Uconn ... the real story

[nyhuskies13]

If the rest of us have to slog through it, so do you. No escalators. Take the stairs.

I had 3 injuries this year so I had to take the escalator

 

[nyhuskies13]

Did we ever find out who Russ is? would say it doesnt matter but this half riddle is so intriguing

 

[selles]

My perception is based on fact as much as possible, not memory, Calhoun was in 23 of 27 NCAA Tournaments his last 27 years, so 4 misses in almost 3 decades, if Ollie misses next year it will be 4 in 6.

Just for the record, your facts are again off. Calhoun coached at UConn for a total of 26 years. He missed the tournament 8 times. Even if you start with 1990, that's 5 misses in 23 years, not 4 in 27.

 

[Huskybass]

You're not wrong he deserves blame, and everyone on here agrees, but the posters who are dubbed 'apologists' rightly point out that JC induced sanctions had a lot to do with the wealth of 'low basketball IQ' players. KO was very limited in what he could bring in, a situation compounded significantly by the retirement of a HOF coach who was the face of the program.

Some things you can't predict either. Back in 2014, would you take a former McD AA (Purvis) as a transfer and expect him to be a significant player as he matured? I'll answer for you: 100 times out of 100.

Please explain the losses to Wagner, Northeastern and East Carolina this season, when UConn's roster was loaded compared to the oppositions'.

I can explain it: a clueless coaching staff.

 

[tzznandrew]

My perception is based on fact as much as possible, not memory, Calhoun was in 23 of 27 NCAA Tournaments his last 27 years, so 4 misses in almost 3 decades, if Ollie misses next year it will be 4 in 6.

Well, work on your memory. His last 27 years would be 1985-2012. So...19 out of 27 rather than 23 out of 27.

1987 - No Postseason
1988 - NIT
1989 - NIT
1993 - NIT
1997 - NIT
2001 - NCAA
2007 - No Postseason
2010 - NIT

And, honestly, 2013 is on JC...

 

[tzznandrew]

East Carolina this season

Well, East Carolina is easy, right? They didn't have a backup guard. Literally the only people on the bench were still recovering Durham and injured Enoch.

Connecticut vs. East Carolina - Box Score - March 1, 2017 - ESPN

I'm not entirely sure why people were surprised by this game.

 

[Huskybass]

Well, East Carolina is easy, right? They didn't have a backup guard. Literally the only people on the bench were still recovering Durham and injured Enoch.

Connecticut vs. East Carolina - Box Score - March 1, 2017 - ESPN

I'm not entirely sure why people were surprised by this game.

They didn't have a backup guard against ECU because the coach only had 11 scholarship players on the roster rather than 13.

Care to explain the losses to Wagner and Northeastern when UConn had its full roster playing?

 

[tzznandrew]

They didn't have a backup guard against ECU because the coach only had 11 scholarship players on the roster rather than 13.

Care to explain the losses to Wagner and Northeastern when UConn had its full roster playing?

On your first point: yes. We know. The staff has tried to be careful and avoid the Jamal Trice's that led to our postseason ban. But hopefully they're realizing that's a bad idea.

On the second point: notice I ignored those. I don't think either of those are excusable. Integrating a whole host of new players is hard, but beating Wagner and Northeastern should not have been insurmountable. Our team has struggled and played down to competition far too much. Some Calhoun teams did that, too (2012 most recently), but even those teams didn't lose to the cupcakes.

 

[intlzncster]

Please explain the losses to Wagner, Northeastern and East Carolina this season, when UConn's roster was loaded compared to the oppositions'.

I can explain it: a clueless coaching staff.

Lose three winnable games to start the year. Make sweeping all encompassing conclusions. Conclusions that previously have direct evidence against them (2014). Data points man. And yes, those games should be won EVERY time. That was a failure. But it doesn't mean there is inherent, static fail everywhere you look. There will be growth. Ollie is showing his willingness to change right now. We'll see how it shakes out.

 

[nyhuskies13]

Well, East Carolina is easy, right? They didn't have a backup guard. Literally the only people on the bench were still recovering Durham and injured Enoch.

Connecticut vs. East Carolina - Box Score - March 1, 2017 - ESPN

I'm not entirely sure why people were surprised by this game.

People are surprised because East Carolina finished 15-18 and that program hasn't played in the tournament in 24 years.

For those keeping score at home, it doesn't look like they've had a top 200 recruit in about 5 years.

We should NEVER lose to them, ever. Even if we just play 7 guys. It's embarrassing and we shouldn't feel bad about demanding more from a program that pays its head coach 3million/yr and an athletic department that requires a surcharge from the student body.

 

[intlzncster]

On your first point: yes. We know. The staff has tried to be careful and avoid the Jamal Trice's that led to our postseason ban. But hopefully they're realizing that's a bad idea.

On the second point: notice I ignored those. I don't think either of those are excusable. Integrating a whole host of new players is hard, but beating Wagner and Northeastern should not have been insurmountable. Our team has struggled and played down to competition far too much. Some Calhoun teams did that, too (2012 most recently), but even those teams didn't lose to the cupcakes.

Well, not 3 in a row, but they did get beat by also-rans on occasion. UMASS a while back (10 years?) iirc.

 

[intlzncster]

We should NEVER lose to them, ever. Even if we just play 7 guys. It's embarrassing and we shouldn't feel bad about demanding more from a program that pays its head coach 3million/yr and an athletic department that requires a surcharge from the student body.

Yes to all of that. No to claiming that Ollie can't coach and the coaching staff is inherently incompetent.

Ollie needs to work on a few things, mostly ingame coaching. Especially things like inbounds plays, timeout management, and most importantly, coming ready to play and starting fast. The latter point is probably why they dropped their first few. The team's play at the start of the seaon mirrored that in the first half of games.

 

[Inyatkin]

Well, not 3 in a row, but they did get beat by also-rans on occasion. UMASS a while back (10 years?) iirc.

We got blown out by St. Bonaventure early in a year that turned out to be one of our best non-title teams ever. Early season losses are bad, but not necessarily indicative of much.

 

[aceboon]

They didn't have a backup guard against ECU because the coach only had 11 scholarship players on the roster rather than 13.

Care to explain the losses to Wagner and Northeastern when UConn had its full roster playing?

Gilbert already done for the year, Vital out with a concussion, Adams on a gimp ankle that he probably shouldn't have even been playing with, even with all the schollies filled I'd love to know the years you guys remember when UConn was going 4 deep at PG and if that was the case that 4th PG wasn't a bum.

 

[BigErnMcCracken]

Care to explain the losses to Wagner and Northeastern when UConn had its full roster playing?

You seem like a clown troll at this point, but I don't think anyone thinks those were "good" losses. It should be noted, though, that Northeastern went out to East Lansing a month later and handled Michigan State reasonably easily. They had a lot of moving pieces to add on the fly last year and stumbled out of the gate. That's basically the long and short of it.

 

[Huskybass]

You seem like a clown troll at this point, but I don't think anyone thinks those were "good" losses. It should be noted, though, that Northeastern went out to East Lansing a month later and handled Michigan State reasonably easily. They had a lot of moving pieces to add on the fly last year and stumbled out of the gate. That's basically the long and short of it.

I seem like a clown troll. Pretty rich stuff coming from a guy who got tossed out of MSG for being a drunk idiot.

I would bet that at least 2/3 of your posts contain some sort of negative comment toward other Boneyard posters. I must be a treat to be that miserable.

 

[BigErnMcCracken]

I seem like a clown troll. Pretty rich stuff coming from a guy who got tossed out of MSG for being a drunk idiot.

I would bet that at least 2/3 of your posts contain some sort of negative comment toward other Boneyard posters. I must be a treat to be that miserable.

 

[Stainmaster]

I seem like a clown troll. Pretty rich stuff coming from a guy who got tossed out of MSG for being a drunk idiot.

I would bet that at least 2/3 of your posts contain some sort of negative comment toward other Boneyard posters. I must be a treat to be that miserable.

I'll take the guy who got thrown out of MSG over the guy who wants to set the program back even further by canning Ollie every damn time.

 

[intlzncster]

I seem like a clown troll. Pretty rich stuff coming from a guy who got tossed out of MSG for being a drunk idiot.

And thereby creating some of the best content this board has ever seen....

Didn't help the mojo, but it was damn funny. Even if not for BigErn himself.

 

[champs99and04]

My perception is based on fact as much as possible, not memory, Calhoun was in 23 of 27 NCAA Tournaments his last 27 years, so 4 misses in almost 3 decades, if Ollie misses next year it will be 4 in 6.

This is such a clown post. First, you're wrong on the Calhoun number. Calhoun missed the tournament twice in his final six years alone and 2012 only got in because they did a good job of gaming the RPI that year.

Second, you just doubled Ollie's tournament misses in one swoop. No reasonable person blames him for missing the tournament in 2013 when they were, you know, banned. If we're going to talk about him missing it next year let's just go ahead and say he'll have missed 7 out of 9 years if he misses the next three after that as well, or that if he wins another championship next year that will be 2 in 6 years which will put him on pace to win 10 by the time he's done.

There are plenty of reasons to critique Ollie, but you are not even pretending to be objective. And if you want my opinion, these last two years he has under-achieved. But last year was not a failure by any means, and 2015 was the result of losing four starters, battling attrition the entire season, and having no depth. I'll give him a pass for that year. This season no such pass can be given, but even still it is fair to point out the fact that we lost two key contributors early and our star point guard just as we seemed to be turning things around.

I'm not a fan of ultimatums, especially with coaches who have already accomplished great things. Thing are too fluid for "you have to win x games" to be a reasonable criteria. I'm more interested in the trajectory and the context. He's going to have to own the disaster of last season, but there are too many unknowns to cast sweeping judgement at this time. Some of the anger, I think, is the distortion of frustration. I know what I watched this season and it was horrible. But it is important to take a bird's eye view of the situation instead of honing in on the optics of today.

 

[ctchamps]

And to think before this season we were all sweating the rumors KO was leaving to coach in the pros. People were practically jumping off the ledge with fear of this possibility. No one was talking about stinking heads. We were all concerned about where KO's ten toes might be going. It wasn't until the news came out how Christian Vital was persuaded to come to UConn because KO reassured him he wasn't leaving that the majority of posters who were freaking out pulled back from the ledge.

Well we're on the ledge again. This time the ledge is because KO should be leaving instead of sacrificing two fins and some scales in order to keep his stinking head at the helm.

Heck with "Uconn..... the real story". There are two bigger stories. First and foremost is the title. If you want to enjoy your life in this forum it's UConn. Only con artists spell it Uconn. Second the real story is that people freak out when their world appears to be coming undone. And when we freak out we need to do several things. One is we need to find things to blame. Another is we need to create stability. In many cases, particularly when we don't have control over an issue we formulate an idea that gives us some comfort to replace what we perceived we have lost. We argue with those we disagree with to maintain the world we created in our heads. That's why we see people sticking to an argument even when they are proven wrong.

You're starting to get angst op. Some of us are way ahead of you and some of us haven't started yet. I've fabricated an illusion that still gives me hope. We have a coach who demonstrated he knows how to win under pressure. I don't subscribe to your emphasis about where players come from. Every coach has players and few win titles. KO beat several hall of fame coaches to get that title and against teams with far better players. Second we now have a recruiter who goes after big fish. So hopefully we reel in a few and can learn once in for all where the stink comes from.

 

[Hoophound]

Pretty sure it was the opposite. Drummond gave up his scholarship to allow Michael Bradley to stay on the team

Actually, the correct answer is they were going to use Bradley's scholarship for Drummond (not Wolfe's as I stated) but Andre wouldn't take it. Andre decided to play as a walk on instead. This served to really infuriate the NCAA because we got the top recruit without a scholarship open. I believe we were being penalized and short schollies.

Anyway, we didn't have a scholarship for Drummond without taking one away from someone else and we definitely didn't have a scholarship for Dunn, so we couldn't offer. Pretty sure we would have gotten him.

 

[tzznandrew]

Pretty sure we would have gotten him.

We also had Shabazz and Boatright at the time, along with Omar, who before injury was dynamite, so the backcourt was stacked.

 

[tentoes4rings]

I'll take the guy who got thrown out of MSG over the guy who wants to set the program back even further by canning Ollie every damn time.

Stairmaster, as someone who always defends KO, can you please tell us at what point you wouldn't disagree with people critical of him?

Would another 16-17 record be justifiable cause or do you think we should see another 4 or 5 of them before we think maintaining the status quo is actually setting the program back even further?

I'm not attacking you here, I'd just love to know at what point you'd start to be concerned as well?

 

[Woof 101]

And while I don't want to exactly support this guys argument. Stop bringing up Vin Baker as someone Calhoun "missed on." No one knew that Vin Baker was going to become Vin Baker. He played for Old Saybrook and averaged 5 pts per game his freshman year at Hartford.

.....LOL @ this one as that cost me a six pack of Heineken back in the day. A friend and fellow basketball fan made the statement early on that Vin would be a NBA first rounder. This while he was still in high school. I jumped on it with a bet... ...And later paid it.