Doogie on Shaka Smart to Minnesota

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Ogee Oglethorpe said:
Monson should have never been hired for the Gopher position, at that time. I still maintain they would have been better off hiring a janitor (custodial engineer?) at $75K for the first few years after Ganglegate. Impossible situation, those first 3-5 years were essentially throw-away years. Hire a sacrificial lamb to ride out the sanctions for those first 3-4 years (maybe even all 5?) and then go after a promising coach to rebuild the program.

Monson got a nice gig, but in hind-sight kind of got the short end of the stick. He's built a nice program at LBSU, 22 wins 2 years ago and 25 wins and a tourney berth last year, and they're off to a 7-1 Big West conference start this year after a BRUTAL non-conference schedule. He's doing just fine.
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They tried the 'caretaker' route. Terry Holland was all set to take the job. His wife decided it was too cold. Or so the story goes. Not sure how that would have gone, but I don't think he'd have stuck around more than 3-4 years either way.
 

Winasota Gopher said:
Man, I've noticed some racist overtones in this board the past couple weeks.... Skaka Zulu??? C'mon man...
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Actually, Smart was named for the famed Zulu warrior, so maybe it's not an insult.

As for Monson, I don't think it was necessarily a bad hire. It just didn't work out. A swing and a miss, but at least the U didn't strike out looking.
 

Bad Gopher said:
Actually, Smart was named for the famed Zulu warrior, so maybe it's not an insult.

As for Monson, I don't think it was necessarily a bad hire. It just didn't work out. A swing and a miss, but at least the U didn't strike out looking.
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Being a Zulu Warrior is not very Smart, especially if that Zulu Warrior is a Kamikaze Zulu Warrior.
 

howeda7 said:
They tried the 'caretaker' route. Terry Holland was all set to take the job. His wife decided it was too cold. Or so the story goes. Not sure how that would have gone, but I don't think he'd have stuck around more than 3-4 years either way.
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Today, I'd have to say she was right.
 

I had no idea Shaka Smart was from Madison. I'd be worried if Bo Ryan was a few years older, or Barry Alvarez had more interest in the basketball program. The Badgers have the better program and are in a great spot recruiting wise. Chicago, Milwaukee, and Twin Cities are all within 4 hours of Madison.
 


Buttcheeks McGaffigan said:
I had no idea Shaka Smart was from Madison. I'd be worried if Bo Ryan was a few years older, or Barry Alvarez had more interest in the basketball program. The Badgers have the better program and are in a great spot recruiting wise. Chicago, Milwaukee, and Twin Cities are all within 4 hours of Madison.
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He was the victim of some pretty bad racism growing up in Oregon (suburb of Madison), I highly doubt he'd ever take the job.

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/...ka-smart-virginia-commonwealth-racist-slogans

When Smart was in eighth grade, the Persian Gulf War erupted, and in Oregon, Wis., a suburb of Madison with a population of roughly 4,500 back then, tolerance was limited, according to people who lived there at the time. A girl of Jordanian ethnicity in Smart’s class was the object of such derision that she one day locked herself in her bedroom, determined never to go to that school again.

Unprompted, Smart called the girl and talked her out of her room. With the sense that she had at least one friend, she returned to school.


“He had this sense of outrage,” said Monica King, Smart’s mother. “When you’re a black kid and you’re growing up in a predominately white environment, you grow up with that sense of outrage because you were the object of it yourself.”

Smart was among the 10 or so minority students in a high school of 1,000. During his junior year, someone spray-painted racist slogans on the wall in one of his high school’s female bathrooms. A group of boys was known to ride around town wearing T-shirts that read “White Power” in a truck that displayed a Confederate flag. Members of an active Ku Klux Klan chapter in nearby Janesville held a rally in his school’s parking lot.

One night in November 1993, Smart’s adopted brother, Alfie Olson, told Smart that he had been threatened — “You better watch it, boy” – by a tall, lanky white student while celebrating a victory by the girls’ basketball team at their high school. When Olson, who like Smart is also half-black, spotted the kid at a Subway sandwich shop, Smart confronted him.

“Do you have a problem with my boy?” asked Smart, then 16.

“Yeah, I’ve got a problem,” the guy said. “I’ve got a problem with all of you.”

It was clear the kid’s choice of pronoun encompassed a group that extended well beyond Smart and his crew.

Olson and their friend, Will Smith, who is black, pleaded with Smart to let it go. But Smart just stood there, as if he couldn’t hear anyone.

“Do you have a problem with us?” Smart asked.

Smart waited for a response.

“You know,” the guy said, “I’ve got friends in the KKK that will put you six feet under.”

There was no fight, only tension — Olson and Smith finally persuaded Smart to walk away — but the incident was emblematic of the responsibility Smart felt.

“He always had a sense of protecting a larger group of people and making a statement,” Olson said. “He sees things through all the way. He doesn’t let things go just because someone says no or someone says it’s not doable. . . . You could tell him there was a huge tidal wave coming: ‘We need to evacuate. We can’t save these people.’ And he’d be like, ‘No, I can save these people.’ And he would say it nonchalantly. And then he would do it.”

Smart led a group of students who organized a multicultural celebration during February of his junior year. They brought in Native American and Hmong dancers to perform at school assemblies. They held workshops on racism and homophobia. Smart even persuaded Stu Jackson, who then was the men’s basketball coach at Wisconsin, to come serve as a keynote speaker.

Change occurred slowly. Some students continued to perpetuate a racially charged slang term for a white person who acts black, despite protestations from Smart and others. One of Smart’s best friends since he was 7 years old, a white kid named Josh, still felt compelled to call Smith a racial epithet during a skirmish on the basketball court. Smith retaliated by punching Josh in the face. When the story later was retold to the school principal, every witness except Smart claimed Smith hit Josh unprovoked.

“I remember all the time dealing with prejudice,” Smart said. “And I think that’s part of what has fed my competitive drive, because especially when you’re a kid, people can be unkind. And it hurts.”
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Buttcheeks McGaffigan said:
I had no idea Shaka Smart was from Madison. I'd be worried if Bo Ryan was a few years older, or Barry Alvarez had more interest in the basketball program. The Badgers have the better program and are in a great spot recruiting wise. Chicago, Milwaukee, and Twin Cities are all within 4 hours of Madison.
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With how good his track record has been against us, I'm glad Bo Ryan is a few years older and wish he were a few more older.
 




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