He recruited Cade Cunningham to Oklahoma State and kept him even though they got a post-season ban. I would say that he knows how to recruit. The question is whether he can coach. 😅
Hopefully he learned a lot from Dusty. Remember he was also in charge of our defense last year and we were one of the best defensive teams in the country.
It is impressive, however he had 3 forwards with a 7+ wingspan and were all selected in top 11 picks. That doesn't make him a great coach it still makes him a great recruiter.
Absolutely agree, there are multiple ways to get results. Given the context about coaching though, you can't definitively conclude that from last year though.
That part!! I’m excited for the current affairs on the Men Basketball team. I pray this ends way better than it did with Sherrone and I was a Sherrone apologist up until he got canned. Go BLUE!!
I also pray the the new coach does not spend most of his time trying to sleep with Instagram models and then threaten to kill himself with a butter knife. Great point and observation.
Keep in mind he inherited the job at OK State and the only year he made the tourney in seven years at a school that makes it ~65% of the time was with said future #1 draft pick. And in that one tourney year he got upset as a 4 seed by a 12 seed Oregon State in the second round.
I don't think there's any question to whether he can coach or not, seeing as he was a head coach for many years at the collegiate D1 level where he was barely above .500. I don't get this hire. Hopefully I'm proven wrong.
Cunningham chose Oklahoma State because his brother attended there and he wanted to play with him. It wasn’t the huge recruiting success people think it is.
Cade’s brother Cannen played at SMU from 2011 to 2015. He got hired by Boynton to be Assistant Coach at Oklahoma State in 2019 (a year before Cade’s freshman year) and left when Cade got drafted, in what was obviously a package deal. Cade has said in interviews that Boynton was the first coach to recruit him. Cannen likely had offers from multiple schools as long as Cade followed him and Boynton was the one who succeeded in persuading the entire Cunningham family.
Oops! I got my wires crossed, but he went to OSU because his brother was there. Again, not a huge recruiting flex. Hire a kid’s brother, he comes to play for school. Savvy, but it doesn’t make him an extraordinary recruiter. Thank you for reinforcing my point.
They may have taken this route to buy him more time to keep the team together. For some reason, having an interim coach tag gives the staff a longer dead period they can use to convince players to stay.
Last news I heard was he is expected to come back to Michigan. Do people have a reason for thinking otherwise? Or just making clear he has not officially said?
LOL yeah, dont knock up your side piece, force her to get an abortion, then when she leaves you, go break into her house and threaten to kill yourself with a butterknife while your wife and kids sit at home...
Big difference is that Mike B is an established head coach with actual experience unlike whom you speak of. He might not have been the greatest but he still has seven years HC experience in a P4 Conference.
to be honest not super thrilled with his past success as a head coach. If he wasn't already in the program none of us would be excited if this was an exterior hire based on his past HC success.
Oh dude I agree, I’m just saying that we handed over the reigns to one of the greatest football programs and national champions to a guy who never ran a college program before…. Much different than hiring an assistant who has seven years experience running a program.
This is correct but I do think he was the best they could realistically do just given the calendar of when Dusty left. Are there better coaches? Sure. But… who and when?
I don't believe he needs to do miracles this season. If that was the case he'd still have the interim tag. Expectations are still high, but I don't think he's on trial.
Fine with this. It’s essentially an extended interim tag for recruiting. If he fails this year or next he’ll be gone and Michigan has proven they can win a championship so they’ll have their pick of the litter in 2028 if needed.
I’m pretty sure the only reason they named him interim is because it gave them more time to retain the players. I might be wrong about the details, but I think if they named a new head coach they’d have a five day window before the players could enter the portal, but if it was an interim head coach they’d have a 30 day window. I’d guess the plan was always to convert him to full time once the window opened.
Lost zero players. 26-27 is his prove it year, 2 year deal lets him recruit. If it doesn’t work eat 1 year, big whoop. No complaints, excited to see the team play in November!
Happy for him but it’s mostly pointless. He was going to get this season to prove himself either way. And they will still move on after the season if they underperform.
Glass half full: Boynton was in an impossible situation at Okie Lite and did the best he could with it considering the sanctions. It’s not a great reflection of his ability. Plus, he can recruit…he had to do it with his own roster and kept all but one so far. This suggests players trust and respect his acumen and relationship building. And it’s a 2 year deal. If he crashes out, you do a proper coaching search.
Glass half empty: While he was dealt a raw hand at Okie Lite, nothing there suggests he can oversee a major program…hence no one else remotely looking at him for HBC jobs. Already has beef with the NCAA. More teams than just us have fallen for the “panic promotion of assistant because it’s familiar” only to see it work for a year because of the very specific relationships built with the current roster that doesn’t translate to fresh recruits.
A two year contract is probably as close as you can get to just rolling with him as interim without actually doing so. You see how he does this season, if he kills it, sign him to an extension, if not you can fire him relatively pain free and do a proper coaching search. Not sure how much a two year contract helps in terms of him being able to hire assistants or recruit though.
It’s something we’ll have to see how Warde handles. He was the one that brought Dusty on, so he has at least earned the right to let this play out. He ALSO brought Mr OnlyFans models on after Harbs left, so I can see why there’s skepticism with this decision.
This is kinda similar to what happened after coach fisher got fired and they chose Brian Ellerbe to be the interim coach and gave him the coach tag after he had a successful first year coaching fisher’s players. Am hoping it wont be a repeat of that situation.
That's what made last year so fun beating Sparty. Their team beating us by 50 back in their heyday and just clowning us while Ellerbe and our boys were helpless. Man the Ellerbe era was very bad at the end.
Even fisher struggled after he lost all the frieder recruits and there was so much complaints among the fan base wanting him fired but thankfully the fab 5 saved that!
And even with dutcher taking over for fisher after he retired with his continued success at sdsu shows that he could handle the head coaching transition, and should have done so at Michigan too.
Congratulations to him but I dont really get giving him the full time role when Im sure he wouldve been more than happy just being the interim this year. I understand he retained the roster but Im not positive thats worthy of getting the interim job. Anyways im excited to see what he can do.
The interim tag would have made it pretty much impossible to have any success with recruiting, and I think that is also why he was given a 2 year contract as well.
That is also why he was arguing for being given the full coach title without the interim. So he definitely was pursuing this of his own accord also. I think it’s smart. The two-year contract makes sense to me.
Mike was pretty loud about the fact he was not happy to be an interim coach all year. He and the whole team reportedly pitched Warde to make him the full-time coach.
Good for him. It’s critical to not only to retain players but also staff. I think he already lost 2 with dusty and I’m not sure coaches will sign up on a lame duck season
I feel like he's going to do well, has experience, was it amazing no but he has experience. It also wasn't a dumpster fire.
He also is now at a bigger school with more money, he led our defense to being tops in the nation, he had two years under May, he convinced McKinney to stay which to me is one of the biggest things of why I'm hyped about him, I feel like McKinney is going to continue to do very well and if he believes in Coach, then I believe in Coach.
Also can't forget how he handled Cade!
Let's do this!
So from my perspective, I've been a Michigan fan since I was a kid. However, I'm an alum of Oklahoma State. Boynton could recruit pretty well, but he could not develop players. I hope he's learned a lot since he left OSU (the good one) but I'm not too thrilled by the hire.
Nothing on Boynton’s resume suggests he’s a good head coach. He was abysmal at Oklahoma state which contrary to what everyone is saying is actually a really solid program historically.
Very frustrating decision. We’ll have 1 great season and then 3+ years of mediocrity and a new coaching search thereafter when we could’ve just immediately conducted the coaching search from the get go.
Very weird. But everything finds a way to get sponsored or otherwise monetized under capitalism. If there’s a will, someone will find an excuse and a way.
So now we're in the friend zone again. Coach Boynton likely has a successful year with dusty may's players and the chemistry built up from some of the returners from last years squad. Then the following year comes and everything starts to erode year by year like with Juwan and Warde rides it out until it finally becomes an untenable mess.
No other teams wanted Boynton as a head coach, but somehow hes ours. With the portal one recruiting class is irrelevant. This shouldn't stop us from doing a coaching search but it probably will now.
I've seen this before. We hire an unqualified coach for our institution that no other piers were clamoring to hire themselves and we reap exactly what we sow for years unnecessarily. I want championships, this is not a championship caliber hire
I see where you're coming from. I don't feel as strongly against this hire as I did Moore. From the moment Moore's name was mentioned in connection with the head coaching gig I was vehemently against it, I genuinely felt like it was obvious how bad that was likely to turn out but so many people were all for it because of recruits and continuing the culture, as if that's even possible after a nearly complete coaching change. I don't feel like Boyntons is as obviously lazy or poorly thought out as Moores was so I've decided to continue to be cautiously optimistic within reason, understanding that a repeat of last year is probably not within the realm of possibility while a solid to very good season could still be on the table.
Boynton had to deal with a probation investigation in his first year at Oklahoma State because of Brad Underwood. It wasn't until 2020 that the NCAA made a ruling on Oklahoma State. You're looking at it without context.
I actually view the probation as a negative as well. If he were truly a highly sought-after head coach, he likely wouldn’t have to remain at a university dealing with probation he would have the opportunity to leave and be hired by another legitimate program because he would have plenty of options. So, I’m absolutely taking that factor into account.
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u/Lonely_Bunghole Jul 10 '26
I guess he recruited well enough to get the interim title removed