I don't know who should be fired. But this team doesn't look well coached. Doesn't take a basketball expert to see that. These guys are getting paid good money. Much more then the last staff. Nit is not good enough
NIT isn't good enough based on what metric....the staffs income? Kentucky has had 5 straight top five recruiting classes. Cal makes more than our staff combined. They're in the NIT. Baylor has had top recruiting classes. They are in the NIT. This is year 3 for Lavin, who missed year 2, and has had 2 recruiting classes, turned over an entire roster and have no upper classmen yet the NIT isn't good enough in year 3? Sure Kentucky lost players to the NBA, so did we. They still have a plethora of top 100 talent, so does Baylor.
We are not Kentucky, we are not even Baylor. We don't have their talent or budget, yet we are playing in the same tournament they are. Lets put this "not good enough" or "we should have been better" talk to rest and put things in prospective.
So because Cal had a bad year, it's OK for us to be bad this year?
That's not how this works.
This season's SJU team had enough talent to be in the NCAA tournament. Not only did they not reached their goal, they imploded down the stretch. On the court, and off. Losing 7 of 9. The best player being suspended indefinitely, and several in game skirmishes that culminated in actual punches being thrown.
do I think it's the end of the world? No, I do not.
Do I think it's fair to say we're better now then during the Norm era? No, not at all. Because that was historic ineptitude. Whoever we hired, at the very minimum, was expected to achieve more than Norm.
Do I think it's appropriate to say "it's ok to be where we are, because team X, who historically is very good, is also struggling at the moment." No I think that's equally misleading. Some good program will always be experiencing a down period.
Kentucky didn't lose some players to the NBA, they lost 6. They also won a national championship last year, and Baylor was in the Eite 8.
We returned 4 of 5 starters, added two highly regarded recruits, and a talented pg transferred in.
We should've been better than this. We aren't obviously, but Lavin is entitled to some slack and some benefit of the doubt. He's enjoying that now. That won't be the case indefinitely.
It's not Lavin's fault that our program has been crap for the past 10 years. My analogy was not to say its ok for us to have a bad year because Kentucky did, it's only supporting the answer to the question of how are any of you measuring the success this team "should" have had? If it's based on talent or coaches salary my point was Kentucky and Baylor both have more higher ranked players out of HS currently on their rosters than we do, and they are in the NIT.
Lavin has been here for three years. Resurrecting a program, a dead program, takes some time. If progress was not being made then that is one thing. Has Lavin made some head scratching moves, sure. But to say we "should have done better" I'll ask again- based on what metric?
Mostly based on talent. And specifically returning talent. Does Kentucky have more talent? Sure. Did they have their leading scorer returning? No.
And while Kentucky may have more talent, does Villanova? Or Pittsburgh? No, they probably don't. They're both dancing. Does Providence? They beat us.
Does Virginia? Oregon? What about Minnesota or Illinois? My point is, for every Baylor and Kentucky who you can look at and say "Oh, its not so bad, they're in the NIT too", there are an equal number of teams who were expected to be with us, but are playing much better.
My expectations weren't much more than this. 212 is correct in that regard.
But at the end of the day I did expect them to be better than this, and they're not. That's underachieving.
And it's not just our record, but also an objective standard they've failed to meet as well. Does this "look" like a good team to you? Did they improve significantly as the season went on? Or regress? How many first half leads did we blow? What about the off the court issues? Shouldn't those count in any final evaluation of the season?