Official Missouri Post Game Thread

[BigBake]

You are wrong. The firing of LE hurt the program and the circus that went on after the pics to his firing was a huge issue and then the coaching search was a mess. Morgan was the easy hire and at the right place at the right time and had the right connections to the players.

No, we're both right. Both incidents severely harmed the program.

 

[Wesley]

We went to the 2nd round of the NCAA tournament, losing to the eventual champion, while only playing 6 guys 5 years ago. I guess "5 years" = "almost a decade" to you?

Firing him seems the only way to change things at this point. We either fire him, or ride out the next 5 years of his contract. At the rate he's going, we'll make CU crowds look good. McDermott's teams just keep getting a little bit worse every year. I'd rather start rebuilding with some hope, than continue our slide to the very bottom of the conference, if we aren't there already.

"8 Mar 2015: McD coached his last Clone game as he graciously finished 120-139. That was the most wins by an ISU coach......unfortunately he never went to a tournament after receiving accolades at UNI for his 3 NCAA appearances....

 

[PJZ]

"8 Mar 2015: McD coached his last Clone game as he graciously finished 120-139. That was the most wins by an ISU coach......unfortunately he never went to a tournament after receiving accolades at UNI for his 3 NCAA appearances....

Now that definitely sounds like some stability.

 

[Tre4ISU]

Ryan from Ames on the call-in show tonight = LOL! "Dorr should be playing more instead of Hamilton or Brackins on a game to game situation, he played better than anyone tonight." "Hamilton is terrible, he can't rebound at all." Chris tells him Ham had 11 boards tonight "well he should have had 20!" Thanks for the laugh tonight, call back again soon!

That was clearly a case of someone being ****** and they don't even know what they are ****** about. Out of all the players mentioned it is hilarious that now Ham get's thrown in as the scapegoat. I haven't heard him thrown around before.

 

[kingcy]

The thing that pisses me off the most is how bad this team passes the ball. If a guy is wide open the pass to them is sloppy and there goes the advantage. The ball movement is pathatic. The player movement with the ball is bad for the most part. If there was a 30 sec shot clock this team would be killer on D.

 

[Tre4ISU]

No, we're both right. Both incidents severely harmed the program.

Right. I would say this about Macs tenure here. He started off with a terrible situation, I don't think that is up for argument and he had basically no time to recruit that first class so I write off his first year. Now, since we had some troubles outside the game that made it hard again for him to recruit the type of talent we needed to compete. Some places can turn it around with freshman. With the shape we were in, we were not going to get those freshman so I will acutally write off the second year. The third year we should have been able to find some stability. Yes, Wes left the year before and that was a huge blow but there should have been some developed talent to work with. Without the results, CC was a get. So was Gilstrap. I would say that those may have been the two best recruits that Mac has gotten at the time of recruitment. Gilstrap has been everything we expected and a little more than I expected. The problem is, there is still no established real Big 12 talent. Macs fault? Partially, but the beginning of his tenure dragged down the next couple years. The problem with the talent we have now is that you have 3 big minute players (DG, CB, Ham) that have played together in games before this year and Ham is only a sophmore. The other guys playing right now are new (CC, LD, SC) We do not have the talent that can step in and compete without being a complete unit. You look at some of the best teams that get great talent, a lot of them have been together for awhile. Kentucky has two absolute studs that are freshman. It would be unfair to say Mac could have gotten that talent.

Basically what I am saying is that yes, we have some talent. That talent, however has not been together long enough to develop into one good single unit. Is a lot of this on Mac? Certainly. Has he had some bad breaks? I would say yes. I would say that the Wesley thing was a clash of heads and styles and I don't know that Mac could have prevented that especially with what has been suspected as tampering going on. Lucca? I can't blame Mac for that. The whole team, I think, was blindsided there.

I am not exonerating Mac. This season has been a disaster. Last season was bad. I am just saying that IMO, with the exception of Brackins, that there has not been great talent on the team and I don't know that Mac could have gone out and gotten a lot better talent with the starting spot that he had that lead to poor seasons which in turn discourages top talent from coming here. This team right now has good players. Players that also don't seem to mesh because half the guys playing real minutes are new. I do not see these as excuses, I see them as possible reasons. I think we underestimated the experience/team factor.

 

[Cyclonepride]

That was clearly a case of someone being ****** and they don't even know what they are ****** about. Out of all the players mentioned it is hilarious that now Ham get's thrown in as the scapegoat. I haven't heard him thrown around before.

That would be the huge downside of his job. My response would be something like "are you ******* stupid?"

 

[temperflare]

Not sure if I've ever seen a team underachieve as much as this one has.

 

[cycloner29]

Is it me or do we have more coaches or players? It seems like during a time out we have more guys in suits huddled around we have players. I think we have too many of them and each one has their own style of coaching, but bottom line it's the head coach that has to make the calls.

 

[CycloneErik]

Well, they need to take the ball inside at the end. Colvin tried to but people kept shooting the easy threes which missed.

After watching four years of short benches, why do we only have one walk-on to play. McD should know by now that **** happens to our team.

He knows. We've basically lost 5 guys this year to injury, illness, or Germany. How many players is the man supposed to have handy? You're not going to burn someone's redshirt at this point in the season. That's not fair to them.

 

[Clonegrad07]

We had two NBA guards on our team (yes, they get drafted if they stick around for senior year). Darn well better make the tourney.

We have an NBA PF and an NBA SF on this team... what's their excuse?

 

[cycloneworld]

Minus a few personnel and timeout decisions, I think Mac has coached 2 very good games this last week. He put us in position to beat a Top 10 team in K-State. And had us in position to win at Missouri. In both games, the players have missed layups, missed WIDE OPEN threes, and have been careless with the basketball.

Like others have said, we just don't have as high of a basketball IQ as we need to win in the Big 12. Some of that falls on Mac and some falls on the players.

I think most can agree that unless something crazy happens, there will be no postseason. I'm at the point now where I think Pollard should make a coaching change, pony up some money, and pay a guy $1.5 mil per year and get an established successul head coach. If we can't do that because of money, I'm not ready to take another stab in the dark with another untested guy.

 

[Clonegrad07]

I'm not sure how many more seasons I can handle, but I would like to have a season that Mac has a little luck in some issues to see what he could do. I personally think that JVB and Lucca make a big difference in 3 or 4 of these conference games. Can I prove that? No. Does it lie on Greg at the end of the day - absolutely. But as much as everyone is willing to throw him under the bus, I do think that just saying you should coach harder and you aren't doing it, when circumstances this year are NOTHING like we expected to be in is a little tough. There are at least 6 games this year that a play here or there turn a L to a W. We started out hoping for the NCAA's and lost a big part of what we wanted to do with injuries, defections, etc.

He needs to fix that, but I also think a couple of the bad breaks he has had do give him a little leeway. The problem is in year 4 nobody is willing to give him that benefit of the doubt and I get that as well.

In watching this game, the one thing I take out of it is just that our guys don't know how to win. Place blame wherever you may, but I feel like a couple hoops against Nwestern and UNI and they figure out how to win and maybe some of these shots against TTech, OU or MU start going down.

Who knows, you all might be right, but I saw how Larry and Tim treated this job and I respect the hell out of Mac and for that I probably give him more leeway than a lot of you.

Good coaches create their own luck.

 

[mkadl]

Re: So wait...

SUPPOSEDLY Craig Brackins and Marquis Gilstrap are NBA caliber players and both should/could be drafted this year. How many NCAA teams have two supposed NBA caliber players and can't put together a nice NIT or NCAA run?

I agree but..

I refuse to believe our other 3 players are that bad. Whoever they are. I also refuse to believe that GMac is so bad of a coach that he has 2 high pick NBA players on the roster and can't win a game. Absolutely none of this season makes sense.

 

[WalkingCY]

Yes, I'll say it...Coach Mac needs to go. The flaws in the team are systemic: lack of team passing (drive and dish), lack of team defense/giving up the baseline or lane and having NO ONE step in, playing a finesse-type game in a physical league and expecting every call to go our way, having no strength, having no mental toughness, having no desire to take every game and use it to step on the throat of the other team...PHEW.

Sure, our players' basketball IQ is generally terrible, especially DG, SC, and MG. MG is a great athlete, but the number of times he gets out-of-control and tries to take the ball into a crowd is unacceptable. DG can't make a lay-up, waits on the dribble until the double team comes AND traps him, holds the ball out by half-court and gets trapped, telegraphs passes...SC puts forth some effort, but in general, no one on our team knows how to stop the fast-break.

There are so many more things we could say (and have). I am sick and tired of being frustrated. We need a fresh breath of air in our program. We SHOULD have beaten UNI, Northwestern, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Texas, K-State, and Missouri. That takes us from 13-11 (2-7) to 20-4 (7-2). HUGE difference. We were in all of those games. We lost most of them by 5-7 points or less. And, we did that while playing POOR basketball; no drive, little control of the ball on the dribble, lack of execution on lay-ups and dunks, etc. Think about how close we've been to greatness this year; a killer instinct and we COULD have done it. I'm done settling with COULD have. It is simply unacceptable; coaching AND playing...but when the playing is bad, and there is bad execution, that makes you wonder what the coaches are teaching, and how practices are run.

Excellent post. Fire McDermott at Season's end. He is not a B12 caliber coach. We lack mental toughness and it shows in the past 4 seasons. We are NOT getting better....we are getting worse with this guy. Absolutly the worst coach we have had in the past 30 years. Time to start looking for coaching prospects now. *Montgomery, assistant to Tom Izzo at Michigan State would be a good start. Just a hint Pollard.

 

[Al_4_State]

Yes, losing sucks. We all agree with that. What we don't agree with is that a new coach will bring a better chance at a winning season sooner than keeping the current staff.



McDermott is accountable, and he says so everytime I hear him speak. In your mind is the only possible way for him to be accountable is to fire him? I disagree.



This is where you fly off the handle and lose all respectability in my book. Everyone here wants what is best for ISU basketball. Some of you think the best thing for ISU basketball is to throw the team under the bus and call for the coach's head in the middle of the season. Some of us think the best thing is to give the coaching staff another year, because (amongst other reasons) we aren't going to get anything better in the current financial situation.

But I guess it makes you feel better if you can bash fans for supporting the team and coach. So be it.

You lose all respectability when you say you agree McDermott is accountable and he says so. Yes, I know that McDermott SAYS these things, but what is he accountable too? "Accountable" generally means you have negative consequences for poor/unsatisfactory performance. There is no negative consequence for McD other than people ripping him on a message board. He's not in danger of losing his job. That's what "accountable" means in college spots. If you don't perform, you don't get to keep your job.

I know we probably can't afford to fire McDermott, I'm just saddened by how far ISU basketball has fallen, and it blows my mind that fans like you continue to support it's death out of some blind loyalty to the man who coaches that program.

I'm a Cyclone fan first, I support ISU, NOT Greg McDermott. If Greg McDermott is doing a good job for ISU, then I'm behind him. If McDermott had shown ANY signs of progress over the past couple years, I could be behind him, but he hasn't. 4 YEARS that we have gone with losing records. 4 YEARS without any wins over ranked teams. 4 YEARS with NO improvement in any measurable, meaningful aspect. I was 100% behind him the first two years, last year it started to wane, and this was the year I thought he would show us one way or the other what kind of coach he is. The season is 2/3rds over and the writing is on the wall.

I don't know how many other jobs exist in this world where you can get paid $800,000/year to continually get worse. If you know of any, sign me up.

We barely made the tourney that year. (yes we made it) but it wasn't pretty and that year had plenty of issues.

Also WE ONLY HAD 6 GUYS. A similar thing exists this year and people are killing coach for it.

Having to be in a position to only be able to play 6 guys = rut.

Thank you for proving my point! Wayne Morgan was not a good coach, and even he got 6 guys to the NCAA tournament! Greg McDermott can't win a game with 6!

We made the NCAA tournament because that team dug down, found some heart, and started winning games, no excuses.

 

[WalkingCY]

You lose all respectability when you say you agree McDermott is accountable and he says so. Yes, I know that McDermott SAYS these things, but what is he accountable too? "Accountable" generally means you have negative consequences for poor/unsatisfactory performance. There is no negative consequence for McD other than people ripping him on a message board. He's not in danger of losing his job. That's what "accountable" means in college spots. If you don't perform, you don't get to keep your job.

I know we probably can't afford to fire McDermott, I'm just saddened by how far ISU basketball has fallen, and it blows my mind that fans like you continue to support it's death out of some blind loyalty to the man who coaches that program.

I'm a Cyclone fan first, I support ISU, NOT Greg McDermott. If Greg McDermott is doing a good job for ISU, then I'm behind him. If McDermott had shown ANY signs of progress over the past couple years, I could be behind him, but he hasn't. 4 YEARS that we have gone with losing records. 4 YEARS without any wins over ranked teams. 4 YEARS with NO improvement in any measurable, meaningful aspect. I was 100% behind him the first two years, last year it started to wane, and this was the year I thought he would show us one way or the other what kind of coach he is. The season is 2/3rds over and the writing is on the wall.

I don't know how many other jobs exist in this world where you can get paid $800,000/year to continually get worse. If you know of any, sign me up.



Thank you for proving my point! Wayne Morgan was not a good coach, and even he got 6 guys to the NCAA tournament! Greg McDermott can't win a game with 6!

We made the NCAA tournament because that team dug down, found some heart, and started winning games, no excuses.

Well said. Excellent post.

 

[CRAZYGREG]

Re: So wait...

I agree but..

I refuse to believe our other 3 players are that bad. Whoever they are. I also refuse to believe that GMac is so bad of a coach that he has 2 high pick NBA players on the roster and can't win a game. Absolutely none of this season makes sense.

DG and SC would not play on any other Big 12 team! JH MIGHT come off the bench for 4-5 mins a game for Colorado or Nebraska.

 

[JoeBoji]

Anybody look at North Carolina's record lately? Check out some of their fan posts..... sound familiar? Maybe Roy would like to return to the Big 12!

 

[WalkingCY]

Anybody look at North Carolina's record lately? Check out some of their fan posts..... sound familiar? Maybe Roy would like to return to the Big 12!

Not bloody likely, but we'll take 'em! But, we are going to pay ya cheap...hope that is alright? :smile: