"Bowl game or not, this UConn football season has already been a success" - Kels Dayton, WTNH

[History Geek]

http://sportzedge.com/2015/11/03/bo...n-football-season-has-already-been-a-success/

I agree 100%. Bowling wasn't a must have for me this year, it was a nice to have. I wanted to see notable improvement and have the program be well-positioned moving forward. I am convinced HCBD has done that. I'm starting to thing the anti-Diaco crowd relish any chance to point out mistakes because they have a ulterior axe to grind, be it that he is not a CT guy, and/or he won't focus on CT first, and/or he replaced PP who was the choice of the high school coaches cabal. Having said that, I'm not ready to proclaim this year a success yet -- I will wait until the end for that. The team and the staff still has to show they are moving in the right direction for the next three games. From what I have seen so far this year, I expect that is what will continue to happen. I have no reason not to. I really don't understand where Diaco naysayers could be coming from at this point in time.

 

[NYUConn]

False. You can't post a losing record and call it a "success."

I'll agree wholeheartedly that it is an improvement and that we are getting there, but you don't measure success in losing seasons regardless of where the measuring stick was entering the year.

As for HCBD, for me winning this weekend is going to be a test for whether I think he's the guy or not. Tulane is an inferior team. You need to consistently beat inferior teams home or away to become a successful program. He's done that so far in year 2: Nova, Army, UCF all inferior. USF talent-wise is probably an equal (though he should have won the game), Mizzou, BYU, Cincy, Navy and ECU were better teams. So he's 3-0 in games he should win, 0-1 in toss ups and 1-4 in games against better programs.

 

[History Geek]

Disagree. Success is relative compared to where you start from. When you hit rock bottom, getting halfway to perfection is an arbitrary and unfair benchmark.

 

[NYUConn]

Disagree. Success is relative compared to where you start from. When you hit rock bottom, getting halfway to perfection is an arbitrary and unfair benchmark.

Actually halfway to perfection is a fairly specific benchmark.

Anything less than winning half of your games is not successful because by definition it's a losing record.

You can argue degrees of success and degrees of failure, but if you're not starting from at least a .500 record your trafficking in moral victories and participation trophies.

 

[PPKChamp]

False. You can't post a losing record and call it a "success."

I'll agree wholeheartedly that it is an improvement and that we are getting there, but you don't measure success in losing seasons regardless of where the measuring stick was entering the year.

As for HCBD, for me winning this weekend is going to be a test for whether I think he's the guy or not. Tulane is an inferior team. You need to consistently beat inferior teams home or away to become a successful program. He's done that so far in year 2: Nova, Army, UCF all inferior. USF talent-wise is probably an equal (though he should have won the game), Mizzou, BYU, Cincy, Navy and ECU were better teams. So he's 3-0 in games he should win, 0-1 in toss ups and 1-4 in games against better programs.

False - you can post a losing record and call it a success. Success depends on achieving a goal. If you achieve your goal then it is successful. Your goal, my goal, Geeks goal and HCBD goals are all different. If Geeks goal was to see improvement, hell I can't see how this year could be anything but a success. If your goal was to have a winning record you are on hold my friend. My goal for this team was to get better, to be competitive and entertaining, based on my criteria, this year has been a success. I am excited again to go to games, and right now, that is all I can ask for. Getting to .500 and going to a bowl game is icing on the cake. Now NEXT year, that is going to be a different story....

 

[Palatine]

http://sportzedge.com/2015/11/03/bo...n-football-season-has-already-been-a-success/

I agree 100%. Bowling wasn't a must have for me this year, it was a nice to have. I wanted to see notable improvement and have the program be well-positioned moving forward. I am convinced HCBD has done that. I'm starting to thing the anti-Diaco crowd relish any chance to point out mistakes because they have a ulterior axe to grind, be it that he is not a CT guy, and/or he won't focus on CT first, and/or he replaced PP who was the choice of the high school coaches cabal. Having said that, I'm not ready to proclaim this year a success yet -- I will wait until the end for that. The team and the staff still has to show they are moving in the right direction for the next three games. From what I have seen so far this year, I expect that is what will continue to happen. I have no reason not to. I really don't understand where Diaco naysayers could be coming from at this point in time.

No. No. No. No. No. If we lose the final three, it is a disaster. One more win is a minimum for claiming improvement, win two and there is some real positive momentum. Win three, "Diaco for President."

 

[NYUConn]

I'm sorry, but I cannot call a losing season a "success" under any circumstances.

That's not to say it's impossible to acknowledge progress or improvement, but you can't go around claiming to be satisfied or "successful" by finishing 4-8 or 5-7. I'm sure HCBD wouldn't and we as fans/alums shouldn't either.

 

[Husky68]

Don't see the only reason that someone can point out shortcomings in HCBD's performance is if they have ulterior motive. Not fielding punts is not really that hard to fix, playing 10 yards off receivers against QB's who can actually pass, playing RJ at running back exclusively several games, not getting offensive plays in on time multiple times in a game (at mid season). Just a few of the legit questions. Not sure what grade he should get through 21 games but I don't think he is on the short list for any of the P5 teams, yet. Is the team better than the 3-9 or 2-10 teams of recent past, answer is yes but that is a pretty low bar. Play has been at least as good as the record, can't say really won any games shouldn't have and several loses were in play fairly late and Missouri all the way to last play.
Tulane is team have good chance to beat. Houston and Temple not so much. I want to see game plans that attack and defend against these specific team's abilities and have good special teams play. No letting punts bounce unless into end zone, offensive plays on time, make good passers make plays into coverage, 3rd down defenses to challenge opponent to make good play, use of best offensive match ups (be it TE's. WR, over middle passing, lot of AN, whatever opponent giving up). HCBD has some experience now, time to show Cinn. was outlier and not ECU. One thing like is he has toned down his happy talk and is taking players to task without throwing them under the bus, also the effort is there - not an easy thing to get when have some loses piling up.

 

[weyuo]

Bottom line: If your not bowling then your not successful by any common sense perception. An upgrade from 2-10 to 5-7 is still 5-7, a losing record and not bowl eligible. That's what prospective recruits and P-5 conferences look at. You want to be a successful program..get to a bowl game. You ant to be a really good program.....get to the playoffs.

 

[Duncan Idaho]

Apparently people aren't familiar with CIAC metrics.

 

[sportsart]

Building a program, with much going on behind the scenes, is tough to measure with wins and losses. I think it's fair to say that if we beat Tulane then we've had a reasonably successful season. That is based on the competitive losses thrown in.

As for success in building the program there is a lot to like.

 

[BlueandOG]

Apparently people aren't familiar with CIAC metrics.

I'm not familiar with CIAC metrics and, frankly, find you post condescending.

Bowl eligibility is a successful season for me. Five wins is significant progress.

 

[Duncan Idaho]

I'm not familiar with CIAC metrics and, frankly, find you post condescending.

Bowl eligibility is a successful season for me. Five wins is significant progress.

How do you know its condescending If your not familiar with the CIAC?

 

[BlueDogs]

I think we will have 8 months coming to hash, rehash and re-rehash why BD is failing or succeeding. We won a very critical game last week. I can agree that if we beat Tulane there is little argument the team is better by all relevant measures. But, a better assessment will be how they finish against very strong opponents. If they steal a W, it bodes very well. If they stink the joint up twice, it means we still need loads of work to get to the next increment.

 

[FfldCntyFan]

I don't know if the term success can be thrown around in early November regarding a team that is under .500 but the term progress can and in all candor I believe we've made quite a bit of progress this season (with the potential for more still available).

 

[BlueMAB]

No. No. No. No. No. If we lose the final three, it is a disaster. One more win is a minimum for claiming improvement, win two and there is some real positive momentum. Win three, "Diaco for President."

So this season can only result in improvement or disaster. Got it.

 

[CTMike]

No. No. No. No. No. If we lose the final three, it is a disaster. One more win is a minimum for claiming improvement, win two and there is some real positive momentum. Win three, "Diaco for President."

At least you are consistent with the last three games being the only ones that matter.

 

[businesslawyer]

No. No. No. No. No. If we lose the final three, it is a disaster. One more win is a minimum for claiming improvement, win two and there is some real positive momentum. Win three, "Diaco for President."

How good are you at math exactly? Because while I'll be ticked off if we lose to Tulane, in most people's reality 4-8 with a tougher schedule is reason to "claim improvement" compared to 2-10 against an easier schedule.

 

[huskynation]

I agree that to call the season a success without finishing strong would be setting the bar too low (Earlier in the off-season Diaco said the team would go undefeated, and that's the mentality to have. So the bar needs to be set at a high standard. And that standard should increase every year....i.e. competitive (5-7), bowl game ( 7-6, 6-7) winning record (7-6, 8-5), Winning Bowl games, conference Champion (9-3. 10-2,11-1), Undefeated

For this season sitting at 4-5, We should expect a bowl game that is the standard for "Success". Now if the team does not pull out two wins then the season is not a success.

This is not to say that the team has not shown tangible improvement, or that the program is not heading in the right direction, or that Diaco has not improved as a Head Coach. ( I think that he has shown himself to be a good recruiter too)

But no matter what the result of the final three games, this team needs to improve, our players need to continue to learn, develop and mature as football players and student athletes, and our coaching staff needs to improve gain experience, and put the kids in a position to be successful.

Our whole program needs to develop. Fact is we had a first time head coach and he's learning on the job. You think Diaco wants to be 6-15 as a head coach. Its a learning process. Right now I'm looking for the team to develop winning ways, not make stupid mistakes, and win games.

 

[RedStickHusky]

In military operations, a plan has an end state and phases with interim objectives or milestones. You're not successful until you meet the endstate. Meeting phase objectives keeps you 'on-plan' or 'on-track'. I think that's how you'd have to characterize this year. No one will pick this season out of a list 20 years from now and point to it as a 'successful' season. That doesn't mean it won't be an important season, as I think if we finish up strong we'll have turned a big corner.

The over-the-horizon challenge (and this is the one HCRE couldn't overcome), is can the program transition from rebuild mode to sustained excellence mode. Maybe too early for that conversation but some coaches know how to coach as an underdog but struggle as favorites - from planning to keep games close to burying teams early.

 

[History Geek]

Sounds like most of you generally agree with me about how you feel about the season, except regarding the word "success." Maybe that is semantics, but I concede that point. All I know is that I am happy with the job HCBD has done to date. I will be grumpy if we regress in any way during the last three games, even though the progress we have made has not been, nor will it be moving forward, a linear function. Regressing for me is losing all three. Winning one will match my expectation for the rest of the year, winning two would be great, winning three and I'm doing backflips.

 

[Fishy]

You guys see this team last season?

We lost to Army. We were life and death to beat Stony Brook. The highpoint of the last month of 2014 was almost beating 0-11 SMU.

I'm good with calling this season a success.

 

[JMick]

In military operations, a plan has an end state and phases with interim objectives or milestones. You're not successful until you meet the endstate. Meeting phase objectives keeps you 'on-plan' or 'on-track'. I think that's how you'd have to characterize this year. No one will pick this season out of a list 20 years from now and point to it as a 'successful' season. That doesn't mean it won't be an important season, as I think if we finish up strong we'll have turned a big corner.

The over-the-horizon challenge (and this is the one HCRE couldn't overcome), is can the program transition from rebuild mode to sustained excellence mode. Maybe too early for that conversation but some coaches know how to coach as an underdog but struggle as favorites - from planning to keep games close to burying teams early.

I'm not sure I could care any less about what the military considers success.

 

[BlueMAB]

Stating the obvious about this season:
We haven't looked great. We have looked good several games, even in some losses. We've also looked bad against good teams a couple times. We haven't come close to looking like the worst the team in football.

Stating the obvious about last season:
We didn't look great. We looked good once. We mostly looked really bad, even against bad teams. We were one of the worst 2-3 programs in the country.

Denying this season has been a success requires one to ignore everything that happened last year, except the UCF game.

 

[RedStickHusky]

I'm not sure I could care any less about what the military considers success.

Lol, yet you still took the time to comment. Thanks for that.