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Post by 00hmh on Mar 24, 2016 17:44:04 GMT -6
Oh, I have no objection to getting tougher...especially mentally.
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Post by DanT on Mar 24, 2016 19:19:46 GMT -6
We gotta ignore All things Columbia. It'll only drive us crazy. I have been wintering over south of the border and will be returning home around the middle of April. I hope I am over my sour grapes by then. If not it will be hard to return to "TCJWOFW". (That city just west of Fort Wayne)
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Post by universityjim on Mar 24, 2016 19:48:46 GMT -6
I had chili for dinner and I'm feeling a little soft intestinally right now.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2016 6:35:42 GMT -6
Yeah we should try finessing teams with more skill and talent. That makes a hell of lot of sense. Sheesh...................You are just clueless................. Yes, exactly, it makes total sense. In fact team basketball and finesse is the only way to beat superior talent. If we use what we have well, we beat those teams that have more skill and talent. Coaching does count... This is not AAU basketball. Finesse and team basketball can beat superior talent and individual skill, however you define it. Call it synergy or call it teamwork. In addition, I tend to count good basketball IQ, shooting and passing as skills, and we as a team are pretty high on those counts. Highly skilled. So. Wait a minute, I am not so sure you are right about our talent and skill. We may well be on track to either have more skill and talent, or use it better. Past and current mid majors who have had sustained success against superior talent ( Xavier, Zaga, Wichita State, Butler, Northern Iowa, etc etc.) all played and still play punch you in the face basketball. I am sorry but you are just wrong. "In addition, I tend to count good basketball IQ, shooting and passing as skills, and we as a team are pretty high on those counts. Highly skilled." Really you "tend to count" court awareness, shooting and passing as skills ? Wow, that really makes you an outlier. Goodness what an extreme opinion. Your pretzel logic is so extreme I can't even follow your thoughts anymore. Even more bizarre is your contention Ball State's current roster is "high on those counts".
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2016 6:36:28 GMT -6
Until he recruits that championship front line, we are likely now at about his ceiling. ...except 2 things: BSU arguably had a better front court this year than Buffalo's (by default) championship front line; and, two, there is a lot of evidence that suggests that the returning players are all getting better. Okay and who recruited those guys ?
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Post by 00hmh on Mar 25, 2016 7:33:40 GMT -6
Past and current mid majors who have had sustained success against superior talent ( Xavier, Zaga, Wichita State, Butler, Northern Iowa, etc etc.) all played and still play punch you in the face basketball. I am sorry but you are just wrong. "In addition, I tend to count good basketball IQ, shooting and passing as skills, and we as a team are pretty high on those counts. Highly skilled." Really you "tend to count" court awareness, shooting and passing as skills ? Wow, that really makes you an outlier. Goodness what an extreme opinion. Your pretzel logic is so extreme I can't even follow your thoughts anymore. Even more bizarre is your contention Ball State's current roster is "high on those counts". Maybe I don't understand what you mean by smash mouth but I think of that as get in your face and challenge physically. I think of power not finesse. so my response on your points is this: 1. Smash Mouth. None of these teams play power basketball particularly. Sure, all rely on tough, tenacious play, but "smash mouth" does not to me describe Butler or most of the rest. They play hard, they compete. That is tough, but not physical power basketball. Most play based on good fundamentals, passing game, and good clutch shooting. They beat physically superior teams with skill more than strength. 2. Comparison to skills, IQ. All of these traits I mention, shooting, passing, IQ are NOT related to "smash mouth" basketball at all, as I think about it. MSU tends to play with skill but is characterized by physical play in most years. The Majerus teams at BSU, for example did the same thing. McCurdy, Kidd, Chandler were not finesse players, they took people on and beat them with physical play. Even Majerus's great team had more players who could not the basket outside 15 feet than not. That team feasted on MISSING shots and going after the ball on the board. (now there is some smash mouth basketball) My idea is not extreme, but it is different than "smash mouth" basketball depending on physical toughness. 3. My bizarre idea about our strengths (?) Who is bizarre here? We lack physical play, if anything, not skill and finesse. We have a bunch of Indiana basketball players who are in fact good shooters with good coaching and good IQ. Moses, Franko, Bo, are very good passers and shooters at their position. Sellers, Weber, Tyler, Kiapway are good shooters at any definition of the term. Contrast this with Taylor's last team. C'mon you can say we aren't physical enough, or even tough enough (I think we are a little tougher than some say), but you can't say we don't have skills. How else did we beat people?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2016 7:37:48 GMT -6
There's a large contingent that believes in the glory days of BSU basketball. While we do lead the conference in tournament championships, I got into the record book and compiled the following stats: Butler: 38-67Indiana State: 58-71Valpo: 31-30Evansville: 14-38Indiana: 1-20Purdue: 2-9IPFW: 3-0 IUPUI: 6-4Akron 15-20BGSU: 34-46 Buffalo: 14-12 Kent: 38-41 Miami: 37-61 Ohio: 33-44CMU: 61-33 EMU: 57-42 NIU: 49-36Toledo: 40-47 WMU: 60-63
We have losing records to just about everyone that matters. Sometimes horrible records. These are before this season, so it's not current.
I'm ok with the red numbers as long as the championship number is bigger than everyone else's. But they're catching up and we're not doing much to distance ourselves anymore.Couldn't be more true. We are historically a .500 basketball program with flashes of brilliance and a strong run with Majeris, Hunsaker and McCallum. THAT'S the era we all chose to remember and aspire to return to. Statistically, it says we may NOT be able to drag ourselves out of long term basketball mediocrity. It might just be a geographical/commercial/image fact that no amount of hope and wish will change, I don't know. Within the state of Indiana, Ball State looks upward at programs like IU. Purdue, Notre Dame, Butler, Valparaiso, IPFW, Evansville. Maybe we get the talent we're capable of getting.....and nothing more. Majeris was a HUGE anomaly to a program such as ours. Maybe he forever skewed our thinking and our expectations?
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Post by 00hmh on Mar 25, 2016 7:53:47 GMT -6
...except 2 things: BSU arguably had a better front court this year than Buffalo's (by default) championship front line; and, two, there is a lot of evidence that suggests that the returning players are all getting better. Okay and who recruited those guys ? Well, Moses counts as a front line player, too. But, the better question is who developed these upper class players and found the way to use them effectively in a system. I am not basing my opinion on the future entirely on front line play, and I don't think our front line this year was a great strength, even, but they managed to be much better than expectations. The future looks pretty good. Already, Franko is good. And Moses looks like he will be a a very good player. And we have not seen Teague, who certainly could be the best of the lot. Oh, and by the way recruiting has to be evaluated by overall talent recruited. With two full recruiting classes, we can't declare Whitford a total success recruiting, it's too early for that. But he has found, counting transfers, better overall talent the last two years, than Taylor did in any comparable period. And that is a guy recruiting to a program busted and beat up by years of relative failure. Either that or he is one hell of a lot better in developing and using talent. Many of us thought Taylor had found some talent, and some of his players looked like pretty good recruits, but he either lost those kids somehow, or failed in having a way to use them and make it work. Whitford's talented Indiana recruits are better or at least as good as Taylor's best, and he has done something with them.
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Post by 00hmh on Mar 25, 2016 8:05:06 GMT -6
We are historically a .500 basketball program with flashes of brilliance and a strong run with Majeris, Hunsaker and McCallum. THAT'S the era we all chose to remember and aspire to return to. Statistically, it says we may NOT be able to drag ourselves out of long term basketball mediocrity. It might just be a geographical/commercial/image fact that no amount of hope and wish will change, I don't know. Within the state of Indiana, Ball State looks upward at programs like IU. Purdue, Notre Dame, Butler, Valparaiso, IPFW, Evansville. Maybe we get the talent we're capable of getting.....and nothing more. Majeris was a HUGE anomaly to a program such as ours. Maybe he forever skewed our thinking and our expectations? I am a more cheery about the prospects of competing with everyone except the big 4. These are programs literally in a different league. We can aspire to occasionally join them in the top 40 programs in an extraordinary year for us. But, the MAC and BSU just usually won't get that done. Majerus was an anomaly, at the end of different era of college basketball. Hunsaker may have been the model for us to be successful. We have some hope that it is possible. Ray had a run, a little different in having Bonzi in the house. Still, We may not, probably will not, match the best teams built and coached by Majerus and Hunsaker on any regular basis. Your post is great to point out that is hardly the norm and you're right. Louisville a little earlier than the Majerus years built themselves into a national power. Butler has managed it since then, although they had a history of national presence. Few programs do that, very few.
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Post by realitycheck on Mar 25, 2016 8:14:02 GMT -6
History would also show that from 88-89 season to 01-02 (a span of fourteen years) we never had a losing season and averaged 21 wins a year. Not every team was obviously the caliber of those late 80's early 90's teams but we were the envy of the MAC for almost a decade and had thrust ourselves into the conversation as the fourth best school in Indiana. Then we lost our way primarily through incredible ineptitude on the part of several AD's (whose names rhyme with Purvis and Seger) and more recently thanks to Collins and Gora.
Point being, our sustained success was not a fluke.
Majerus was many things. A great coach, recruiter, teacher, personality and eater. It was hard not to love the guy. But he was the spark that ignited our program, university and city. It was a perfect storm without a doubt to land a guy of his caliber and pedigree. Who knows why he chose to come to Ball State, but we didn't fall off the map after he left. Hunsaker won 97 games in four years which is still hard to comprehend. McCallum 126 in seven years. Once the spark was lit and we were perceived as legit, the momentum and notoriety made us very desirable to recruits. Keep in mind this was before Butler or Creighton or some of the other recent mid majors had begun their ascent. We had a head start and a real chance to create perhaps the same kind of profile as some of the aforementioned mid major powerhouses, but instead we lost our focus, we blinked in the face of financial reality it takes to hire great talent, and we decided that just being competitive and conservative was more important than winning championships. It may not have been a conscious decision at the time, but our moves or lack thereof has spoken volumes. We had a great, perhaps once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to feed that beast when it was a killer and we starved it instead.
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Post by cardfan on Mar 25, 2016 8:20:51 GMT -6
The decline of our program also coincided with a change in admissions standards during the Buckley years. There are players who were studs, including 1 currently in the nba, that Buckley would have gotten but couldn't get them admitted. Two of them starred at Xavier, another at WKU. So it's not like they weren't admissible.
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Post by 00hmh on Mar 25, 2016 9:09:03 GMT -6
We had a head start and a real chance to create perhaps the same kind of profile as some of the aforementioned mid major powerhouses, but instead we lost our focus, we blinked in the face of financial reality it takes to hire great talent, and we decided that just being competitive and conservative was more important than winning championships. It may not have been a conscious decision at the time, but our moves or lack thereof has spoken volumes. We had a great, perhaps once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to feed that beast when it was a killer and we starved it instead. YES! The Administration did make a run at upgrading football, and that has been expensive. We did have a couple of expensive buyouts of coaching contracts. We have faced historic tight fisted funding years from the state, which indirectly has an impact on athletics. A lot of things contributed. Still, basketball at one time at least, had that once in a lifetime opportunity which required some risk, we did not take it. We pinched pennies on coaching expenses, and especially on hires, instead. We kept Buckley too long, could have done more with that hire in the first place. We then made the biggest mistake in MAC coaching history. After that we were in pretty deep trouble. It may have all been understandable and maybe even nothing we could do about it after that.... We can only hope now that we don't repeat the mistake and continue to invest in basketball. But we lost an opportunity that is forever lost and probably won't come our way again.
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Post by williamtsherman on Mar 25, 2016 9:11:18 GMT -6
Wrong.
It's completely wrong to credit Ray's success to Bonzi.
Ray's most impressive team was after Bonzi left, and probably Ray's most impressive coaching feat overall was the incredibly full cabinet he left Buckley. Two NBA players PLUS the MAC's all time leading shot blocker PLUS Pete Jackson PLUS a flock of other very serviceable players. Ray had gone into recruiting hyperdrive just before he left.
By the way, Ray's failure to win a 2nd championship with Bonzi, during his last 3 years here, was primarily due to Ray's inability to recruit a strong frontline presence to supplement Bonzi. It's almost like....wow, I don't know....it's almost like we could learn something from that.
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Post by proctorp on Mar 25, 2016 10:00:39 GMT -6
Going to state the obvious:The administration chose football and basketball lost.(inept AD's and meddling President and First Hubby escalated the demise too!) I am hopeful that the expenses of pretending to be a relevant D1 football program will cause a serious re-evaluation. I think we forget the absolute train-wreck that Whit took over. BSU basketball was irrelevant. Are we headed on the right track? Yes. Do we need to do so much more on all fronts in basketball? Absolutely. Hopeful that Whit can score some recruits that get us off the Mr. Softee menu soon.
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Post by universityjim on Mar 25, 2016 11:42:00 GMT -6
We had a head start and a real chance to create perhaps the same kind of profile as some of the aforementioned mid major powerhouses, but instead we lost our focus, we blinked in the face of financial reality it takes to hire great talent, and we decided that just being competitive and conservative was more important than winning championships. It may not have been a conscious decision at the time, but our moves or lack thereof has spoken volumes. We had a great, perhaps once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to feed that beast when it was a killer and we starved it instead. YES! The Administration did make a run at upgrading football, and that has been expensive. We did have a couple of expensive buyouts of coaching contracts. We have faced historic tight fisted funding years from the state, which indirectly has an impact on athletics. A lot of things contributed. Still, basketball at one time at least, had that once in a lifetime opportunity which required some risk, we did not take it. We pinched pennies on coaching expenses, and especially on hires, instead. We kept Buckley too long, could have done more with that hire in the first place. We then made the biggest mistake in MAC coaching history. After that we were in pretty deep trouble. It may have all been understandable and maybe even nothing we could do about it after that.... We can only hope now that we don't repeat the mistake and continue to invest in basketball. But we lost an opportunity that is forever lost and probably won't come our way again. Correction. The worst coaching hire in the history of organized sports.
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