Brother the schools you mentioned and us are very comparable. The people want top 10 every year. Not every other. if you want the level of success of the schools you mentioned you have that or are very close to it.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.
You answered your own question you get better players. Coaches is responsible for that. Mick has not been able to land the real difference maker. Ask yourself why.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.
Brother the schools you mentioned and us are very comparable. The people want top 10 every year. Not every other. if you want the level of success of the schools you mentioned you have that or are very close to it.
You answered your own question you get better players. Coaches is responsible for that. Mick has not been able to land the real difference maker. Ask yourself why.
UCBearcats it is all those things. The coach needs the support of the administration. Many things have changed in college athletics. Networks, conferences just to name a couple. Could we hit gold with a new Coach. Yes, but lots of programs have gone that route and failed miserably. Our we at the point of trying that. I don't know the answer to that. I do know I'm unhappy with our season.College basketball is about coaching and the line in college basketball between the haves and the have nots is much more blurred than in college football.
Waite brought up UK in a previous post and obviously UK is the gold standard in college hoops these days. It wasn't that long ago though that UK was firing Tubby Smith because he wasn't living up to their expectations and hiring Billy Gillespe who took that great program and all it's resources and drove it into the ground. It wasn't until UK went out and hired Calipari that they got back to being a dominant program.
If you want to look at college football you can look no further than Alabama. Before they hired Saban they were largely irrelevant for 15 years.
I don't point this out to say that we should have expectations like either of those two schools or that we could lure a coach like either. I point it out because just having a great program doesn't equate to success. Likewise, not having all the same advantages as a UK or Alabama doesn't mean you can't still compete. You have to have the right coach in place to drive the ship.
All the other factors people use to make excuses don't matter much, what matters is the coaching, or lack thereof.
UC still has many things in place that make it a very attractive job for the right coach. Just look at Mick's salary alone. We could take almost any up and coming young coach and immediately triple or quadruple their salary if that's what it took.
Does anyone really think someone like Archie Miller wouldn't have to seriously consider a UC offer that paid $2.5 million a year plus bonuses??? Does anyone really think someone like Archie Miller, given his bloodlines and success he's had at Dayton, couldn't do just as good if not a heck of a lot better than what we're getting right now?
Jake I know this, Mick is a better Coach then I could ever dream of being. I'm not bright enough to say that if we played this guy or ran up tempo we would do better. I know what I prefer. Winning at any program is not easy. Is someone out there that could win here. History says yes but I caution that they do not grow on trees. Lots of things go into making a successful program. I do not have the answer to your question and my opinion doesn't matter. The BOT needs to make that decision. We could do better and we could do a heck of a lot worse.So there is nothing wrong with the scheme? No $2+ million coach in America could develop players here?
sounds good. I will say this only way to find out if it is coaching is to make a change.SMU, Dayton, Wichita State and Northern Iowa are nowhere near similar to us. We're recognized as one of the Top 15 college basketball programs of all time by multiple accounts. At this moment in time our program is performing worse than all those schools but that's only because of our coach.
This argument goes nowhere, it just goes back and forth in circles. We both agree that this program is not performing well. You say it's because the game changed and we're not a big time program and we shouldn't expect better than we have and I say it's because our coach is a loser.
Let's just agree to disagree at the reasons why our basketball program is currently a joke.
Let me say it this way. Without improving our facilities, getting into a better conference and expanding our budget we will never win a NCAA Championship. With or without Coach. If Mick is fired tomorrow I'll still cheer and root for UC. But if the goal is to win a title there is lots of work to be done.
You may remember that coach. He moved on to an average basketball program, already has taken them to a Final 4, and last week beat #1 and lost to #2 at the buzzer, playing a style of ball that we once played and with the kind of recruits we once got, and they are 16-2 and ranked ahead of all those blue-blood schools who supposedly get all the good players. Must be the attractiveness of Morgantown, because as we know, college basketball is different today..
Huggins said he was tired of the same style we see at UC and he wanted to change that. It didn't happen overnight either. They were pretty mediocre for a two year period while he was implementing a shift. They started as a very good offensive team that sucked defensively. Over the last two years they've improved and now become an elite defensive team and still an efficient offensive team. Mick on the other hand, curls up into a ball and returned to the slow down style as soon as we lost games to Butler and Iowa State in the last few minutes. Well guess what? When we slowed it down again we still lost games in the last minutes to Temple and SMU. Pathetic coaching this season from the guys with the bald heads on the bench!
% of Team FG Attempts in AAC
Caupain 21.0%
Cobb 17.5%
Clark 11.9%
Johnson 10.5%
Ellis 9.4%
Evans 9.4%
Thomas 9.4%
DeBerry 6.2%
Moore 3.0%
Jenifer 1.6%