I don't think many on this board would argue against firing Jeter.
I just think 95% of the people on this board don't want Amanda Braun within 100 miles of hiring the next coach.
They'd be right.
When she fired Greg Henschel from women's soccer, she made a good choice. So who did she hire? Troy Fabiano, who had been head coach at Parkside for 20 years and had been to a handful of NCAA Tournaments over the years, but never made a huge splash. He's essentially done there what Rob has done here with men's basketball - you know, results like Rob's are good enough to hire them but not good enough to merit a postseason?
Anyways, I bring up women's soccer because she hired Fabiano. The jury is still out on him, so I won't slam him. What I will do, however, is highlight who she didn't hire - David Nikolic.
For those who don't know David Nikolic, he's basically the human representation of Milwaukee Panthers Soccer. A player in the 1990's, David became top assistant to new coach Michael Moynihan. In 16 years running the program, the two turned our women's soccer program into a world beater. They were so good that you questioned why they DIDN'T beat a Big Ten team. We watched them tear apart schools like Michigan and Ohio State. The only time they'd lose by a big margin was if they were playing the absolute elite, like teams that went on to the Final Four.
The Panthers chased Penn State for the longest time for the NCAA lead in consecutive seasons with a conference regular season championship. The only years Milwaukee missed the NCAA Tournament were when they got upset in the HLT. The Panthers ended up overtaking Penn State right after Moynihan and Nikolic left for Northwestern. Rick Costello passed on promoting Nikolic, ignoring the pleas of every player on the roster and plenty of alumni.
Nikolic and Moynihan were very involved in local club soccer - apaladino can explain just how intertwined they are with the local clubs better than I can - and Nikolic has been the coach of local clubs forever (you can do both in soccer if you coach the other gender in club).
In recruiting, they alternated between #1 and #3 in the Midwest with Notre Dame and Marquette annually. If a kid in Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri, Michigan, Minnesota or Iowa was a top flight prospect, she was likely going to one of those three schools or to a national power.
And through the entire time, Nikolic was always portrayed by everyone in the program as being just as important as Moynihan to the team.
He's an alum who loves this school as much as any of us. He was the co-architect of one of the 25 best soccer programs in the country at Milwaukee. He owned recruiting in the upper Midwest. He's the coach who brought in every player we've ever had that has gone pro, up to and including Sarah Hagen, who could have been the star at any school in America. She graduated 9th in NCAA history in goals scored. He brought her in.
Since Costello made the stupid pick of Henschel, Nikolic and Moynihan have broken down and built up the Northwestern women's soccer program. This past fall, they made the NCAA Tournament, I believe it was either the first time in school history or the first in 20 years or something like that.
Whenever there's an opening for Milwaukee at soccer coach, Nikolic has been a finalist. That's for men and women. Bud hired Jon Coleman, but every other coach was hired by one of this parade of incompetent AD's. Koonce went with national championship D-II coach Chris Whalley for the men, resigned in disgrace. Costello went with Greg Henschel for the women, failure.
And Amanda Braun went with Troy Fabiano, he of the marginal success in D-II, over David Nikolic, the most effin-ay obvious home run hire you could ever make in any sport for this school.
Associate head coach here for 16 years, a dozen conference titles, every NCAA Tournament victory in our history, owned regional recruiting.
So why didn't Amanda Braun hire David? I asked her, point blank.
"He isn't ready."
