-- [ From: Adam Wodon * EMC.Ver #2.10P ] --
 
> While Jeff Sauer has a lot of wins for Wisconsin and two
> NCAA Championships, he's not a "program-building" type of
> coach...  his championship team in 1983 was recruited by
> Bob Johnson, and Sauer even admits that it was not HIS
> team, but Johnson's. His team in 1990 was so
> talent-stocked (Shuchuk, Tancill, Derksen, Osiecki, etc)
> and played so well together that they probably could have
> won if *I* had coached them :) The Wisconsin program was
> built by Bob Johnson, and Sauer just continued what
> Johnson started.  If we could mention past coaches,
> Johnson would be #1 on my list.
 
I have stayed out of this debate, because I know relatively nothing
about it.  However, the above sounds very contradictory.  He's not a
"program-builder" because he won with Johnson's players -- then he won
a title with a "stacked" team.  So, who exactly got all those players
in 1990 -- it wasn't Johnson.
   If you mean program-builder in terms of starting from scratch,
that's unfair, because things can go downhill pretty quickly under a
new coach, but they didn't (see, Harvard, BC, etc..).  All criticism of
Sauer seems so silly to me (as an outsider and someone who heard some
when in Milwaukee last month).
 
    (BTW - the Harvard thing was not meant as a knock on Tommassoni).
 
AW
 
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