2015-2016 Season

[Bulldog01]

Welcome back Bulldog. How did you like JJs games this past week?

Need guys with higher IQ around him. He's ready to run and nobody runs with him. In half court set he's wasted goods just passing around perimeter. He's the anti Mick PG so I don't understand why even recruit him.

 

[Bulldog01]

Clark killing us on D. Can't close out on 3pointers nor stand tall and defend paint. Ellis isn't getting blocks anyway so they need to switch spots on D.

 

[L-T]

Need guys with higher IQ around him. He's ready to run and nobody runs with him. In half court set he's wasted goods just passing around perimeter. He's the anti Mick PG so I don't understand why even recruit him.

He was awesome against Houston, but Mick shut him down as usual. Against Temple, 2 quick mistakes got him splinters in his ass for the rest of the game? Caupain can make 100 mistakes and play as log as he wants. 1 freaking assist and 3 turnovers in 50 minutes for our starting PG, 0-fer from three. That on the heels of 0-10 against Houston. His poor play should have him on the bench more than he is, but Mick has went on record claiming he is one of the best in the country, so he has to stay with him now.

 

[Bulldog01]

Not having Scott KILLING this team. Crazy as it sounds, if Scott isn't a fumbler and bumbler we could possibly only have X loss. We've been energy guy that can just grab rebound away all year.

 

[Bulldog01]

If Shaq understood basketball he'll be a lottery pick. Has more hops than the helicopter but can't dribble, pass, shoot or dunk. Should ONLY see 8-12min game when we in press, if were not in press Shaq is useless for this team. If you CAN'T dribble, pass or shoot at least use your athleticism to shut down other teams best player(1-4) and grab 7+rebs with your 30min

 

[HoosierCat]

Shaq will have a breakout game here in about 3 games and then will revert back to normal. He always gives us that tease of what he could be, but the on court smarts just aren't there. And sadly, his shot looks to be improved this year, but still shoots when he shouldn't. I got my head bit off on Twitter for saying Troy has regressed (right before his own tip in) but I still stand by that statement. Jenifer has to get more minutes for him. Cobb can not run the point (is there anyone worse on a full court breakout?). Very frustrating season all around, coaching, effort, player progression. I'm blank as a die hard fan of the team, I no longer expect any game to be a gimme from here on out for the rest of the year. The whole team needs a foot in the ass, which seemed to only work for one game.

 

[UCalum08]

We are more than half way through the season. With that being said, where is our player development? We should be getting better right? Normal progression says yes. But does anyone see any positives? Maybe Evans is our one bright spot. Unfortunately this team has been trending the wrong direction. Is what we see, what we get with this team this year?

 

[HoosierCat]

I think Cobb has progressed and that may be it. Evans has seemed to hit a little bit of the freshman wall, but might be breaking through it. Jenifer hasn't been given a chance, and I think quadri has shown he has put in work. All others have regressed (Troy, Ellis, Shaq) or flat lined (KJ, Deberry, Clark)

 

[WAITE HOYT 2]

Very frustrating season. Expectations were very high and to lose games against ranked competition by narrow margins has been hard. Watching X have a big season so far is never easy but given the state of our program we are now the little sister. We are in a shit conference, with sub par facilities and a team that is underperforming. Our big investment in Football turned out to be a huge disappointment at least in year 1. The Big 12 doesn't need to expand so it looks as though we may be in this spot for quite sometime.

I'm not going to bore everyone with if we play this style or that guy gets minutes. Fact is the whole athletic program needs a fix. When I go to other arenas and watch a game its like night and day. TOSU is light years ahead of us. Dayton has a better arena as does X. I won't even mention Indiana, U of L and Kentucky. Other than Dayton I would guess our budget is last on that list except for Dayton. We are being out spent, out played, out recruited and apparently out coached in both sports. The bad part is in both sports it looked as if our talent level has been elevated but our expectations have gone unfilled.

 

[Bulldog01]

I've NEVER seen player develop under Mick during the season. JJ had two ugly NERVOUS blunders from playing with starters for 1st time all year. Instead of Mick letting him get his feet wet against bottom of barrel team, JJ doesn't play rest of game. I'll take the losses if I seen growth in younger players but it's been the opposite.

 

[rogerOH]

I think our best chance to finish strong - get Cobb, Evans and Clark 30+ minutes a game from here out.

 

[Bulldog01]

I think our best chance to finish strong - get Cobb, Evans and Clark 30+ minutes a game from here out.

nobody on team deserves 30min

 

[rogerOH]

Every time Cobb starts a game hot MC takes him out for extended periods of time . Clark and Evans are our 2 best all around players and are light years ahead of their back-ups. All 3 of these players -tired or not need to be on the floor.

 

[UCBearcats]

Very frustrating season. Expectations were very high and to lose games against ranked competition by narrow margins has been hard. Watching X have a big season so far is never easy but given the state of our program we are now the little sister. We are in a shit conference, with sub par facilities and a team that is underperforming. Our big investment in Football turned out to be a huge disappointment at least in year 1. The Big 12 doesn't need to expand so it looks as though we may be in this spot for quite sometime.

I'm not going to bore everyone with if we play this style or that guy gets minutes. Fact is the whole athletic program needs a fix. When I go to other arenas and watch a game its like night and day. TOSU is light years ahead of us. Dayton has a better arena as does X. I won't even mention Indiana, U of L and Kentucky. Other than Dayton I would guess our budget is last on that list except for Dayton. We are being out spent, out played, out recruited and apparently out coached in both sports. The bad part is in both sports it looked as if our talent level has been elevated but our expectations have gone unfilled.

Building a new arena is going to be make the fan experience a whole lot better but it WILL NOT bring the fan base back long term. It might give us a band-aid for a season but the only way to bring fans back is to win at a high level. If we were ranked top 15 right now we'd be close to selling out every game in our crappy arena.

I fear that our new arena might not ever get built if Mick stays as our coach. I think you're going to see a lot of folks back out of tickets or downgrade their donations after this season if Mick doesn't go. When Mick first took over we had the rise of football to help prop up basketball for a while, now that football is in the crapper too I think this athletic department is going to start feeling the hurt real soon. Hopefully it's the catalyst for change but knowing this town I highly doubt it. We're already getting articles in the paper today that dismiss the criticism of Mick and try to even the tone back out.

Mick Cronin has to go, Tommy does too if he blows another season. UC fans are not going to put up with losing in this crappy conference. Bohn needs to feel the heat to put leaders in place who will win at a high level. It needs to happen now or I think he's in for a rude awaking come UCATS renewal season.

 

[WAITE HOYT 2]

Building a new arena is going to be make the fan experience a whole lot better but it WILL NOT bring the fan base back long term. It might give us a band-aid for a season but the only way to bring fans back is to win at a high level. If we were ranked top 15 right now we'd be close to selling out every game in our crappy arena.

I fear that our new arena might not ever get built if Mick stays as our coach. I think you're going to see a lot of folks back out of tickets or downgrade their donations after this season if Mick doesn't go. When Mick first took over we had the rise of football to help prop up basketball for a while, now that football is in the crapper too I think this athletic department is going to start feeling the hurt real soon. Hopefully it's the catalyst for change but knowing this town I highly doubt it. We're already getting articles in the paper today that dismiss the criticism of Mick and try to even the tone back out. I have my doubts we will ever see the glory days again.

Mick Cronin has to go, Tommy does too if he blows another season. UC fans are not going to put up with losing in this crappy conference. Bohn needs to feel the heat to put leaders in place who will win at a high level. It needs to happen now or I think he's in for a rude awaking come UCATS renewal season.

My friend, Mick will never get that type of recruit in this league or showing them these facilities. If I'm a recruit and you take me to 5/3rd and then I visit TOSU or Kentucky or U of L no way I'm coming here. I can play for a HOF coach with a big budget and 1st rate facilities that has put players in the NBA. Why come here. The only reason is Playing time. The game has changed KY and other top schools get all the good players because by and large they have PT to offer every year. They are usually gone after 1 semester. The college landscape has changed. UC is not a destination of choice anymore. Let me ask you. If shown KY or Louisville as a recruit where would you go? If you could go play for Matta at TOSU at the schott in the big ten or here? Everyone has a theory but in the end its a number of things. Certainly Mick's style doesn't help but that isn't all that's needed to get back to top 10 status

 

[UCBearcats]

My friend, Mick will never get that type of recruit in this league or showing them these facilities. If I'm a recruit and you take me to 5/3rd and then I visit TOSU or Kentucky or U of L no way I'm coming here. I can play for a HOF coach with a big budget and 1st rate facilities that has put players in the NBA. Why come here. The only reason is Playing time. The game has changed KY and other top schools get all the good players because by and large they have PT to offer every year. They are usually gone after 1 semester. The college landscape has changed. UC is not a destination of choice anymore. Let me ask you. If shown KY or Louisville as a recruit where would you go? If you could go play for Matta at TOSU at the schott in the big ten or here? Everyone has a theory but in the end its a number of things. Certainly Mick's style doesn't help but that isn't all that's needed to get back to top 10 status

The game has changed, doesn't mean you can't win at Cincinnati. Coaches are winning at SMU, Dayton, Wichita State, Northern Iowa, and many other smaller schools. A good coach can win at UC, a good coach can lure good players and energize our fan base. This is still a school with a national brand, we still have a lot of "street cred" so to speak and many of the players we target as recruits like the fact that our campus is more of a city feel and not just a bunch of buildings in the middle of nowhere. For all the excuses everyone loves to make for Mick as to why he can't be successful there's still plenty of reasons why he can. How about the fact that we've improved our campus and the areas surrounding it tenfold since Mick has been here?? The student living experience is a million times better in Clifton than it was in the 90's and early 2000's, but the excuse makers would never admit it.

I don't expect that Mick is going to land UK type recruiting classes, but I do expect he gets better talent in here and runs a system that allows his players to have success. I don't care what those player's rankings are, but they better be able to play basketball at a high level and they damn well better develop during their time here.

We need a new area no doubt and it will help with recruiting but it's not going to magically make Mick Cronin a great coach.

 

[jacobkdoyle]

I refuse to believe that Cincinnati can't do better than 54.3 points per 40 minutes in AAC road games bc of the arena.

 

[L-T]

If Cronin gave us a glimmer of hope somewhere, it would be different. This year, he did. We came to the early games, albeit with the usual cupcakes, but we saw a radically different offense and everyone was having fun, the players, the fans, but all Mick could see were some defensive mistakes. His comments on his postgame shows would be, "everyone wanted more offense, but did you see our defense?". Slowly, but surely, we started seeing the transformation. Point guards began walking the ball up again and looking to Mick for answers like his old freshman team did at Woodward. And, Mick was back in his element....in control....screaming at his assistants again. The team, however, did not take to the change this time. Almost everyone has regressed. Our point guard is now unrecognizable. Our center has lost his edge and evidently his strength. Our two freshmen, who appeared to be the best we've recruited in many years, are struggling to find their mojo in an offense that they are obviously not comfortable playing. The list goes on.

Great coaches can adapt their offense and defense to the strengths of the players. Here, we adapt the players to what the coach wants to do. It usually works ok, because he rarely recruits much talent and they have embraced the defense and slow pace because they achieved a little success playing it. . But lately, he has upgraded the talent some, and recruited some players with offensive skills, and his attempt to change them is failing miserably. It's like buying a thoroughbred race horse and making them an equestrian horse.

I wish everyone could have seen Evans and Jenifer at the pre-season scrimmage. You would understand. The players you are watching today are unrecognizeable when compared to early in the season. They've been Croninized. We may never see those players again. The problem is, the end product can only go so far. It is not built for March. It is built to mask the limitations of the head coach and to get just beyond an imaginary line of minimal success necessary to hang on to a well-paying job and hope that his team one day gets lucky and advances maybe just one game further in March and the fanbase, who at this point is just numb from prolonged mediocrity, will falsely believe this 10 year journey is finally taking the next step. We saw it happen 4 years ago with a sweet 16 run, and we believed, and bought in. But, it was just a mirage. Nothing really changed. In fact, things have went south. The losers are the fans, many of whom have left and probably have moved on to root for other more attractive options....and the players, who come here with dreams of playing at the next level, only to find out that defense doesn't sell at the next level, nor does it sell much at this level either. Defense has always been important at all levels, but there are 2 parts to basketball. It is a game of offense and defense. If you only try to win with one part, you may achieve some success, but you'll never reach the mountaintop. Like climbing Mt. Everest, some guides will only get you half way up to the base camp. Others will get you to the top. Mick has gotten us to the base camp, and the view is ok. But, don't we as fans want to experience the summit? I certainly do. I think it is time to change guides and find one who is not content with just showing us the view from base camp.

 

[jacobkdoyle]

Our player development sucks. How is a new arena going to fix that? Even if we don't currently land 5* players, how is it acceptable for the players we do get, to not improve? It is possible for 3 and 4* players to get better from FR to SR year.

 

[L-T]

Back in the 1990s/2000s, when the Shoe looked exactly the same as it does today, and we were filling it to the rafters, and we were doing it in a Mid-major conference, and the OSU, X, Dayton, Indiana, Louisville, Notre Dame, West Virginia, etc, were all breathing our exhaust fumes, I wonder if their fans were making these ridiculous excuses for why they can't compete at a higher level. The only thing that brought a lot of those programs back is that they hired good coaches that elevated their programs. Recently, many mid-major programs did the same thing and guess what, we've seen them in the rankings and making deep runs in March too. College basketball for those programs hasn't changed. It's only changed for the University of Cincinnati because we have people who believe that keeping a mediocre coach will somehow produce a different result. That in itself represents a big change. With that attitute we will cement our transformation into mid-majordom. Why upgrade the Shoe? If we upgrade the Shoe and keep the coach, it'll be a waste of $87 million. Just save the money until we're serious about taking the next step.