Perspective

[jibsey]

Last year's team still completely blows my mind. That team had two 5 stars on it: Rodney Purvis and Daniel Hamilton. Ollie adds a freshman 5 star in Jalen Adams. To top this off he goes and gets two graduate transfers, who performed at the level of a 5 star one and done. Using 5 stars from the composite rankings, Ben Simmons, Skal Labissiere, Cheick Diallo, Diamond Stone, Henry Ellenson, and Stephen Zimmerman averaged 11.7/6.9/1.4/0.7/1.4 on .514/.283/.693 shooting in 23.8 MPG in a combined 190 games. Shonn Miller averaged 12.3/5.2/0.6/0.9/0.9 on .572/.375/.802 in 25.7 MPG over 36 games. Unfortunately Jamal Murray was the 5 star one and done so I can't make a similar composite comparison for Sterling Gibbs, but scoring 13 points a game is certainly nothing to scoff at. On top of having five extremely talented players, we had a very solid supporting cast: Omar Calhoun, Kentan Facey, Amida Brimah, Phil Nolan, Steve Enoch, and Sam Cassell Jr.

It boggles my mind that last year's team didn't enter the NCAAs with 30 wins. 3 point losses to Syracuse and Gonzaga. Lose by 2 to Temple at home. Lose by 1 to Cincy at home. Close road losses at Tulsa, Temple, and Cincy. Folding vs Houston at Gampel in February. 11-7 record in a conference in a conference that produced four NCAA teams seeded 9, 9, 10 and 11 (play in game). Last year, on the whole, was an embarrassment.

Now I fully support Ollie, and the absolute best thing for UConn is for our team to be successful with Ollie at the helm. But since signing his new contract Ollie failed to add to the 2014-15 roster resulting in a NIT appearance, took a team that was a shoe-in for a Sweet Sixteen appearance and turned it into a 9 seed, and then started off this season losing to two garbage mid-majors before half our team sustained an injury of some sort. Ollie absolutely deserves a mulligan for what has transpired this season. But if next season we once again do not have a NCAA-caliber team, it may be time to start thinking of a post-Ollie era at UConn.

On the whole, Kevin Ollie will have my support for the next 3 seasons (I'm sure he doesn't care whether I support him or not), because I fully understand that it is hard to become a successful coach at a high-major. Jay Wright, for example, needed 8 seasons at Villanova to make the Final Four and then 8 more to finally win a NCAA title. Postseason success is hard. Ollie has proven he can do it, which makes this season and the past two all the more frustrating.

I'm sort of agreeing with you here except it turned out that Purvis, Gibbs and Hamilton each had their own issues and they weren't small ones. Add in Brimah and Facey that were less than expected and voila.

 

[Matrim55]

That's what I think some are missing. The injuries have provided a valid excuse for why we're so bad, but we did also lose the first two games to teams we had no business losing to.

That Northeastern team also went on the road and beat Michigan State. They were a NCAA tourney team before Miller got hurt IMO.

The Wagner loss was really bad, though. KO & the team should still be embarrassed by that.

Kevin Ollie inherited a 1 percent college basketball university job making 1 percent money, with 1 percent basketball history, with 1 percent name recognition, and a program with a history of producing NBA talent.

So did Tom Crean. Maybe it's just really hard to rebuild a program that's been slapped with sanctions?

Last year's team still completely blows my mind.

Last year's team did not have a point guard – Gibbs was a combo guard. The year before that, we didn't have a point guard – Boat was a combo guard. This year's team, until things clicked with Jalen in the first half of the Auburn game, didn't really have a point guard. And all three teams struggled/struggle rebounding against top talent.

Ollie has addressed the point guard thing in a big way over the last 3 recruiting classes, and he's attempted to address the rebounding issue with Diarra (considered one of the best volume rebounders in his class), Durham (an elite recruit and potentially devastating out-of-area rebounder) and hopefully Carlton (classic big man).

Recruiting poorly causes a lot of problems. Recruiting well fixes a lot of problems.