Let’s have an honest conversation about how things are going under Dave’s watch. I don’t want to venture into hyperbole, as there’s already plenty on both sides. No, Dave shouldn’t be on the hot seat. He also doesn’t shit ice cream. Some things are going well and some other things are going poorly. Mentioning the things that are going poorly is generally met with a Frank Drebin “nothing to see here” routine from the crowd that thinks we’re right on schedule, so I want to talk about those.
- Mason has looked totally unprepared in the first half of more than half our games so far. Dug gigantic deficits against Auburn, Rhode Island, Fresno State, Louisiana Tech, Georgia Southern, and Penn State. Trailed at the half against CSUN, Binghamton, and Morgan State. That’s on the coaches.
- Player development is bizarrely lacking in one particular area. Kier hasn’t hit a three all season. Boyd has tons of physical talent but disappears for long stretches most games, and shoots 26% from deep. Javon airballed a three today and hit the side of the backboard on another. Does this team have a shooting coach? How does a team full of guards shoot 30% from 3?
- The state of the roster is 100% on Paulsen. It stinks to high hell that Karmari, Troy, and Relvao all departed the program after returning to campus for the new season – the staff clearly didn’t expect it, and those guys clearly expected to be here. This is a different tangent, but yes, Relvao would help right now. So would Troy. Most college bigs are terrible. There’s value to occupying space, clogging the paint, and having five fouls with which to clobber the Nathan Knights of the world.
- I’m very disappointed with our unwillingness to change tactics to fit our personnel. The “adjustment” last year was having Marquise Moore turn into Russell Westbrook. There’s no such miracle waiting for us right now. If we continue the season without trying to generate more turnovers and run in transition we’ll finish between 4-6 A10 wins.
- Dave got beat for Tre Wood, a 3-star point guard from DC, by Matt McCall at UMass. McCall stepped into a similarly bad situation at UMass and is in his first year. Whether or not Dave can recruit the horses necessary to compete at the top of the A10 is still a valid question. Mar is a great recruit and next year’s class looks promising, but the book isn’t closed by any means.
Not for nothing, but I don’t buy that Hewitt left the program in such utter disrepair that we can’t reasonably expect to be better in year 3 under Paulsen. Hewitt had a few losing seasons, nothing more. There were no sanctions to deal with, no postseason bans, no lost scholarships. All the talk of how the Hewitt recruits didn’t have the right mentality doesn’t stand up to scrutiny either – Marquise and Jalen turned out great, Trey Porter is averaging 11 and 5 for ODU, and Isaiah Jackson is in the 8-man rotation for a tournament team two years running.
I don’t want to dwell on the negatives, really I don’t, but I also don’t want legitimate talking points to be represented only by the various troll accounts that infest these boards. Dave is taking some lumps in the rebuild, which is fine, but let’s call them what they are. Go look at the first couple pages of the predictions thread – 20 wins, above .500 in the A10, NIT berth, etc etc. Now people are talking about how we can’t judge Dave by next year either because he still needs more time. I like Dave, I support Dave, and I think he’ll get it done, but I have no interest in endlessly adjusting my expectations downward to avoid putting any sort of accountability on him.
- Mason has looked totally unprepared in the first half of more than half our games so far. Dug gigantic deficits against Auburn, Rhode Island, Fresno State, Louisiana Tech, Georgia Southern, and Penn State. Trailed at the half against CSUN, Binghamton, and Morgan State. That’s on the coaches.
- Player development is bizarrely lacking in one particular area. Kier hasn’t hit a three all season. Boyd has tons of physical talent but disappears for long stretches most games, and shoots 26% from deep. Javon airballed a three today and hit the side of the backboard on another. Does this team have a shooting coach? How does a team full of guards shoot 30% from 3?
- The state of the roster is 100% on Paulsen. It stinks to high hell that Karmari, Troy, and Relvao all departed the program after returning to campus for the new season – the staff clearly didn’t expect it, and those guys clearly expected to be here. This is a different tangent, but yes, Relvao would help right now. So would Troy. Most college bigs are terrible. There’s value to occupying space, clogging the paint, and having five fouls with which to clobber the Nathan Knights of the world.
- I’m very disappointed with our unwillingness to change tactics to fit our personnel. The “adjustment” last year was having Marquise Moore turn into Russell Westbrook. There’s no such miracle waiting for us right now. If we continue the season without trying to generate more turnovers and run in transition we’ll finish between 4-6 A10 wins.
- Dave got beat for Tre Wood, a 3-star point guard from DC, by Matt McCall at UMass. McCall stepped into a similarly bad situation at UMass and is in his first year. Whether or not Dave can recruit the horses necessary to compete at the top of the A10 is still a valid question. Mar is a great recruit and next year’s class looks promising, but the book isn’t closed by any means.
Not for nothing, but I don’t buy that Hewitt left the program in such utter disrepair that we can’t reasonably expect to be better in year 3 under Paulsen. Hewitt had a few losing seasons, nothing more. There were no sanctions to deal with, no postseason bans, no lost scholarships. All the talk of how the Hewitt recruits didn’t have the right mentality doesn’t stand up to scrutiny either – Marquise and Jalen turned out great, Trey Porter is averaging 11 and 5 for ODU, and Isaiah Jackson is in the 8-man rotation for a tournament team two years running.
I don’t want to dwell on the negatives, really I don’t, but I also don’t want legitimate talking points to be represented only by the various troll accounts that infest these boards. Dave is taking some lumps in the rebuild, which is fine, but let’s call them what they are. Go look at the first couple pages of the predictions thread – 20 wins, above .500 in the A10, NIT berth, etc etc. Now people are talking about how we can’t judge Dave by next year either because he still needs more time. I like Dave, I support Dave, and I think he’ll get it done, but I have no interest in endlessly adjusting my expectations downward to avoid putting any sort of accountability on him.
