Lee rose

[SANJAY]

The current basketball coaching search made me review the poor history of usf basketball. My own personal knowledge goes back to Radenko Dobras and Hakim Shaheed while I was in high school. But I had heard of Lee Rose and USF's attempt to launch the program to the big time through hiring him. So I did some research. Lee Rose led the UNC-cHARLOTTE 49ers to the final 4 in 1977 and then left for Purdue who he took to the final 4 in 1980. He came to USF later in 1980. What a coup.

At the time USF was in the Sun Belt. Rose led the team to 3 NIT berths and a 106-69 record during his 6 years. The best winning percentage in usf history.

So why did he leave? Well based on the article below it appears that Rose was hard to get along with, not a gladhander, butted heads with the AD and the president, suffered from an underfunded program and poor fan support. Not sure how accurate the article is but the article left me with a feeling of what could have been.

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1986-01-08/sports/0190090001_1_lee-rose-south-florida-sun-dome

[Brad]

I remember those days.  Thanks for posting the article.

 

I remember the hope that after Rose's work at UNCC and Purdue he'd take us somewhere...

[DELdaBull]

Winning is hard to do on Dale Mabry. We need a proven guy.

[usfgrad84]

The Lee Rose era was the time period I was on campus.

He definitely raised the stature of the basketball program. By bringing Rose in to coach the BB team the school started to come out of the John Allen mentality that we should only be an academic institution.

Rose proved that USF could compete on a national level. However, he still ran into a lot of political issues, as well as many of the same issues we face still today. Back then, we weren't just considered a commuter school. We pretty much were. It was very hard to convert lifelong fans of UF and FSU (Miami was just sort of emerging as a football powerhouse).

It was because of Rose's respect in the basketball community, his forceful personality and his coaching ability that he was able to get great players on campus (Grier, CB, Redden, Kitchen, Tonnelli) and also get some great games on the schedule (Depaul on Ray Meyer's last year, Duke, etc).

Believe it or not, we were considered, by many people, the best BB school in the state. However, we were never able to get over the hump. Whenever we had the chance to do something big and attendance was starting to creep up, we would lose and deflate all the positive momentum. (Sound familiar to football). I think we were on the cusp of winning the conference championship. Just one win away and CB got in a car accident and we end up losing. It's always something.

We need a coach with the stature of Rose. A guy that has the "most important guy on campus" attitude. We need a coach that bring respect to the program because of his name and gas the fortitude to overcome and forge through the rest of the BS that goes on to build the program.

[DELdaBull]

Oops. Make that Fowler. I was thinking about football

[SANJAY]

Oops. Make that Fowler. I was thinking about football

I was going to ask if they moved the sundome.

[SANJAY]

My bigger point in posting the article is that the issues related to university support and fan support exist today. There's always something.

Big name or not you need to have someone that the initial lack of fans in seats and political issues have no impact on. Someone that can bring the dream and the juice all on their own.

[charsibb]

My era too. I was even in a sophomore sociology class with Charlie Bradley.

 

Rose was a great coach, but we had some tough to explain losses. IIRC, the Lee Rose era was when we first started talking about the burial ground to explain why even Rose couldn't win the big ones at USF.

 

The big rivalries back then were USA, VCU, and ODU in the old Sun Belt and we were part of the 3-point experiment. Fun days. But it's always been tough to be a Bull.

[TheUpperHand]

Winning is hard to do on Dale Mabry. We need a proven guy.

 

 

Oops. Make that Fowler. I was thinking about football

 

Don't worry about it. It's been hard to win there, too.

[Apis Bull]

I don't care if we get a, "big name".  I want someone that wins.  A well known coach may inject some initial excitement, but if they don't win, it won't matter.  A lesser known coach might not ignite the fan base initially, but winning cures all.

 

So, I want the right coach, regardless of his current stature.