I can get past taking a shot on Reuter despite injury concerns. We had a scholarship to burn. I don’t even blame DP for the all A10 comment. But I don’t understand why Reuter started nearly every game when Calixte was out performing him.
That is a fair take, but I have a different view point.
I had bought in to the plan, that, DP is doing things right. That it is going to take some time, but he is going to avoid the quick fix drug of transfers, and do it with four year kids with good character, excellent work ethic and the right attitude. Up until he picked up Reuter, all things pointed to that being the plan. If you were going to go after transfers, doing so in your first two years would have made more sense. Then, out of the blue he jumps at the opportunity to sign a transfer. To be honest, though, I was blinded by the hype and looked past the red flag it should have raised given what I understood to be DP's way of building a team. In my defense though, I am just a fan that knows nothing about coaching a college basketball team. He is the one that is the expert at that, not me.
Some of the consequences of that decision:
- It ruined the chemistry of our two year team. If you were viewing this as a two year team, why bring in someone that requires us to play a different type of basketball? That does not seem like a two year plan to me. We were significantly worse in the OOC portion of the season. If we had continued to show growth like we did in the previous year, we might have finished higher this year.
- It cost us 3 years worth of scholarship time for a big that could have been developed the right way. The DP way. That big could have been blossoming in his junior year this coming year...
- It has likely stunted Calixte's development. It may have stunted AJ's, but that one is very debatable.
- He totally screwed with our expectations, and in some ways, ruined the year for Mason fans because of the unreasonable expectations he set.
So, I fault DP for not following through on his own plan. If I had to guess, it is almost like he was already feeling that his 4 year player recruiting was struggling, and he needed to give it a boost with a transfer to help get it back on track with a banner year. Almost as if he felt his seat getting a little warmer in the near future if he didn't do something to address it quickly. Unfortunately, I fear it was a mistake that may have set us back a year or two.
He has also lost the excuse of playing the long game for a lack of results. Just as I criticized people for playing both sides of the argument and saying he sucks as a coach while he is winning with lesser athletes, I would have to criticize him or people that defend him for playing both sides of the the transfers versus 4 year recruits coin. You can't say you are playing the long game and then try to use a transfer to fix it when you think it isn't working and go back to saying you are playing the long game.
Some of his current and near future recruits need to turn out to be stellar college athletes with corresponding results very soon whether they are 4 year recruits or transfers. The long game plan can no longer be used as an excuse.