Fordham AD David Roach Sees Growth, Says Too Early to Fully Evaluate Young Rams

Fordham athletic director David Roach told Bleacher Report in July that he wants to see "significant improvement" from this year's team.

He wouldn't put a number on how many wins he expects, instead saying it's something he "can feel."

Roach sat down with B/R again on Wednesday, right before the Rams' final nonconference game against South Carolina State. He was asked for his overall assessment of Fordham's season up until that point.

"I would say, first of all, it's a marathon not a sprint when you play 29 games plus the conference tournament and everything," Roach said. "[We have] some really good young talent that we haven't had in a while—probably the best talent we've had.

"Obviously the two losses to UMass Lowell and Maryland Eastern Shore were disappointing. You look at some of those games on paper and you kind of go 'well, they're games you should win.' But sometimes what should happen and what actually happens isn't the same.

"You can see the younger guys starting to meld and become more comfortable with each other and kind of understand what [head] Coach [Tom] Pecora and the coaching staff want. I think we've rebounded nicely from those two games."

Roach said it's too early in the season for him to perform a full evaluation.

"With any of our programs, we always sit down with the coach and go over every year and talk about the future and what we're looking for," he said. "As I said this summer, it's kind of a feel for [whether] we're headed in the right direction and [whether] the program's improved."

When discussing the first 10 games of the season (Fordham was 4-6 at the time but picked up its fifth win later that day), Roach acknowledged the Rams' youth, a fact that will be part of the narrative all year.

"We're young. We have seven guys that weren't playing last year. It's going to take time to get them going. There are some really good things that you see from a bunch of those guys," Roach said.

"I think we've grown and learned a lot during the nonconference [games]," he would later add.

Last month, prior to Fordham's game against St. John's at Madison Square Garden, Roach set off a bit of a firestorm with comments he made to the New York Post's Zach Braziller about Pecora's future.

“I’ll evaluate everything at the end of the year and see where we’re at,” Roach said in the article.

“After the last couple of years, we’re looking for significant progress in the program," he added. "That means we’ve got to feel like we’ve improved quite a bit and the program is moving forward.”

Not all that different from what he told B/R last summer, but given the timing—Fordham was 3-4 and had those losses to UMass Lowell and Maryland Eastern Shore on its record—and considering that the New York Post is a major New York City newspaper with a large local following, there were plenty of raised eyebrows.

Pecora couldn't have been very pleased. In most cases, an athletic director would either choose not to comment or he or she might go with the vanilla "we support our coach" response. Looking back on it, Roach understands why some may have interpreted his comments as a knock on the head coach.

"In retrospect, I tried to say it in general terms, that we do it in all sports," Roach said. "But it didn't really come out that way. I probably should have said 'it's a marathon, you've got the whole season, we're young, we've got more talent than we've had, Tom's proven in the past he could take young talent and blend them and we fully expect that to happen heading into the A-10 season.'"

Roach was most concerned with the effects his comments may have on recruiting, and didn't think what he said would lead Pecora to have doubts about his future at Rose Hill.

"In retrospect, you might say if I had of said it differently it wouldn't be perceived by potential recruits the way it might have been," Roach said. "That's really what I'm concerned about."

To his supporters, the idea that Pecora could be on the hot seat is troubling. It's true that he's 39-91 since taking over the program prior to the 2010 season. But it's also true that up until this season he hasn't had much to work with, that he's shown he can recruit talent and, perhaps most importantly, that he's trying to rebuild a program that's finished above .500 only once in its 19 seasons in the Atlantic 10. The fact that he runs a clean operation where student-athletes are held accountable in the classroom and on the court is something that must be recognized in this day and age. It also happens to be the Fordham way.

When Pecora was at Hofstra, he won 155 games and got to three National Invitation Tournaments in nine seasons. He won there and, given time, he can win here. But if you go back and look at it, Fordham basketball has had a complicated relationship with time.

Nick Macarchuk, who took the Rams to the NCAA tournament in 1992, lasted four seasons once Fordham made its move to the Atlantic 10. Bob Hill took over and was out the door after four years. And Dereck Whittenburg stayed for six-plus seasons before he was let go. This is Pecora's fifth year. The school can ill afford to start over yet again.

In response to that, Roach insisted there are things in place now that weren't in place in the past, essentially saying that Pecora has more to work with than his predecessors did.

"I think when you look back as an institution, we wanted to be good in basketball but we may not have done the things necessary to be good," Roach said. "Maybe we should have been doing those things 15 years ago, but as an institution we weren't quite there yet. Now we are. I think things are in place and things are different. We expect to be competitive."

Roach understands what the Rams are up against beginning Sunday when VCU comes to town in what will be the first of 18 games against conference opponents. Last year, the A-10 sent six teams to the NCAA tournament. That may not happen this year, but this is still one of the top basketball conferences in the country.

"The A-10 might not be quite as strong as it's been from top to bottom," Roach said. "I think there's some optimism heading in, but it's obviously a tough league."

"I think when you look at it realistically, we're more talented, there's no question, with all the guys," he added. "I think it's very doable to get a bunch of A-10 wins especially at home, [but] tough on the road."

Then, when the season ends, he says he'll be able to evaluate how things went.

"You always look at every season in its full entirety," Roach said.

Unless otherwise noted, quotations in this article were obtained firsthand.

Charles Costello covers the Fordham Rams for Bleacher Report. A full archive of his articles can be found here. Follow him on Twitter: @CFCostello