When did things start going south?

[Bryan Lord]

Can't look at just the season for the answer. In truth, it was 2010 when "things started to go downhill". There is of course irony in the fact that we've won two national championships since things started going downhill. 2009 was the final season of vintage UConn greatness as we knew it. A great wire-to-wire team, in the Top 25 the whole season, beating up on nearly every Big East team, a fully-loaded roster, multiple future NBA players. 2010 was a huge disappointment, as was 2012 but there was still a ton of talent on the roster. 2011 was an awesome but freak season - that wasn't a great team. We went .500 in the Big East.

• After the 2012 season JC's retirement and the sanctions took things up a notch. Losing Drummond, Lamb, Oriakhi, Roscoe in one season really hurt our talent and depth.
• 2013 - We lost all that talent and replaced it with Nolan, Omar and Tolksdorf. Our final season in the Big East was already a below-average roster in terms of talent.
• 2014 - a subpar recruiting class (Facey, Brimah, Samuel), Omar was never the same after a good freshman year, a disappointing first regular season in the AAC (12-6) but the most amazing NCAA title run in history. I will never wrap my mind around the fact that that team won a national championship.
• 2015 - lost a ton of production (Bazz, Daniels, Giffey, Kromah, Olander) and brought in Purvis (now eligible), D. Hamilton and Rubin.
• 2016 - Lost Boat, upped our trend of relying on grad transfers (Gibbs and Miller). Added Larrier as a transfer and Adams and Enoch on paper made up our best recruiting class since 2012. Still a fair amount of talent in the program.
• 2017 - a full, good recruiting class, Top 10 nationally, that turned to junk. Meant to be the foundation that solidified the program after four shaky seasons with transfers, grad students and early departures. Our best recruiting class in a long time. Unfortunately, the best player got hurt and two others transferred out along with Enoch.
• 2018 - A very weak recruiting class, three 3-star kids and a grad transfer who makes Shonn Miller look like Blake Griffin and another who makes folks pine for Rob Garrison. Lost the only Top 50 recruit in the class.

We all like to bash KO and most of this is his fault too but there is a major problem with the recruiting and talent in this program. We just brought in three 3-star frontcourt kids (Carlton, Whaley, Polley) who wouldn't have had a prayer at getting a scholarship from UConn a decade ago - and they're playing relatively big roles as freshmen. Once Gilbert got hurt it meant Adams was the only PG on the roster (Anderson doesn't count in my book). The only shooter we've signed in the last five years was a headcase who left after one season, and wasn't that great of a shooter anyway.

So to sum it up, it's a team short on talent and experience with dreadful in-game coaching.

This

 

[Tenspro2002]

Can't look at just the season for the answer. In truth, it was 2010 when "things started to go downhill". There is of course irony in the fact that we've won two national championships since things started going downhill. 2009 was the final season of vintage UConn greatness as we knew it. A great wire-to-wire team, in the Top 25 the whole season, beating up on nearly every Big East team, a fully-loaded roster, multiple future NBA players. 2010 was a huge disappointment, as was 2012 but there was still a ton of talent on the roster. 2011 was an awesome but freak season - that wasn't a great team. We went .500 in the Big East.

• After the 2012 season JC's retirement and the sanctions took things up a notch. Losing Drummond, Lamb, Oriakhi, Roscoe in one season really hurt our talent and depth.
• 2013 - We lost all that talent and replaced it with Nolan, Omar and Tolksdorf. Our final season in the Big East was already a below-average roster in terms of talent.
• 2014 - a subpar recruiting class (Facey, Brimah, Samuel), Omar was never the same after a good freshman year, a disappointing first regular season in the AAC (12-6) but the most amazing NCAA title run in history. I will never wrap my mind around the fact that that team won a national championship.
• 2015 - lost a ton of production (Bazz, Daniels, Giffey, Kromah, Olander) and brought in Purvis (now eligible), D. Hamilton and Rubin.
• 2016 - Lost Boat, upped our trend of relying on grad transfers (Gibbs and Miller). Added Larrier as a transfer and Adams and Enoch on paper made up our best recruiting class since 2012. Still a fair amount of talent in the program.
• 2017 - a full, good recruiting class, Top 10 nationally, that turned to junk. Meant to be the foundation that solidified the program after four shaky seasons with transfers, grad students and early departures. Our best recruiting class in a long time. Unfortunately, the best player got hurt and two others transferred out along with Enoch.
• 2018 - A very weak recruiting class, three 3-star kids and a grad transfer who makes Shonn Miller look like Blake Griffin and another who makes folks pine for Rob Garrison. Lost the only Top 50 recruit in the class.

We all like to bash KO and most of this is his fault too but there is a major problem with the recruiting and talent in this program. We just brought in three 3-star frontcourt kids (Carlton, Whaley, Polley) who wouldn't have had a prayer at getting a scholarship from UConn a decade ago - and they're playing relatively big roles as freshmen. Once Gilbert got hurt it meant Adams was the only PG on the roster (Anderson doesn't count in my book). The only shooter we've signed in the last five years was a headcase who left after one season, and wasn't that great of a shooter anyway.

So to sum it up, it's a team short on talent and experience with dreadful in-game coaching.

Brilliant post.

About 6 years ago I posted that our consistent cycles of success had started to erode, and that boded ill for the future of the program. The 2011, and then 2014 championships papered over a lot of underlying issues. As expected, that post was not received well, but as you describe, that downward trends has continued and exacerbated.

We used to have not just great, but dominant teams, legitimate championship contenders, every 2-3 years, as a recruiting class headlined by one or two studs developed. Think 94-96 with the Marshalls and Ray, 97-99 with Rip and Khalid, 02-04 with Emeka and Ben, 05-06 with Rudy and Marcus Williams, 07-09 with AJP and Thabeet. We haven't gotten that stability and development at all in the latter JC years and certainly under KO.

With KO, the issues are in that he has no idea how to identify talent and intangibles, and no idea how to get his own recruits to buy in and instill toughness.

 

[champs99and04]

Brilliant post.

About 6 years ago I posted that our consistent cycles of success had started to erode, and that boded ill for the future of the program. The 2011, and then 2014 championships papered over a lot of underlying issues. As expected, that post was not received well, but as you describe, that downward trends has continued and exacerbated.

We used to have not just great, but dominant teams, legitimate championship contenders, every 2-3 years, as a recruiting class headlined by one or two studs developed. Think 94-96 with the Marshalls and Ray, 97-99 with Rip and Khalid, 02-04 with Emeka and Ben, 05-06 with Rudy and Marcus Williams, 07-09 with AJP and Thabeet. We haven't gotten that stability and development at all in the latter JC years and certainly under KO.

With KO, the issues are in that he has no idea how to identify talent and intangibles, and no idea how to get his own recruits to buy in and instill toughness.

I don't think anybody ever disputed your point that it would be better to go 30-4 rather than 23-11, we just wondered why you harped on it so much. Anything that has occurred since then has not made your point any more or less legitimate.

 

[Javjudah]

3 years ago with recruiting.
No PG to take over from Shabazz and Boatright. Instead, we brought in Sterling Gibbs. And when we finally landed a good PG, he was hurt.
The team has been rudderless for 3 years.
This has been a recruiting debacle.

Stop it! We all thought Jalen Adams's was going to be a lot better by now. This would have been Alterique Gilbert second season had he not got hurt.

 

[Storrs South]

Not going to go on another anti-Ollie rant, but I missed this the other day and had a good laugh. So things went south somewhere in that timeframe.

 

[temery]

The divorce.

This is the bottom line answer.

 

[August_West]

This is the bottom line answer.

I never bought that for a long time. But there is no discounting that now.

 

[temery]

This season was doomed before it even started. This season died last year when Ollie lost Juwan, Enoch, Vance and Makai. He replaced them with Anderson, Kwintin, Onoruah, and Whaley. pretty easy to figure it out from there

Then explain last season?

 

[temery]

I never bought that for a long time. But there is no discounting that now.

Most people I know say divorce was the best thing they'd ever done, outside of having kids. With that said, his demeanor on the bench screams depression. He seems lost.

 

[AZHuskiePop]

Brilliant post.

About 6 years ago I posted that our consistent cycles of success had started to erode, and that boded ill for the future of the program. The 2011, and then 2014 championships papered over a lot of underlying issues. As expected, that post was not received well, but as you describe, that downward trends has continued and exacerbated.

We used to have not just great, but dominant teams, legitimate championship contenders, every 2-3 years, as a recruiting class headlined by one or two studs developed. Think 94-96 with the Marshalls and Ray, 97-99 with Rip and Khalid, 02-04 with Emeka and Ben, 05-06 with Rudy and Marcus Williams, 07-09 with AJP and Thabeet. We haven't gotten that stability and development at all in the latter JC years and certainly under KO.

With KO, the issues are in that he has no idea how to identify talent and intangibles, and no idea how to get his own recruits to buy in and instill toughness.

That KO can’t identify talent is crazy We have been on more kids in the last five years but can’t close.
We just our usually unable to close on first or second choices
Exceptions would be JA ,Gilbert ,and Hamilton .

Another problem is the expectations here make little allowance for rebuilding almost impossible.

Folks here bad mouth 2016 even though that team won 26 games and got to the second round of the NCAA tournament . Only at a very few programs would that be considered a failure.
As thin as we’ve been
2015 if Daniels stays for his senior year I think we’re in the dance.
2016 (see above)
2017 If Hamilton stays it’s a completely different team even with Injuries to Gilbert and Larrier . If he got JA off the ball I think we make the dance.
2018 The conspirtors got their wish and destroyed UConn their brothers included
The margin for error has been paper thin.
As far your erosion theory it has merit. The game attendance has been in decline
for years before the Big East fell apart.
The atmosphere gradual changed
People don’t like playing in Hartford but I remember that place rocking .
It also was easier to get to and from from a Western Ct on a week night.
I rarely went to Storrs but wouldn’t miss a game in Hartford.
But I left Ct in 2008 my Son who went to games with me since 1980 left earlier for economic reasons. How many diehard UConn fans left the state in the last 15 years ? Who replaced us.? Interesting thought

 

[SixRings]

For me it’s hard to say. Ultimately it’s hard to argue that it didn’t happen when JC left but you could argue it was due to the problems he was having (health, violations, etc.). I clearly remember thinking that JC would have talked DeAndre Daniels back for his senior year and could have been a top recruit. Just my opinion but looking back I thought KO’s style with NBA potential was irresponsible.

 

[mauconnfan]

I did find out the Geoff Bloom is an in this thread, whoever he is.

Good take by Lefty too, we'll stated.

 

[upstater]

Stop it! We all thought Jalen Adams's was going to be a lot better by now. This would have been Alterique Gilbert second season had he not got hurt.

Stop what? Alterique came in a full 2 years after Boatright. We needed someone playing WITH Boatright.

That someone was Terence Samuel. Not Jalen who was a combo from day 1.

This is recruiting. The APR stuff and the change in coaching yielded a class of Facey, Brimah and Samuel. Samuel was supposed to be the next UConn PG.

 

[Palatine]

TSam had some great moments his freshman year. He looked to be a young Ricky Moore, great defensive player, a little bit of offense and 6-4 to boot. He never developed beyond that. He helped us win a NC. Wish there was more, there isn't.

 

[Javjudah]

Stop what? Alterique came in a full 2 years after Boatright. We needed someone playing WITH Boatright.

That someone was Terence Samuel. Not Jalen who was a combo from day 1.

This is recruiting. The APR stuff and the change in coaching yielded a class of Facey, Brimah and Samuel. Samuel was supposed to be the next UConn PG.

We were lucky to get Samuels considering the state of the program at the time. APR ban from tournament, Calhoun's health and who the future coach is going to be, Kevin Ollie giving a 6 month contract, conference realignment... with that said after Napier left we still had Boatright, samuels, Gibbs and Adams as our point guard/combo guard and Daniel Hamilton as a point forward. For your knowledge, Gilbert came one season after Boatright left, he's been hurt the past 2 seasons. Boatright graduated in 2015 and Gilbert arrived in 2016.

 

[VAHuskyFan]

Things started going south when some fan — who knows damn well he is supposed to wear his 2004 championship shirt during games and drink his beer only during UConn possessions — got lazy one night and wore a sad Jonathan shirt and drank whenever he damn well pleased throughout the game.

Maybe you never told anyone about your little routine, but YOU KNEW. You knew what would happen if you changed it up. And then one day you told yourself that “rationally” it didn’t matter and you were just being “superstitious” and you could wear what you want and drink when you want.

We’ve never been the same. And you’ve remained silent.

It’s time for that individual to step forward. You know who you are! Stop allowing KO to serve as the scapegoat for your transgressions.

 

[Waquoit]

Blaming the divorce is so lame.

 

[Dogdeacon]

Can't look at just the season for the answer. In truth, it was 2010 when "things started to go downhill". There is of course irony in the fact that we've won two national championships since things started going downhill. 2009 was the final season of vintage UConn greatness as we knew it. A great wire-to-wire team, in the Top 25 the whole season, beating up on nearly every Big East team, a fully-loaded roster, multiple future NBA players. 2010 was a huge disappointment, as was 2012 but there was still a ton of talent on the roster. 2011 was an awesome but freak season - that wasn't a great team. We went .500 in the Big East.

• After the 2012 season JC's retirement and the sanctions took things up a notch. Losing Drummond, Lamb, Oriakhi, Roscoe in one season really hurt our talent and depth.
• 2013 - We lost all that talent and replaced it with Nolan, Omar and Tolksdorf. Our final season in the Big East was already a below-average roster in terms of talent.
• 2014 - a subpar recruiting class (Facey, Brimah, Samuel), Omar was never the same after a good freshman year, a disappointing first regular season in the AAC (12-6) but the most amazing NCAA title run in history. I will never wrap my mind around the fact that that team won a national championship.
• 2015 - lost a ton of production (Bazz, Daniels, Giffey, Kromah, Olander) and brought in Purvis (now eligible), D. Hamilton and Rubin.
• 2016 - Lost Boat, upped our trend of relying on grad transfers (Gibbs and Miller). Added Larrier as a transfer and Adams and Enoch on paper made up our best recruiting class since 2012. Still a fair amount of talent in the program.
• 2017 - a full, good recruiting class, Top 10 nationally, that turned to junk. Meant to be the foundation that solidified the program after four shaky seasons with transfers, grad students and early departures. Our best recruiting class in a long time. Unfortunately, the best player got hurt and two others transferred out along with Enoch.
• 2018 - A very weak recruiting class, three 3-star kids and a grad transfer who makes Shonn Miller look like Blake Griffin and another who makes folks pine for Rob Garrison. Lost the only Top 50 recruit in the class.

We all like to bash KO and most of this is his fault too but there is a major problem with the recruiting and talent in this program. We just brought in three 3-star frontcourt kids (Carlton, Whaley, Polley) who wouldn't have had a prayer at getting a scholarship from UConn a decade ago - and they're playing relatively big roles as freshmen. Once Gilbert got hurt it meant Adams was the only PG on the roster (Anderson doesn't count in my book). The only shooter we've signed in the last five years was a headcase who left after one season, and wasn't that great of a shooter anyway.

So to sum it up, it's a team short on talent and experience with dreadful in-game coaching.

You are flopping out of your mind to say things started going downhill but then we won 2 national championships. Do you know the difference between irony and a contradiction? Over 300 college basketball programs would take just one of those NC's in exchange for a lifetime of irrelevance. Two!? C'mon.

It is true that some of the things you mentioned were signs/beginning of the end of the Jim Calhoun era, but equally you can point to his age & various other inevitable occurrences related to an unavoidable fact that Calhoun couldn't coach UConn forever. All that was SIDEWAYS, the end of the BE is beginning of the downhill, then Ollie veers into the skid & takes us off a cliff .

 

[upstater]

We were lucky to get Samuels considering the state of the program at the time. APR ban from tournament, Calhoun's health and who the future coach is going to be, Kevin Ollie giving a 6 month contract, conference realignment... with that said after Napier left we still had Boatright, samuels, Gibbs and Adams as our point guard/combo guard and Daniel Hamilton as a point forward. For your knowledge, Gilbert came one season after Boatright left, he's been hurt the past 2 seasons. Boatright graduated in 2015 and Gilbert arrived in 2016.

UConn has always had a PG playing WITH the outgoing PG. That is what I wrote in my previous post. The fact that afull year takes place in between without the heir apparent means you're 2 years off schedule.

UConn has been rudderless since before Gilbert stepped onto campus. This has been the main difference between the prior 3 years and the years that came before.

The only UConn PG who was capable of handling the rigors of the PG position without the benefit of playing with an upperclassman was Taliek Brown. Every other PG needed that experience.

Ricky had Sheffer. Khalid had Ricky. Taliek came in alone. Marcus W. had Taliek. AJ had Marcus. Kemba had AJ. Shabazz had Kemba. Boatright had Shabazz. Terrence Samuel had Boatright. But Terence did not work out. Then.... a year without a pointguard. Sterling Gibbs comes in. The following year after Gibbs is gone, Gilbert comes in, is injured.

The 2001-2004 years are actually a good hypothetical case for comparison. Obviously, those teams with Caron Butler, Emeka, Gordon, Boone, Villanueva, Rashad, Denham, were immensely talented. But each year we went into the season with only one true PG, Taliek Brown. If the 2001-2003 teams lost Taliek to injury, our starting PGs would have been Tony Robertson or Rashad Anderson. That would not have worked well. Jalen is a good comparison for Tony, athletically and in terms of his overall impact on the team, both shot the 3 similarly, Jalen is more skilled, though Tony more athletic. Neither of them are really adept at running a team.

 

[Huskybass]

Blaming the divorce is so lame.

More accurately it was the things that led to the divorce.

 

[CL82]

And, dishonestly?

 

[Sphinx]

The only answer is when Gilbert and Larrier went down at beginning of last year. Everything is traced to that. .

I agree that the team's total crash can be traced to those injuries but not the slow, steady demise of UConn as a championship program. Larrier, we know, is a seriously flawed basketball player, and Gilbert, though smart and talented, has everything to learn about running the point. We forget that AG was not his team's starting PG in high school. He was no more a playmaker than Adams was. Like Adams, he was his team's principal offensive weapon, and there was always going to be difficulty meshing the two similar talents. We saw this in their moments together on the court.

In my view, without the injuries, KO's 16-17 season might have been 20-13. This year much the same. KO himself would now be entrenched as the journeyman coach of an up-and-down program, dependent entirely on its coach's ability to recruit Shabazz-like self-starters who can operate in essentially a coachless environment. There would be an occasional year when the chance confluence of a Shabazz and a Boat could lead to some excitement, but the more common result would be the chaos we see presently.

It is a mercy, thanks to the injuries, that the moment of truth comes now and not after KO has added 13 dreary years as a journeyman coach to his 13 years has a journeyman NBA-er.

 

[KodiacKemba]

Just keep Ollie!! Again we don’t need a new coach we need better overall players and I know chill will get them guys ...! Just keep playing guys n stay together and trust the process and get better ... Go Blue.

 

[superjohn]

More accurately it was the things that led to the divorce.

Bingo.

 

[Huskybass]

In my view, without the injuries, KO's 16-17 season might have been 20-13. This year much the same. KO himself would now be entrenched as the journeyman coach of an up-and-down program, dependent entirely on its coach's ability to recruit Shabazz-like self-starters who can operate in essentially a coachless environment. There would be an occasional year when the chance confluence of a Shabazz and a Boat could lead to some excitement, but the more common result would be the chaos we see presently.

Some here will dispute that, but I think you nailed it.