of teams that were just out of FCS and one that dropped to FCS.

mcaggie1 · Post by **mcaggie1** » March 31st, 2024, 4:30 pm

sam tingey wrote: ↑
March 28th, 2024, 2:04 pm

Blue Sage wrote: ↑
March 28th, 2024, 2:00 pm
How do you not have Blake Anderson in there? He owns my favorite season of all time coming out of the worst season ever or close to ever. In any case, I'm going with BA. What he has done under the circumstances he has and didn't leave us after his magical season. I really appreciate him for that.
He's still with us. This is about coaches that left-leaning

LaVell Anderson left us and he is not on the list, and he did more for Aggie basketball than anyone. But, alas, most people on this board can only remember Stew, and don’t want to talk about the REAL Glory years.

So my vote is Wells, So sue me….I am more of a football guy. I was furious, however that LaVell not only left, but left for BYU. That would almost be grounds for not including him. It took a few years of hurt, and LA left the WHY to coach the Jazz….or was it the Stars?

USU78 · Post by **USU78** » March 31st, 2024, 5:12 pm

mcaggie1 wrote: ↑
March 31st, 2024, 4:30 pm

sam tingey wrote: ↑
March 28th, 2024, 2:04 pm

Blue Sage wrote: ↑
March 28th, 2024, 2:00 pm
How do you not have Blake Anderson in there? He owns my favorite season of all time coming out of the worst season ever or close to ever. In any case, I'm going with BA. What he has done under the circumstances he has and didn't leave us after his magical season. I really appreciate him for that.
He's still with us. This is about coaches that left-leaning
LaVell Anderson left us and he is not on the list, and he did more for Aggie basketball than anyone. But, alas, most people on this board can only remember Stew, and don’t want to talk about the REAL Glory years.

So my vote is Wells, So sue me….I am more of a football guy. I was furious, however that LaVell not only left, but left for BYU. That would almost be grounds for not including him. It took a few years of hurt, and LA left the WHY to coach the Jazz….or was it the Stars?

ummm. LaDell.

LaVell is that other guy.

LarryTheAggie · Post by **LarryTheAggie** » March 31st, 2024, 5:44 pm

Aggie formerly in Hawaii wrote: ↑
March 28th, 2024, 3:22 pm
Id rank Odom last. He was the most "meh" coach ever

Yeah, it really sucked to go to the NIT in a reloading year and then follow that up by going to the conference championship game and getting an at large ncaa bid...

Sad thing is I kind of agree... Man we have been spoiled...

Bullnamed_gus · Post by **Bullnamed_gus** » March 31st, 2024, 6:40 pm

GameFAQSAggie wrote: ↑
March 28th, 2024, 11:34 am
How would you rate the five coaches across both sports that left us?
I would go
1. Gary 1.0
2. Sprinkle
3. Wells
4. Odom
5. Smith

Obviously, all five have their pros and cons in comparison to the others. And of course, some people are going to be more into football caring more that we finally started winning in football, and others are going to care more about basketball.

1. Gary 1.0.
If you completely disregard the debacle of his second stint and only look at the body of work of his first stint, he arguably did the best job as a whole. Of the five, he took the job when it was most viewed as an uphill battle, taking it when USU was known as a graveyard for football coaches careers. Even though Wells, Sprinkle, and Odom took over the jobs after we were winning and just trying to keep it going, while Smith took over when the program was down, there was still a somewhat strong history of USU basketball and the Spectrum and the job when Smith took over wasn't quite the uphill battle when Gary took over. And we were all pretty excited to even just have a winning season in Gary's 3rd year, being all the more excited in his fourth year when we got a conference championship and previously unimaginable appearance in the AP polls, along with a win over Utah. Even just getting the win over BYU in year 2 made us barely care about losing some of the other games we did that year.

He also did leave a foundation for Wells the following year, something that is now a thing of the past, and we can't give him any credit for not gutting our team cause he didn't have the ability to back then. In today's era, he would have cherry picked our best players to go to Wisconsin, out of necessity cause of Bielema cherry picking the best Wisconsin players to take to Arkansas.

But of the five, He is the only one that went as far as to issue a press release saying he is staying. He didn't know that Wisconsin would open up, but he could have just said he was withdrawing from the search at each school he would not be interested in if there were jobs he would be interested in but didn't anticipate opening up.

2. Sprinkle.
The big one that puts him head and shoulders above Odom and Smith is the tourney win. There also is of course the beaten to death narrative of having 0 returning points, and maybe that narrative is what costed us getting him for at least 1 or 2 more years. But that will be the new reality for new coaches moving forward, maybe not as few as 0 returning points, but at least a good chunk of the roster gone. Especially cause schools losing their coach are also still going to lose players to no more eligibility along with the portal. Gone are the days of coaches having the foundation Wells had when he took over or at least taking over with Sam Merrill to build around like the case with Craig Smith.

Even though we lost him after 1 year, I'm not going to look at that as any differently that getting, say, 3 years out of him with an NIT one and done the first year, an NCAA one and done the second year followed by a third year with an NCAA second round appearance. The leak of him going to Washington probably shouldn't have happened, but you can say he did stay more invested than Matt was his last two games where he was in negotiations with Texas Tech.

We also can't pretend to think that him cherry picking our best players is any different than what he did to Montana State, or what any other coach we have leave us(in both sports) will do to us, nor what any coach who leaves does in today's era, or what coaches we hire will do to their old school.

3. Wells.
For what we were happy about getting out of Gary, arguably the one thing we got out of Wells that we never got out of Gary was wins over BYU in Provo. We also got an appearance in the polls and wins over ranked opponents, like we got out of Gary.

We never got a conference championship out of Matt, but we did get a division championship and were in a tougher league that we were under Gary. We'll never know if Gary would have been able to lead us to conference championship and a league that Boise is a part of.

The funny thing is he was probably the one coach of the five we were the least sad to see go, simply cause he was the one we did NOT go around thinking it will be fine if we can hold on to for 20 years. After 2 years of us thinking he was great, he took enough of a nosedive to be on the hotseat, improved from 2016 to 2017 arguably just enough to save his job before using the 2018 season for the bigger offer. But the 2018 season was fun.

4. Odom.
I put Odom above Smith simply because of the school he left for not being a hated rival. Even though he had to start over from scratch to an extent after Smith, there was more of a strong culture and a perception of Aggie basketball and the spectrum being "back" when Odom took over.

5. Smith.
The program was a mess, but he did inherit Sam Merrill, the type of thing that will likely become a thing of the past. I do have to give Smith an incomplete grade cause of having the 2020 NCAAs taken away, but there was still the 2019 and 2021 trips to the dance where he was unable to get a win.

Gary
Sprinkle
Odom
Wells
Smith

mcaggie1 · Post by **mcaggie1** » March 31st, 2024, 9:05 pm

USU78 wrote: ↑
March 31st, 2024, 5:12 pm

mcaggie1 wrote: ↑
March 31st, 2024, 4:30 pm

sam tingey wrote: ↑
March 28th, 2024, 2:04 pm

Blue Sage wrote: ↑
March 28th, 2024, 2:00 pm
How do you not have Blake Anderson in there? He owns my favorite season of all time coming out of the worst season ever or close to ever. In any case, I'm going with BA. What he has done under the circumstances he has and didn't leave us after his magical season. I really appreciate him for that.
He's still with us. This is about coaches that left-leaning
LaVell Anderson left us and he is not on the list, and he did more for Aggie basketball than anyone. But, alas, most people on this board can only remember Stew, and don’t want to talk about the REAL Glory years.

So my vote is Wells, So sue me….I am more of a football guy. I was furious, however that LaVell not only left, but left for BYU. That would almost be grounds for not including him. It took a few years of hurt, and LA left the WHY to coach the Jazz….or was it the Stars?
ummm. LaDell.

LaVell is that other guy.

Oh my goodness, how did I do that. It has to be a board record for miss spelling a name.
GEEZE!!!

QuackAttackAggie · Post by **QuackAttackAggie** » March 31st, 2024, 9:08 pm

mcaggie1 wrote:
USU78 wrote: ↑
March 31st, 2024, 5:12 pm

mcaggie1 wrote: ↑
March 31st, 2024, 4:30 pm

sam tingey wrote: ↑
March 28th, 2024, 2:04 pm

Blue Sage wrote: ↑
March 28th, 2024, 2:00 pm
How do you not have Blake Anderson in there? He owns my favorite season of all time coming out of the worst season ever or close to ever. In any case, I'm going with BA. What he has done under the circumstances he has and didn't leave us after his magical season. I really appreciate him for that.
He's still with us. This is about coaches that left-leaning
LaVell Anderson left us and he is not on the list, and he did more for Aggie basketball than anyone. But, alas, most people on this board can only remember Stew, and don’t want to talk about the REAL Glory years.

So my vote is Wells, So sue me….I am more of a football guy. I was furious, however that LaVell not only left, but left for BYU. That would almost be grounds for not including him. It took a few years of hurt, and LA left the WHY to coach the Jazz….or was it the Stars?
ummm. LaDell.

LaVell is that other guy.
Oh my goodness, how did I do that. It has to be a board record for miss spelling a name.
GEEZE!!!

I think you mean Ms. Pelling.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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