When did things start going south? | Page 2 | The Boneyard

When did things start going south?

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

I realize there is other stuff going on and that there are challenges KO needs to overcome as a coach even with a a full squad. No doubt. But those injuries have played into the single biggest reason of why we are here. It started a ton of dominoes falling.
Before the beginning of last season we were coming off a 25 win season and tourney appearance with a great recruiting class coming in mixed with what should’ve been solid vets.None of those kids had expectations of playing big minutes to start with except for Gilbert. They were forced into action and there were resulting delusions of grandeur. And I’m sure Ollie didn’t handle that right either. But Larrier and Gilbert going down started everything.
 
SubbaBub said:
When KO got to pick his own players.

It is the only reason that makes sense. He was an excellent coach in 2014. I think he fell in love with too many guys with only one skill.
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The only "skill" I see is certain prototypical build.. thin and lanky...without the rest of the goods... shooting, passing, ball handling, basketball IQ. If Adams wasn't out there, we couldn't even compete against the A10.
 
Lefty2one said:
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.
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Note to others: if you're going to post off the question asked, this is how to do it.

The only thing missing here is Kasongo. And Colson. And Diallo. And...

As to this season, it can only be Gilbert. AND, there's no way to know the difference he would have made. OR, how how he'll heal & play in the future.
 
Hans Sprungfeld said:
Note to others: if you're going to post off the question asked, this is how to do it.

The only thing missing here is Kasongo. And Colson. And Diallo. And...

As to this season, it can only be Gilbert. AND, there's no way to know the difference he would have made. OR, how how he'll heal & play in the future.
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I still didn’t see Gilbert being this great player to carry us to the tourney. He had a limited shot and normally dribbled too far into the trees and got it swatted. He had one really good game and that is about it. He would have helped us out but we still lacked shooters and any inside guy to make it easier. As others have said it all started in the offseason with the mass exodus of players. No way Whaley and Carlton should have been counted on more than backup minutes. Also, instead of picking up Williams they should have gone for a fifth guard to allow them to play small and for insurance against an injury to Gilbert with his history.
 
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UConn is 31-30 since the shot. and yes you know what shot I am talking about. clearly the downfall.
 
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3rdbass said:
I still didn’t see Gilbert being this great player to carry us to the tourney. He had a limited shot and normally dribbled too far into the trees and got it swatted. He had one really good game and that is about it.
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This season, agreed. We weren't going dancing even if he stayed healthy. Still have high hopes for him by the time he graduates from Storrs.
 
Lefty2one said:
This season, agreed. We weren't going dancing even if he stayed healthy. Still have high hopes for him by the time he graduates from Storrs.
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Nothing against Gilbert as I have liked how he has stuck with the team through 2 years of playing ball but I hope whoever is the coach next year recruits to have at least 5 guards next year including Gilbert. After four shoulder injuries we can’t rely on him ever playing and extended amount of time at a high level. Just being realistic about his future. I hope he proves me wrong but I don’t want to a season like the last 2 years were we are short a guard or two.
 
3rdbass said:
Also, instead of picking up Williams they should have gone for a fifth guard to allow them to play small and for insurance against an injury to Gilbert with his history.
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This !!!! One of the biggest complaints I have with KO is his inability to properly fill out a roster with the guards and with proper backup. We can't effectively run a 3 guard offense because we only have 3 guards. Next year could be even worse if Adams leaves and AG isn't fully recovered. It amazes me how a coach who played PG in the NBA for 13 seasons can't fill out a roster with enough competent guards.
 
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Two Interpretations of Gilbert's Injury - I lean toward the Gilbert injury being the turning point of this season as the team had practiced all fall with him as the leader. The offense ran through him and has never looked semi-decent since he departed.

Positive - With Gilbert UConn beat a decent Oregon team in Oregon. UConn was hanging tough with Mich St. until Gilbert got hurt. The freshmen were still lost on the court, but if Gilbert had played the entire season his handle and distribution would have enhanced the development of the young guys. There would have been less standing around watching Adams do his thing and Ollie's offense would have been more successful. Jalen would have accepted his role as the 2 guard and would have benefited greatly from Gilbert's skill set. Anderson could have played the role he was brought in to play as the 4th guard and defensive pressure guy. With a healthy Gilbert there would have been more penetration and dishing to the wings for easier 3 pt attempts by Larrier and Vital. UConn's issue for most of this year was that there are limited scoring threats with Adams, Larrier and Vital, and you don't know if and when Larrier and Vital would show up. Gilbert would have been a much needed 4th scoring threat to put more pressure on the defense. He was averaging 9 pts, 4 rebs and 3 assists and was just getting back into game shape. The assumption would be that Gilbert would have improved throughout the year and also assisted in the improvement of others. His presence may have made the difference in games like Arizona, Wichita St, Cincy where a 4th scoring threat and quality PG play was needed in what were close games late into the 2nd half. Estimating he would have resulted in 3-4 more wins thus far (Tulsa, UCF, Arizona, Maybe Cincy at home. Fewer blowouts which is essentially meaningless. +3 puts UConn at 15-9. Still not an NCAA team, but lots of potential shown and gets into NIT.

Negative - Gilbert was not hitting a high % and was not playing smartly against lesser competition. He would not have been the true difference maker that would have pushed UConn even toward the top of the AAC. Maybe he would have meant 1-2 more wins. Not an NCAA team but no idea what the future holds.
 
Nothing happened this year that caused this year to go south.

If there was a beginning point, it was the month after the national championship when no one in the basketball office could summon the energy to dial Prince Ali’s phone number.

That was the snowball heading downhill.
 
When all of the penalties hit. If it weren't for Shabazz Napier, we'd have been in the state we're in now much sooner.
 
There are a lot of ways to answer this question, but to me the first time something felt seriously wrong was when we lost to Wagner to start last season. A lot of people chalked it up to youth or inexperience, but youth and inexperience at a program like UConn means you beat Wagner by 15 instead of 50. You don't drop the opener to Wagner if your program is healthy, you just don't.

But that's just when I started to wonder. Other people seemed to express real concern much sooner than that, even dating back to the late signing period in 2014. Losing Clark, Mack, etc. triggered a lot of warning bells with people and in hindsight I wonder if they knew about things going on behind the scenes. I remember pessimism being expressed during the 2014 opener that didn't seem compatible with everything else we had learned about Ollie and co. the years before and seemed particularly alarmist given the circumstances.

I thought people were very easy on KO last season because of the injuries. This season, I'm not sure he ever had much of a shot without Gilbert and without all the guys that transferred in the off-season.
 
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SirHypeAlot said:
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
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This is exactly correct. The defections were a major punch in the gut, especially during the summer. The fact that Whaley is the best player out of the five guys we added pretty much says it all.
 
Lefty2one said:
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.
Expand ...
This
 
Lefty2one said:
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.
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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.
 
Tenspro2002 said:
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.
Expand ...

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.
 
upstater said:
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.
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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.
 
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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.

 
SirHypeAlot said:
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
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Then explain last season?
 
August_West said:
I never bought that for a long time. But there is no discounting that now.
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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.
 
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Tenspro2002 said:
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.
Expand ...
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
 
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