I'd give him a B, I have a hard to going any lower for a team that reached the sweet sixteen which has not happened often in this program. I wasn't a huge fan of some of his coaching moves, thought he rode the starters too much, thought we needed a lot more Cooke instead of Ashton for most of the year. He struggled connecting with McKay, which I'm sure is not easy. He came into a very tough spot though and next year will tell us a lot more about him.
Steve Prohm Report Card thus far
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I'm not sure you can- I tried for you. No big deal, you'll just have to live with your shame.
Just kidding, of course.
I give him a B. He got screwed by the timing of his hire and the loss of Naz. It also took the players way too long to buy in, which is a shame. This season won't define him as ISU's head coach though. The real coaching job is just beginning.
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I give him an A. Why? Because it was fun. Win or lose they gave it everything they had. I few more buckets go in we finish in the top 3 of the big 12. We played every game to the buzzer and lost some heart breakers but we always had a chance.
B+.
11 regular season/conference tournament losses were the most we've seen in a long time. That being said, a lot of the things that went wrong this year were not his fault.
First, he was hired extremely late because Hoiberg had to wait so long for the Bulls job to open up - so late that he had virtually no input on recruiting for 2015-16. While it's unlikely any freshmen he would have recruited would have contributed much this season, he missed out on the opportunity to recruit any potential immediately-eligible transfers that might have been able to contribute, especially transfers that would have been able to help McKay and Niang in the post and with rebounding.
Second, while he inherited a highly talented, veteran roster, that veteran roster was largely set in its ways. While Prohm coaches a similar style to Hoiberg, there are enough differences, and it wasn't until later in the season that he was able to figure out the balance between "status quo" with what the players were used to and "rocking the boat" to implement the differences.
Third, once again, while it was a talented, veteran roster, it was a flawed roster, and the flaws became highly apparent as he had to deal with injuries (Long), players going "mental" (McKay), players not doing what Prohm asked of them (Cooke), and players simply not ready to contribute outside of spot minutes (Carter, Babb, and Ashton) during the year. This led to having no depth throughout the year, at times going only 6 deep. Several posters in the past have argued that a lineup really only needs to go 7-8 deep. We found out this year that this is not the case. Perhaps if we had more depth and bigger bodies we might have been able to play more physical defense and be more physical on the boards because we would have more fouls to play with.
That being said, until last night, we didn't lose a game this year by more than 10 points, which means, in spite of all of the disadvantages Prohm had going against him, we were in every single game playing one of the nation's most difficult schedules. And even though we lost 11 games, the Committee still rewarded us with a 4-seed in the NCAA Tournament.
I think had a few more things gone our way this year this would have been an easy A.
11 regular season/conference tournament losses were the most we've seen in a long time. That being said, a lot of the things that went wrong this year were not his fault.
First, he was hired extremely late because Hoiberg had to wait so long for the Bulls job to open up - so late that he had virtually no input on recruiting for 2015-16. While it's unlikely any freshmen he would have recruited would have contributed much this season, he missed out on the opportunity to recruit any potential immediately-eligible transfers that might have been able to contribute, especially transfers that would have been able to help McKay and Niang in the post and with rebounding.
Second, while he inherited a highly talented, veteran roster, that veteran roster was largely set in its ways. While Prohm coaches a similar style to Hoiberg, there are enough differences, and it wasn't until later in the season that he was able to figure out the balance between "status quo" with what the players were used to and "rocking the boat" to implement the differences.
Third, once again, while it was a talented, veteran roster, it was a flawed roster, and the flaws became highly apparent as he had to deal with injuries (Long), players going "mental" (McKay), players not doing what Prohm asked of them (Cooke), and players simply not ready to contribute outside of spot minutes (Carter, Babb, and Ashton) during the year. This led to having no depth throughout the year, at times going only 6 deep. Several posters in the past have argued that a lineup really only needs to go 7-8 deep. We found out this year that this is not the case. Perhaps if we had more depth and bigger bodies we might have been able to play more physical defense and be more physical on the boards because we would have more fouls to play with.
That being said, until last night, we didn't lose a game this year by more than 10 points, which means, in spite of all of the disadvantages Prohm had going against him, we were in every single game playing one of the nation's most difficult schedules. And even though we lost 11 games, the Committee still rewarded us with a 4-seed in the NCAA Tournament.
I think had a few more things gone our way this year this would have been an easy A.
I'd give him an A..Put together a nice class for next year, handled the transition from Fred well, dealt with the team head case, has a really good staff put together, kept us in the top 25 all season which got us a lot of exposure, had the respect of his players, and last but not least he's a quality person who represented Iowa State remarkably well!! Thanks coach Prohm!!
B. It was a tough situation but good one. He did a good job of moving from what Fred did to what he wants to do. He took a good team and used it to make the changes he need to make this program better going forward. The Naz and Monte injuries and the lack of depth, were out of his hands. IMO he has things in place to move this program forward in the future. The program as a whole is more stable that it has been the last 2 years.
demoncore1031
Well-Known Member
B is a good answer. I think Prohm shouldn't be judged much on this season. Next year he will be in complete control of the team and we will be playing his style so I'm excited to see what happens. Right now I think he is a good coach and a good fit for ISU, but that could change in the next couple years.
I'll give him something in the C area. He did a good job of handling the off court stuff and other things out of his control(Naz and Morris) but I'm not sold on his coaching ability quite yet.
Disappointed with the season somewhat. At the same time, a lot of the reasons had nothing to do with Prohm, IMO. Naz's injury was probably the biggest blow of all to this team. We missed his leadership. We also missed his presence on the court. Jameel having his struggles hurt us a lot. I actually liked the fact that Prohm did not cave in and let everyone know he was in charge. Monte's injury hurt us in the NCAA's. Monte was hurting a lot. Give him credit for giving everything he had. But he just wasn't himself physically.
Overall, I would give Prohm a B. He couldn't pull the rabbit out of the hat to get the A. But overall he did a pretty good job. IMO, he is a decent coach that we can rally around. The players seemed to embrace him and love him at the end of the season. One season is not enough time to make a judgement. But IMO Prohm took over a tough situation and dealt with it pretty well. I definitely would not make a knee jerk decision and terminate him as coach. And I have confidence that he will do a decent job at Iowa State and that we will have very good basketball teams in the future. It will be awfully hard to replace Georges Niang. One of the all time Cyclone Greats.
Overall, I would give Prohm a B. He couldn't pull the rabbit out of the hat to get the A. But overall he did a pretty good job. IMO, he is a decent coach that we can rally around. The players seemed to embrace him and love him at the end of the season. One season is not enough time to make a judgement. But IMO Prohm took over a tough situation and dealt with it pretty well. I definitely would not make a knee jerk decision and terminate him as coach. And I have confidence that he will do a decent job at Iowa State and that we will have very good basketball teams in the future. It will be awfully hard to replace Georges Niang. One of the all time Cyclone Greats.
Yeah. **** that Hoiberg guy for destroying Naz's hips, Williams and Noskowiak not showing up, and Cooke and McKay not being team players early on. Clearly all his fault
Prohm had a lot of things working against him this year, players attitudes, injuries, rule changes that made an average defense even more vulnerable, preseason expectations that were unrealistic (this just simply wasn't a top 5/10 type of team). All I think he did a good job, especially when you consider he put together a pretty solid recruiting class so far and that he seems to have won over the locker room. I'd give him a solid B.
Personally, I think this team would have won at least 6 more games with Naz. He was good for 12 to 20 points a game and would have allowed everyone more rest. He was money late in games and his injury cost us dearly. 8 man rotation, another scorer and rebounder would have allowed us to finish with a better seed and likely final 4.