After Cael and Brands, is Mark Manning the best coach?

[wrestle87]

2 hours ago, Cornell Kevin said:

No love for Rob Koll? 

This one's tough because Cornell was really good with the Grey Koll combo.  Koll is great at the upward management, Grey clearly runs a good room.  Them being separated has really diluted their success.  Grey is still the one who holds down the NJ pipeline, and between the two of them is clearly the technique wizard. 

Koll going program-hopping in recent years doesn't really improve my estimation of his coaching ability.

 

 

[Cornell Kevin]

On 3/1/2025 at 12:04 PM, wrestle87 said:

This one's tough because Cornell was really good with the Grey Koll combo.  Koll is great at the upward management, Grey clearly runs a good room.  Them being separated has really diluted their success.  Grey is still the one who holds down the NJ pipeline, and between the two of them is clearly the technique wizard. 

Koll going program-hopping in recent years doesn't really improve my estimation of his coaching ability.

Really? You think ? I don’t see it like that at all.  Koll developed and made Cornell what it was long before Mike Grey came along.  I think the program hopping is understandable too, maybe even more impressive. He left Cornell solely because of what the IvY did cancelling the 2021 season.  Then he left stanford cause is Alma matter opened up.  All the meanwhile, Grey earns two trophies off of Koll’s recruits and frame work and Stanford even having some success with Koll’s recruits while he had UNC take a share of Acc title this year.

The thing about Koll is he is the best at running his program like a business. He will always say that he knows his limitations and when they are reached he gets the right people in there.  I think Grey had hit a ceiling and because of that we have seen Yianni and Vito do the same. The two team trophies look good but I would argue that both years a whole lot of points  were left on the table.  Ramirez 3x BRer, no reason for that when the guy has a hit list of David Carr, Quincy Monday x2, and Shane Griffin. Putting Chris Foca up a weight last year after his 32-2 3rd place ncaas finish then he loses first round at ncaas.  He then tech falls a guy in 90 sec that he lost to 3x during the year:  those kind of inconsistencies seem to be a trend. Also not a clue what is going on with the concussions in the room. Actually nobody knows as he didn’t even make a statement to the fan base that Greg D, Cornella and Ungar were not coming  back this year.  We were just left guessing. Between all of that and the lack of interest that he shows in winning dual meets…I am struggling to compare him to Koll in anyway.  I went to quite a few Koll Cornell camps when i was younger and you may be surprised, he really is a wizard. I mean the guy battled with Dave Schultz and Kenny Monday after he won his ncaa title. He has the nastiest foot sweep!

 

 

[dragit]

On 2/26/2025 at 9:49 AM, Jimmy Cinnabon said:

It seems like currently he is the best at maximizing his teams' talent without overreliance on NIL and the transfer portal to buy AAs.

If I read Manning's bio correctly, in a quarter century as a head coach, he's coached two guys to national championships and has had two team trophies, both 4th place.  Hard to say he's the third best coach, clearly I'd put Koll and Tom Ryan over him for starters.