A Sea Of Red

All sources point to Ritchie returning to the Vines Center. Bring your chat here...

CBS Sports
Lynchburg News & Advance

Getting Reacquainted with Ritchie:
1996-98 w/ Portland State (24-29 overall, 16-16 in conference)
1998-00 w/ Colorado State (37-23 overall, 15-13 in conference) ** NIT Quarterfinals
2000-02 w/ Oregon State (22-37 overall, 8-28 in conference)
2002-07 w/ New Mexico (82-69 overall, 31-43 in conference) ** NCAA 1st Round
2007-09 w/ Liberty (39-28 overall, 19-13 in conference) ** CIT Quarterfinals
Overall: 204-186 (.523%)

"There was honestly not a day that I thought I would leave Liberty, except for the day or day and a half prior to leaving," McKay recalled this week. "I was very fond of the people there, the mission of the university, the players that we had." - Ritchie McKay (November 31st, 2013; VirginiaSports.com)

Welcome back Ritchie! Let's go to work.

It would be hilarious if the locked thread was premature. lol

Glad he is back. I hope he brings his offense and the UVa defense.

At this point - it'd be worth the laugh. Scout, ESPN, Lang, etc... are all reporting it's a done deal. Hard to argue with that.

TOLD YOU GUYS!!!!..lets get it on

Even his wiki page list's him as LU head coach already!!

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritchie_McKay

Goodman is going in at Liberty with this hire right now on twitter. don't blame him. hire a search firm for this? Lets hope he actually stays more than 4 years.

Love it. Probably won't feel the same if we mimic UVA's style of play but at least we'll compete. Also, anyone who wants to mock our diversity should know that two of the highest paid faculty on campus are minorities. That's pretty cool.

I love this hire. McKay was the coach my first year or 2 at LU, back when the team was still watchable. Hope he gets us back there.

I already have a bad feeling about this. I hope i'm wrong.

Welcome Back Ritchie!!!

Liberty - the land of recycled coaches.

is Layer the associate HC?

what a joke of an AD.

Does he clean house or retain assistants?

It could be worse but I can't say I'm excited. As always time will tell.

Very pleased with this hire. To Sly's point, if McKay really sent his daughter to LU, then he truly meant every word he said while coach here. Fact of the matter was he saw his rebuild turn into a rebuild with 1 transfer. He chose to go to UVA, and I believe he had every intention of coming back. 5 years at a top 5-10 program is nothing but gold for us.

Welcome Home Richie. Let's get it.

Actual Sauce,

http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketb ... chie-mckay

In all seriousness, I think Ritchie is a great hire, and am glad to have him back in the fold.

Now hold up there BSK, none of us really know what all went down with the search committee and the process leading to this hire outside of the occasional updates from Lang and Manson (and the cryptic stuff from Neo, who Im still not totally sure about). Barber has handled this search about as well as he could have and my guess is that he was the best candidate available of the ones who remained as this went forward.

VAGolf- that was my first question as well, because the assistants are as much an important piece to this puzzle as the head man himself.

FFG- I hope that youre wrong too...I would love to see RMK do some big things with this bunch...but really his recruiting is going to begin as soon as he arrives and meets with the returning players.

Bigsouthking wrote:Liberty - the land of recycled coaches.

is Layer the associate HC?

what a joke of an AD.

Yeah, that's really uncalled for,

thecaveallegory wrote:Actual Sauce,

http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketb ... chie-mckay

This "actual sauce" is a bit weak. McKay may very well be the next hire. But that fact that this reporter can't even nail down our announced press conference time and goes with "within the next 24 hours" makes me question his source. It could be a UVA source...

Bigsouthking wrote:Liberty - the land of recycled coaches.

is Layer the associate HC?

what a joke of an AD.

Congratulations. Dumbest post of the year

Again, someone who <might> be "in the know" tweeted: "So pumped. Well done being able to pull this off....quite a few of other schools tried to do what we just did." Could it be we don't really know who will be introduced?

The hilarious series of events as I understand it:
-We hire a search firm.
-We get our number 1 guy on campus and he says no.
-Our back up plan is to hire a former coach who left the program to become an assistant.
-Said Back up plan makes hiring search firm a waste of money.
-we look as ridiculous to the national media as Depaul does.
-We announce said back up plan on the exact date he left the school 6 years prior.

hmmm think i about covered it.

I'm not going to fault barber for this. I truly believe that he really wanted Hoffman and he just said no thanks. that puts the AD in a bad position and I don't think anyone else the search firm came up with would have been a "homerun hire" so we go back to what we think will work. I sure hope they are right.

That is if the national media is correct. lol