No kidding. Look. I get it. Ollie has made some mistakes. He hasn't landed a shooter, etc. But don't try to tell me Terry's ACL and Gilberts shoulder are his fault. I don't want to hear it. If KO leaves and the whole team leaves is a new coach going to bring in an entire roster of players better than we have now? No way. Firing Ollie right now would be a huge mistake. They've got talent coming in. Lets play it out and see what happens.
Never said fire him now. But saying he's been snakebit is also completely incorrect. With both Gilbert and Larrier, we lost to Wagner and Northeastern and were down 15 eight minutes into the game against Okla St when we lost Larrier. The team was awful fully intact, too. Those injuries, of course, are not KOs fault, but saying it was bad luck is implying that we were rolling and then we got screwed. And that's absolutely not true. We don't know if they would have gelled over time or not.
If we replace KO, it is likely that someone might leave. But it's up to the powers that be to bring in a coach who CAN bring in players. We already know that KOs name and UConn's for that matter in this regime are not exactly lighting it up in the recruiting world. Recruits know that all is not right here. If we make the right hire, we should be able to sell to a prospective recruit that the ship has been righted. Will it take a year or two of lumps? Quite probably. But I'd rather know that we are looking to change then continue to try the same thing that has not worked.
As far as the players coming in, they are solid. But I'm not sure if any of them are day-one impact players except out of necessity. Akinjo looks like he can play but small guards often take some time to figure out how to play against bigger and better competition and he's still just a borderline top 100 player. Matthews looks like he is talented and may be underrated, but he's rated (I know imperfect science) lower than Polley, and the big man looks like a garbage type guy. Useful, yes. Impact player? Not likely.
Again, an in-season fire is asinine on all accounts and simply will not happen unless they think Chill, Kill, or Ricky Moore is the next head coach and I think there is zero chance of that happening. But, I'm growing weary of just riding it out with KO because we are worried about what change may come. We need change or we are going to be completely irrelevant.
