Rhody Hoops At A Crossroads
Friday, February 17, 2012
As the URI men’s basketball team finishes up an historically bad season, there are many questions about the future of the program. None of those questions are bigger than the question about who will coach the program next season and into the future.
Jim Baron is completing his 11th season in Kingston and has done many good things for it since taking over the head coaching duties.
Baron arrived from St. Bonaventure back in 2001 and walked into a rather difficult situation. The program was coming off of a stretch which saw them go 12-48 under Jerry DeGregorio. Rhody’s website (www.gorhody.com) said, “it was a program in disarray.”
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTAfter an 8-20 campaign in 2001-2002, Baron led the Rams to the second round of the NIT and a 20-win season the following year earning him Coach of the Year honors in the Atlantic Ten. Rhody fans were excited about the turnaround and dreaming of possible NCAA Tournament appearances in the not-so-distant future.
They never came.
Despite a 5-year stretch where Baron’s teams won more games (109) than any 5-year stretch in the program’s history, not a single NCAA Tournament appearance was earned.
This is what may ultimately cost Baron his job.
No one will argue that Baron isn’t a good coach, he is. And Baron is a solid individual as well. For the better part of his 11 years at URI, his teams have been very competitive, played hard and won a lot of games. In addition, there were very few problems off the floor and his players graduated from school.
But as the years went by and there were no Tournament appearances, Ram fans began to grow a little restless.
During that historic 109-win 5-year stretch, Rhode Island was in great position on more than one occasion to make it to the Big Dance, but late season collapses prevented them from getting there.
Probably the biggest disappointment was in the 2007-2008 season when the team went (14-1) out of conference but stumbled to a (7-9) record in the A-10 before bowing out in the opening round of their conference tournament.
Some believe that Baron is a man who is wound very tightly and that his teams sometimes reflect that personality. Others close to the program have suggested that Baron drove his kids too hard for too long and didn’t know when to take his foot off the gas pedal so-to-speak. Whether or not that explains why some of his teams stumbled late in the year is a subject for debate but there appears to be some merit to that argument.
This season has been a disaster for Baron’s Rams. Leading scorer Jamal Wilson was kicked off the team for violating team rules, Junior Nikola Malesevic was suspended for a game for violating team rules, was kicked off the bench by Baron during a game and missed significant time because he punched a wall out of frustration. Transfer Andre Malone has become an academic casualty as well. All of these problems in addition to the youth and inexperience on the roster have contributed to their (5-22) record.
But this season is not what may ultimately cost Baron his job at URI. Instead, it was those near misses in regard to the NCAA Tournament.
Had URI made the Tournament a couple of times over the past 10 seasons, Ram fans would probably be able to accept this season as a rebuilding year. But there were no trips to the Big Dance which is why there seems to be little patience amongst the fan base and why Athletic Director Thorr Bjorn has a very difficult decision ahead of him.
Baron has two years remaining on his current contract at what is believed a total of $430,000 annually. The base salary is believed to be about $255,000 per year.
Many suggest that because of the Rhode Island’s financial crisis, that there is no way that Baron could be let go because the state could not justify paying the buy-out while also paying whoever the new head coach might be.
If that is, indeed, the case, what does that say about the program in general? It says that URI basketball will never be able to compete at the big-time division one level with that type of support.
I do not envy Thorr Bjorn. He has a very difficult decision to make this offseason. He knows that Jim Baron is both a good coach and a good man. But he also knows that his only revenue-generating sport has an apathetic and dwindling fan base that is showing up in far fewer numbers at the Ryan Center these days.
It is the type of difficult decision that Bjorn and all athletic directors understand they have to make when take the job.
