Our next head coach

[M]

I commented.  I do wonder how many other head coaching openings gave an interview to an NAIA coach?

[valpotx]

That is one of the worst researched articles I have ever read.  I am sure that he was considered, but as wh mentioned, Valpo is of a stature that does not need to hire NAIA D-1 or D-2 HCs to the same position at our school.  We are a few decades away from the need to do so.  Our job would have been a top target for just about any P5 assistant coach, as well as the many mid and lower major HCs below our stature that would love to coach a consistent winner, and that is an obvious launching pad to a P5 HC gig.  Greg was a fantastic Crusader during his playing days and when he was on staff.  However, he really needs to get experience at an NCAA D-2 or D-1 institution as a HC, before he is going to be considered for our HC job.

Let's get serious about this guys.  As much as the Drews did for us, it is the culture of winning that has also helped us be a consistent winner.  We have 2 losing seasons in the last 22-23 seasons?  How many schools can say that??

[NativeCheesehead]

To heck with a comment.  I'm leaving him a voicemail and encourage all to do the same.  Keep in mind, as I will, we represent the fan base of our school but I think a respectful message is in order.  I for one think Greg should have been at least interviewed. But this is nothing more than a hit piece disguised as journalism.  Complete garbage.

260-461-8240
Email: tdavis@news-sentinel.com

[agibson]

disguised as journalism

To be fair, it's labeled as an opinion piece, not a news story, right? Still, particularly if the guy's other use a journalist, you'd hope he's stay on this side of the truth, make it maybe a little clearer what's on firm ground and what's speculation, etc.

[SanityLost17]

Moving from NAIA to D2 is not going to help Greg's resume in any way.  Both give scholarships and both have virtually the same caliber of players/athletes.  D1 players who don't work out transfer to NAIA schools just as often as D2 schools.  Lots of very talented athletes pick NAIA over NCAA because they have different restrictions. 

So, with this understanding.  The difference between the success of Linc Darner and the success of Greg Tonagel is not as great as this board seems to think.   

That said.  If it is the desire of Tonagel to be a D1 head coach, he needs to "play the game" and be a low-major D1 head coach or be an mid-major to high major D1 assistant.   

[rogerwilco]

Pearl did lots of things that Bryce couldn't do...
Scott, well...that's another conversation. 

[chef]

Not a fear comparison, both Pearl and Ryan were long-time Big Ten assistant coaches prior to becoming head coaches - Pearl at Iowa and Ryan at Wisconsin.

[VU75]

Next time you spot him holler, wave, smile then strut on over and deliver a sucker punch. This has powers of enlightenment that you can not imagine

Sounds like a Trump tweet.

[VULB#62]

http://news-sentinel.com/sports/columns/Valpo-AD-drops-the-ball-in-ignoring-Tonagel?platform=hootsuite

Interesting article.  I have no problem with hiring from within, but I think an interview would have been nice, just for due diligence.  Hopefully there was at least some phone conversation between the two camps talking about what it would take to ever be a head coach here, because I do think Tonagel has something special about him.

Leave it to Tom Davis to give his 2 cents worth.  He finally puts something in his paper, other than news service articles, about Valpo and then it is criticism.  Isn't it funny that he never mentions anything about Butler's problems, and never criticizes them.

valpo64 you hit the nail on the head! I am sure that Tom is reading our forum and somehow came up with this brilliant angle of an article based on some of our posts just to kick VU in the shin.  I will be asking him if he even talked to Greg or Mark and if he did why there were no comments attributed to either one of them.  It really takes guts to write that article completely out of the blue when you haven't lifted one finger to cover Valpo in as long as I can remember.  If Paul Oren had written this article I could maybe understand (I am sure he would have at least included some quotes from Greg or Mark), but to be completely unassociated with the program and then to write something this scathing is ridiculous.

For another perspective, how about Mike Hutton in the Trib....

[tweet]718936915429441538[/tweet]

[valpo64]

Since when has Tom Davis researched any article about Valpo.  Funny he never had a problem with his Bulldogs doing it the Butler way by continuing to hire from within, with perhaps the current coach who I believe was a player and asst.coach at BU  altho I'm not sure about that.  The entire past season he never wrote an article about VU even though I believe we had more Div. 1 wins than any D-1 school in IN.  And, he is the Sports Editor.

[atkins]

Davis' column contains presumptions, but at least he has great passion in support of Tonagel.  Keep in mind this is just the sports guy for the Fort Wayne local paper, which is not the New York Times or even the (higher circulation and more highly regarded) Times of NW Indiana.   

[agibson]

just the sports guy for the Fort Wayne local paper, which is not the New York Times or even the (higher circulation and more highly regarded) Times of NW Indiana.   

Huh. Whattaya know?

I'd begun to think of Ft. Wayne as surprisingly a sort of "urban" center. But, I guess Lake and Porter county together are substantial.

Post Tribune might be around 50k circulation, Ft. Wayne's Journal Gazette closer to 60k, and the NW Indiana Times maybe more like 80k or 90k.

That other Times has about 1.5M paid digital subscribers, 600k print. Behind maybe only the Wall Street Journal, among American papers.  (The Tribune does about 400k and the Sun Times a bit more.)

[bbtds]

From items I've seen in the NWI Times they also cover parts of the South Chicago suburbs.

[FWalum]

It appears that the paper has removed all of our comments from the website.  I didn't think any of them were that horrible.  Papers should welcome that kind of discussion on their website!

[a3uge]

Since when has Tom Davis researched any article about Valpo.  Funny he never had a problem with his Bulldogs doing it the Butler way by continuing to hire from within, with perhaps the current coach who I believe was a player and asst.coach at BU  altho I'm not sure about that.  The entire past season he never wrote an article about VU even though I believe we had more Div. 1 wins than any D-1 school in IN.  And, he is the Sports Editor.

Couple things
1.Holtmann went to Taylor University
2. He was the head coach at Gardner-webb then was an assistant coach at Butler for 1 year and then became interim coach after miller took a medical leave
3. Until we win a NCAA tournament (in the near past) we will not get nearly as much press as we think we should
4. We did have more wins but our only good win was against Ore. St.
5. Most important what he says doesn't matter to how valpo ends up doing with our new head coach

I think you're completely missing the point - it's not whether Butler is more relevant than Valpo, or if Valpo should be covered more, or that Valpo didn't have enough good wins because nobody wanted to play us, it's that he literally only writes articles to dump on Valpo. I think it's reasonable to point out his hypocrisy and shoddy journalism (or whatever it's called).

[ValpoDad89]

In Indy, Butler is far more relevant but in Chicago, we should capitalize on the irrelevance of DePaul, Loyola, UIC and Northwestern. Chicago has a far better populated area. We have relevance in context to those bumbling schools. How we capitalize on that is up to the university and their marketing department.

[FWalum]

Since when has Tom Davis researched any article about Valpo.  Funny he never had a problem with his Bulldogs doing it the Butler way by continuing to hire from within, with perhaps the current coach who I believe was a player and asst.coach at BU  altho I'm not sure about that.  The entire past season he never wrote an article about VU even though I believe we had more Div. 1 wins than any D-1 school in IN.  And, he is the Sports Editor.

Couple things
1.Holtmann went to Taylor University
2. He was the head coach at Gardner-webb then was an assistant coach at Butler for 1 year and then became interim coach after miller took a medical leave
3. Until we win a NCAA tournament (in the near past) we will not get nearly as much press as we think we should
4. We did have more wins but our only good win was against Ore. St.
5. Most important what he says doesn't matter to how valpo ends up doing with our new head coach

I think you're completely missing the point - it's not whether Butler is more relevant than Valpo, or if Valpo should be covered more, or that Valpo didn't have enough good wins because nobody wanted to play us, it's that he literally only writes articles to dump on Valpo. I think it's reasonable to point out his hypocrisy and shoddy journalism (or whatever it's called).

Tom wrote 2 articles that included Valpo coverage this past year.  One was about the IPFW game, (a game he better have written about considering it was a Fort Wayne Team) and the "AD dropped the ball" article.  The NIT articles were all AP stories.  In my twitter conversation with TD about Derrik Smits (a player TD seemed to be actively recruiting for Butler, interviewing either Derrik or Rik 4 times on then News-Sentinel video channel and YouTube) going to Valpo, TD informed me that Derrik "didn't continue to progress at a rate that the high-major coaches wanted to see. Valpo good fit for him." Arguably an accurate statement I suppose, but could have been said in a less snarky way.  I'm sure Butler wouldn't have kicked him to the curb if he had committed there and that TD quite possibly would have had a different assessment.

Everyone on this board knows that I think the Fort Wayne papers should do a better job of covering VU basketball.  I know we aren't nationally relevant like IU, Purdue and perhaps Butler, but in a Lutheran town that quite literally helped birth the current iteration of the school, I don't understand the lack of awareness and almost disdain for Valpo coverage. We can get articles in SI but we are not relevant enough for the local Fort Wayne media. Contrast our article to this one from TD about Butler's transition. Holtmann Takes Unforeseen Route to Coaching Goal.

Oh by the way, TD does seem to like Greg Tonagel and has written some very respectful and complimentary pieces about IWU and Greg in the past 12-14 months.

[rogerwilco]

I'm really confused about why people should care about what one turd-burglar newspaper writer from Fort Wayne(!) has to say about anything.

This was probably his most-successful column because all of you clicked on his article (troll bait success).

He'll probably write more of the same because it got so much feedback. Some of you need to learn to not take the bait.

Relax. Who cares? Don't take the bait. Jeez, is this your first rodeo per media trolling? Wake up. It's an honor to be trolled. Don't feed 'em.

Some pisswhistle 1.5 hours east on Route 30 has a shaded opinion? Nah, I'm good. Really, do you care? I sleep well.

[a3uge]

I'm really confused about why people should care about what one turd-burglar newspaper writer from Fort Wayne(!) has to say about anything.

This was probably his most-successful column because all of you clicked on his article (troll bait success).

He'll probably write more of the same because it got so much feedback. Some of you need to learn to not take the bait.

Relax. Who cares? Don't take the bait. Jeez, is this your first rodeo per media trolling? Wake up. It's an honor to be trolled. Don't feed 'em.

Some pisswhistle 1.5 hours east on Route 30 has a shaded opinion? Nah, I'm good. Really, do you care? I sleep well.

[FWalum]

I'm really confused about why people should care about what one turd-burglar newspaper writer from Fort Wayne(!) has to say about anything.

This was probably his most-successful column because all of you clicked on his article (troll bait success).

He'll probably write more of the same because it got so much feedback. Some of you need to learn to not take the bait.

Relax. Who cares? Don't take the bait. Jeez, is this your first rodeo per media trolling? Wake up. It's an honor to be trolled. Don't feed 'em.

Some pisswhistle 1.5 hours east on Route 30 has a shaded opinion? Nah, I'm good. Really, do you care? I sleep well.

OMG how did you know I was emailing TD again at 1AM last night. Not Kidding

[usc4valpo]

89 - you have a point, but there has been a long debate to whether Valparaiso is part of Chicagoland, not to mention they are in Indiana instead of Illinois. Many folks in Valpo for strange reasons do not want to be associated with Chicagoland.


College basketball in Chicago is definitely at an alltime low, and it should not be that way.

[StlVUFan]

3. Until we win a NCAA tournament (in the near past) we will not get nearly as much press as we think we should

There really is no need to constantly point this out.  We all know this depressingly well already.

[VULB#62]

It would be cool if the Athletic Strategic Plan would list "win at least one freaking NCAA Tournament Game" as an objective.  Then, because Department plans emanate from the overall enterprise SP, the BofT will suddenly realize they have to shove funds to the Athletic Department to meet their responsibilities.  that's assuming that the BofT assumed that they must have approved the Athletic Departments Plan.

[ValpoDad89]

RogerWilco and a3uge nail meet head, spot on. And Usc4valpo, living in Chicago and knowing how frustrated people are every year for the last few, to want a winning college program, despite what the Valpo residents want, sell ourselves to the disenfranchised. DePaul and Loyola will suck for the next few years, Chris Collins cannot get NU going plus he's destined to be another failure from the Coach K tree. Heck, ND is an hour, an hour and a half east of Valpo and they get big time Chicago media coverage. Both football and basketball. We did get some pub on both ESPN and WSCR with our NIT run. Boers and Bernstein talked about Valpo for 15-30 minutes when we were playing in the NIT Championship that night. That is some positive local press.

[StlVUFan]

Boers and Bernstein talked about Valpo for 15-30 minutes when we were playing in the NIT Championship that night.

I just listened to the entire show from 3/31.  Nary a Valpo mention.  Which day were you referring to?