Kevin Ollie is right around the 10th highest paid college basketball coach in America. We deserve better than what we've seen the past three seasons. With a program with a history like UConn, top notch facilities and the salary to match it, 1 NCAA tournament bid the past 3 seasons doesn't cut it.
The narrative that we are limited as a program as to where KO takes us is BS. The conference isn't attractive, but the program still has cache and the salary more than anything else would allow us to bring in a solid coach.
KO will always get credit for the National Title run and he earned that. The pattern of middling regular season success and this past seasons abject failure is more of an indication to me about his capacity as a head coach than catching lightning in a bottle with the best player in college basketball for that season over 6 games. They don't contradict each other. You can achieve the apex of success in a game, but then also fall off the mountain.
More so concerning than the up and down results of the past 3 years is how the bottom fell off this off season. Given the injuries, this past season would be difficult, but there was at least some hope that returning Jalen, Gilbert and Larrier, and then adding a top recruit in MAL, that we could make some noise next year at least in the AAC.
The fact that so many players are leaving (spare me the public comments of support for KO, if they truly believed what they are saying, why would they leave) and the stories that have come out about KO and how he's been running the program are what is really painting a dark picture here.
I want KO to succeed and prove me wrong. I love the idea of the continuity of a former player keeping UConn elite. However, nobody is bigger than the program. KO needs to get his act together, because at $3M a season, there would be a lot of guys out there that would be up for the challenge.