...wasn't when BP replaced Jim Donnan. It goes without saying that people liked Donnan because he won, not so much because he was a good-ol-boy like Pruett.
No, the last time we had to replace a coach as popular and as loved as Bob Pruett was when Lee Moon, literally overnight, dropped the bomb that Huck was out AND ALREADY, before anyone could even utter the words "national sear....", Dana Altman had a contract in his hand and was on his way to Huntington.
Interestingly, for the next several years, some number of Herd fans would wish that Dan Bell -- a Huckabay assistant who had married into the Tri-State family, and a very likeable guy by all accounts -- had gotten the post, even in the dark light of the NCAA sanctions due to that program.
Can we learn anything from that experience?
Not much is translatable to this current situation since Altman was coming from K-State.
EXCEPT... we can debate the reasons for it, but what can easily be agreed upon is that Altman was never accepted.
And chief reason #1, in my humble (?) opinion... the appointment always was considered a Moon appointment without any legitimate outside input. Then, I have to add, when he actually got here and his personality was as quiet as Huck's was loud... total culture shock for Herd Nation.
The "take-away" lesson, though, is that a trumped-up "national search" does Larry Kueck no favors... if it isn't flagrantly obvious that all candidates will be given genuine consideration -- and in this context, Marcum will have to work hard to convince us even if it is actually true -- then this thing begins to spin out of control, and Marshall moves more toward its post-Huck days than toward its post-Donnan days, to be sure.
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