Craig leaving early will hurt much more than not getting Barnes. We need a good year next year.
Goals for MBB program-long term
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Craig leaving early will hurt much more than not getting Barnes. We need a good year next year.
If Craig leaves early this year then we can likely continue our streak of losing our best player for two more years... Brackins this year and Gilstrap next...
I knew this thread wouldn't make it one page without being a coaching debate. Afterall, it was teed up that way.
Think about this: How many games has coaching cost us this season. How many games did we come out with a completely stupid game plan or blew major in game decisions? There may have been one. I don't recall many head scratching moments. The fact is the players we have can't compete in the Big XII for 40 minutes (besides 1). Everyone else is 7th or 8th man in on the upper 75% of Big XII teams. Why are we so undermanned? We lost our top player every year for the past 3 seasons (and probably will be 4). ISU can't sustain anything with losses like that. We aren't Kansas. We don't have McD AAs sitting on the bench waiting their turn.
I being completely serious when I say that I don't think coaching is the problem right now. It is talent. There isn't enough of it.
One thing I'll point out I see as a coaching staff mistake was signing 7 (or was it 8) guys for 2008. I suspect McD really wanted to win some games to relieve pressure and rolled the dice. Well, he missed on most of those guys and now we have a bit of a scholly issue to fix.
Recruiting is starting show lots of positive signs. After the first couple year of scramble and grab, I see good, long term talent either already signed or in the hopper.
It isn't coaching. It is talent.
With all that said, do I think McD deserves a free pass forever? NO! Next year is big for him. He needs NIT or better, IMO. At some point, you gotta take ownership, even if you've been dealt a bad hand.
That's a very good point. Winning one game in the tourney or winning 2-3 doesn't really make much difference to me. Watching a team compete the entire year is a much more telling indication of our program's strength. Every year there is a cinderella in the Sweet 16 and every year a top program goes down first round. While it's very exciting (and of course, I would like to win in the tourney too), it's not the do-all-end-all. Frankly, I'd rather see us win 20-25 games and win 9+ in Big 12. As you said, the rest will fall into place from there.
I agree with all of that with one caveat. It is the coaches responsibility to recruit and retain the talent to be competitive. With the exception of the recruiting home run with Brackins this staff has run off more talent than it has brought in.
Nope, I just think that he bit off more than he can chew. The Big 12 is not the Valley.
Do you know the "power conferences" Mike Anderson at Missouri, Doc Sadler at Nebraska, and Mark Turgeon at AM (not to mention the previous AM coach came from. If you can recruit and coach driving a ford taurus you can recruit and coach driving a Vet. When you have to take a chance on 8 new players because they leave during your first signing period there are going to be player retention issues. You have to take a chance on players nobody else has so there are bound to be some problems. Throw in the Taylor and Johnson departures and it made it terribly difficult. I am guessing many of the same people bashing McD for player retention issues were praising him for booting Mike Taylor
Do you know the "power conferences" Mike Anderson at Missouri, Doc Sadler at Nebraska, and Mark Turgeon at AM (not to mention the previous AM coach came from. If you can recruit and coach driving a ford taurus you can recruit and coach driving a Vet. When you have to take a chance on 8 new players because they leave during your first signing period there are going to be player retention issues. You have to take a chance on players nobody else has so there are bound to be some problems. Throw in the Taylor and Johnson departures and it made it terribly difficult. I am guessing many of the same people bashing McD for player retention issues were praising him for booting Mike Taylor
I can agree with that. But I also understand when players who were recruited by the previous staff leave. I think that covers most of them. As for Wes Johnson, who knows. It stinks he left. The team was being built around him. From my perspective, he had every incentive possible within NCAA rules to stay at ISU. He was the centerpiece of a Big XII team. It was a huge, huge kick the jewels he left. But I wouldn't say he was run off.
Mike Taylor had trouble staying out of trouble. McD gave him the boot. Again, it sucks but I think if you are going to say things like "Mike, this is your last chance", you also have to be willing to deal out the punishment when he violates that "last chance" opportunity or else the life lesson is there aren't consequences.
It is really a bad situation. We have a good (IMO) coach who wants to be at ISU as long as we'll allow him to be and nothing is going his way.
Uhhhh, Mark Turgeon came from the MVC and he's taken A&M to the tournament the last two years. Granted, he had more to work with than GMac, but still
I was going to say NCAAs 1-3 years would be nice, but maybe a little unrealistic for ISU, just looking at our long term history.
I would LOVE that.
I agree. Beat the teams you are supposed to beat. At the same time, we as fans have to be patient.
I know there will be a lot of disagreement on how high the bar should be at ISU.
Personally, I think top half of the Big 12 every year with the periodic run for a conference title every 3-4 years would be nice. I also think we should be thinking post season nearly every year with an NCAA bid about 70-75% of the years. Once in the NCAA I think we should expect to get to the Sweet 16 about once every 5 years or so and I think a Final Four should be part of the goals...once every 10-12 years or so. How is that?
On the other end, I would hope that we are all in agreement that finishing in the bottom quartile of our conference for three straight years is unacceptable.
Personally, I think top half of the Big 12 every year with the periodic run for a conference title every 3-4 years would be nice. I also think we should be thinking post season nearly every year with an NCAA bid about 70-75% of the years. Once in the NCAA I think we should expect to get to the Sweet 16 about once every 5 years or so and I think a Final Four should be part of the goals...once every 10-12 years or so. How is that?
On the other end, I would hope that we are all in agreement that finishing in the bottom quartile of our conference for three straight years is unacceptable.
It doesn't.
As for my expectations, I would hope we can make the tourney about every 4 of 6 years, with maybe a Sweet 16 in there once or twice. The other two I wouldn't really expect any tourney.
CycloneErik
Well-Known Member
I think we're in agreement. I'd like to make a run at the conference title more often, like every other year, and maybe a Sweet Sixteen run every three years. I didn't look that up, just typed off of the cuff, so I didn't research how many schools actually pull that off.
It doesn't??
Stinson, Blalock, Carr, Degand, Dunson, Evonavich, Cory Johnson, Marsden and Taggart were Morgan Recruits. McIntosh, Vette, Brister, Wes Johnson, and Mike Taylor were McD recruits. I discussed Johnson and Taylor in my previous post and everyone knows their story. The 3 others had reasons for leaving and, quite frankly, wouldn't have given many quality minutes and would have only made the scholarship situation we have now even worse. In fact, we probably need some player attrition to happen in order to help us long term. It just can't continue to be our top players. We need attrition from end of the bench players who want to find more playing time elsewhere.
I count 9 Morgan players and 5 McD players, including all of the players from his hodge podge, last second, 2006 class.
9 of 14 is nearly 65%. So, I believe I am correct when I say that covers most of them 65% is "most".
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this basketball program needs to be no worse than 6th place in the big 12 year in and year out...
should be good enough to get you to the big dance in most years...:yes:
should be good enough to get you to the big dance in most years...:yes:
Johnson was a Morgan recruit but he chose to play for McDermott. He could have told Johnson to take a hike like he did with Westbrook but he kept him on. I consider him a McDermott recruit. So that makes 5 from 2006, 2 from 2007, and likely one from 2008 if the rumors are true. Plus, Morgan was not involved in recruiting Dunson at all so you are wrong there. Marsden chose to play for McD so it really doesn't matter who recruited him.
Regardless the problem this season is not with the guys that left at the end of 2006. There only would have been four Morgan guys left this year, Marsden, Tags, Evanovich, and Degand.
I agree that we need to get to the point where we lose a guy or two at the end of the bench every year. I think that's healthy. Not everybody can be good enough to play.
However, my count is Degand, Stinson, Blalock, Carr, Tags, and Evanovich that left after Morgan. McD's guys that left were CJ, Wesley, Taylor, McIntosh, Dodie, Brister, Vette and Marsden, although we can call him a wash and not count him. So that's 6 for Wayne-O and 7 for McD. Even if we didn't count both Marsden and CJ it would be evens.
At this point I would be glad to get back to the levels we had from Orr's 4th year through Morgan's second year, 22 years total.
22 seasons, 16 winning, 5 losing, 1 even
12 NCAA appearances
3 NIT appearances
2 conference titles
several undefeated home seasons
22 seasons, 16 winning, 5 losing, 1 even
12 NCAA appearances
3 NIT appearances
2 conference titles
several undefeated home seasons
Good post.
Right now, we've got a couple of the losing seasons over with. Maybe we'll go 12 winning seasons in a row?