The biggest flaw to Mullin coaching was that he was not fully vested at being the SJUBB coach. Not saying he was lazy, I am saying he did not like many of the aspects of being a college coach.
Even if he hired the perfect staff, that would not be enough. The biggest issues were:
-Splitting time between NY and California
-He ran the program like a pro team, instead of treating them like college students. His presence needed to be around more. Even if the staff does everything he wanted, it is still not the same as when the leader of the organization is there. People slack off, it’s the nature of any organization.
-Self awareness, between wearing shorts in Hawaii, sitting on the scores table, trying both his shoes on national television, cursing at refs.
If he won more this would all be considered Quirky or part of Mullin’s personality. Instead these became critiques of how engaged he is with his program.
-The disjointedness of his position. The President sent him up to fail by having Mullin directly report to him. That undermined the first AD, and there was going to be major conflict down the road between Mullin and Cragg.
The President chose the AD over the coach.
Mullin staying longer would have kept the structure out of sync, because he wasn’t Cragg’s pick and it was obvious Cragg wasn’t impressed by him.
Right now the organization is in sync the AD picked Anderson and the President supported that decision. Time will tell if Anderson was the right pick to finally rebuild SJU in the proper way.