In the Toledo postgame thread, you said that "Bill has done a horrible job managing his teams for the last 8 years." I don't think it should be surprising that people took that to mean you think that he should be fired or politely asked to retire. Not to mention the people who actually have explicitly said that Bill should be replaced.
I love bill as our coach!!!!!
- Thread starter blood94
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I never used the words fired or move on. My point is that two players covered up a sh!t ton of inefficiencies for the last 8 years.
Name more than maybe 5 or 6 womens programs without a **** ton of deficiencies? Take Clark away from Iowa and they have many deficiencies, most women's teams have 1 maybe 2 players that drive the bus, unless your program name is UConn, Stanford or Sputh Carolina.
No, you didn't. But if others are using those words, and you follow up by saying that he has "done a horrible job" without saying anything positive, people are going to infer that you agree with those who do to move on from him.
Some might also point to the existence of those two players in the program (both in recruiting and development) as something positive that Fennelly did, but I guess we're only supposed to focus on the negatives.
Those who want him gone or unhappy with not beating Toledo, let’s go back to what was Iowa State women’s basketball in 1995. Theresa Becker was coach and won 18 games in three years. She was fired. I don’t remember much about her or the team, but I do remember her press conference after she was fired. Most coaches don’t hold press conferences after losing 80 percent of their games. She did. She cried and cried and cried and said Iowa State would never amount to much for women’s basketball and waaa, waaa, waaa. I do remember telling someone she will never be a head coach again and wouldn’t it be funny if Iowa State did something right and hire a coach who could show Becker what a winning program looked like. Both things ended true. Within two years, she moved to athletic administration and Becker is now compliance officer at Kansas. Bill Fennelly won more games this year than Becker did in her career at Iowa State. I’ll take a 67% win rate over 20% any day.
Actually a pretty solid comparison. I would question when we have been occasionally great. But consistently good.
Let’s be honest - it’s a lot about expectation.
TJ is a god because our expectations were rock bottom the first two years. We vastly exceeded expectation.
This was supposed to be the greatest team
In ISU history - everybody returning and added Soares. Compared to expectation - this team did not have the desired success.
Losing to an apparently poor Toledo team was tough to swallow too. This team did not meet expectation - hence a lot of complaining.
If you're calling for a change you have no concept of what it was like before BF got here.
Soares was to help with that. Her injury and Be’s kinda threw us back to last year the new ladies coming in look to fill some holes.
Bad luck! Often the loss of Jordao is overlooked. She was a half-step faster and a little better than our next best post, therein after Soares went down, Kane.
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Losing Soares was huge, she was the addition to the returning group that caused the hype. Did BF ever have a post that good? I don’t know. You are probably right about throwing great out there but they have been good+ on occasion. This team was weak at 3’s and that’s not good in women’s BB.
Bill is a great ambassador to Iowa State and he has done a great job. The offense needs some adjusting because it gets very stagnant and iso-oriented. I don't know if it was due to lack of shooters, but the offense struggled all year. Injuries obviously played a role, but even when Soares was healthy, we still struggled a bit. With Carleton and Joens, it seemed like our offense was give them the ball and everyone else stand around and watch. I've seen Fennelly's offense look good and innovative over the years so I know he has it in him. He can draw up some really good out of bounds plays. Recruiting has been pretty strong the past few years, which has helped.
Welle was close IMO, but a different type of post. Soares really reminded me of Lauren Cox at Baylor (mean this in a good way)
Johnny Orr was pretty much shown the door. He wasn’t ready to retire. Get your facts straight .
I wouldn’t use 20 wins as the end all be all with the women’s. They play some pretty poor non conference teams. I would like to see them step that up to battle test them sooner.
According to the metrics we had the third toughest schedule in the country and the fifth toughest non-conference schedule. It is always a balance of the buy games to fill the home schedule (the budget dictates what type teams you can bring in), the in-state schools and typically a holiday MTE. Typically who is in the MTE will determine the tough out of conference games. 27 of our 32 games this year where Quad 1 or 2 (for reference South Carolina had 23 of 34 Quad 1 or 2) - which is a REALLY tough schedule. Some of the names may not be national powers that we played but they were mostly solid teams.
As someone said be careful what you wish for.
BF has averaged 21 wins per season over his 28 years. Before him Iowa State had one - count 'em ONE - 20 win season. So his average is better than the pervious best season.
Before BF the Cyclones had one (ONE again) conference season with over a 500 record. BF has had 22 seasons at 500 or above.
BF has averaged 21 wins per season over his 28 years. Before him Iowa State had one - count 'em ONE - 20 win season. So his average is better than the pervious best season.
Before BF the Cyclones had one (ONE again) conference season with over a 500 record. BF has had 22 seasons at 500 or above.