Mass Failure of College Basketball Coaches Previously and Erroneously Thought to be Good

Many college hoops fans & members of the media, especially those living in the Twin Cities, had high expectations for the Minnesota Golden Gopher Men’s Basketball Team. After all, they made the NCAA tournament last year with essentially the same line-up, and they’re led by National Championship winning Coach Tubby Smith. The fact that they are 5-7 in conference (14-10 overall) means those Tourney hopes are essentially out the window, barring 5 or 6 wins in the final 6 games (vs. Wisconsin, vs. Indiana, vs. Purdue, at Illinois, at Michigan, vs. Iowa) or a victory in the Big Ten Tournament which comes with an automatic bid. Stranger things have happened, but clearly this season has been a disappointment, and there’s no one to blame other than the coach, right? After all, good coaches are able to rally the troops even when the top two recruits never play a game and the best defensive player on the team/starting point guard is out for the 2nd half of the conference season due to grades, right? A coach with 1 National Championship, 3 Elite Eights and 5 Sweet Sixteens, who had a string of 14 straight NCAA tournament appearances with three different teams (Tulsa, Georgia & Kentucky) broken in his first year at Minnesota, clearly isn’t as good as his career record if he can’t get this team back to March Madness. If this is the case, as so many local writers & fans have said, there are a lot of bad coaches out there this season that used to masquerade as legends & leaders of the game!

UCLA is 11-13 this year, with a 6-6 record in the very “down” Pac-10 conference. They lost to Cal State Fullerton, to Dan Monson’s Long Beach St and were absolutely annihilated by Portland, who later lost by 30+ points to Idaho. Ben Howland used to be a good coach, back when UCLA went to 3 straight Final Fours in 2006-2008; or those two Sweet Sixteen trips for Pittsburgh, which landed him the Bruins job. Heck, he can’t win this year even though they only made Nikola Dragovic sit out a couple games when he was charged with felony assault. His trial has been pushed to March 15, and unlike the Gophers’ Trevor Mbakwe, Dragovic doesn’t have any witnesses saying he wasn’t even in the state where the assault occurred. UCLA clearly knew they were down on talent this year, due to multiple early entries into the NBA the past few seasons (Kevin Love, Jrue Holiday & Russell Westbrook, just to name a few) so little things like a felony assault didn’t bother them, but still they can’t seem to win. I guess Ben Howland just isn’t a good coach anymore.

Remember a few years ago, when the Florida Gators celebrated the first back-to-back men’s college basketball championships in nearly 15 years? Billy Donovan was a hot coach then, being offered the Orlando Magic NBA head coaching spot, accepting it, and then changing his mind & returning to Florida. His team is 17-8 this year, which sounds good, but is a bit deceiving. Their win over Michigan St is nice, but the loss to South Alabama and no other significant non-conference wins has them on the outside looking in for March Madness. Nick Calathes clearly left college a year or two early, and prior to that, it apparently hurts to lose all 5 starters from your National Championship team. If they fail to make a late run, this will be two years in a row in the NIT. I guess in Billy the Kid’s old age (he is at close to the nursing home entry level at the age of 44) he has forgotten how to coach, because we’ve heard around here that these things must be overcome by enthusiasm and leadership of the head coach. 3 Final Fours (2 championships & 1 runner-up) and a Sweet Sixteen just aren’t worth what they used to be…)

Jim Calhoun’s normally strong UConn team has really struggled this season. Their overall record is 15-11, but they are only 5-8 in the Big East conference, which won’t get them into the big dance. Connecticut has losses against strong teams like Duke, Kentucky, Georgetown & Syracuse, but has also struggled against weaker teams such as Michigan, Providence, and a suddenly down Louisville (come to think of it, Rick Pitino is another coach I could feature for this blog). Their only wins this season against likely tournament teams are vs. Texas, who has been free-falling for weeks, Villanova and…William & Mary. Pretty bad if William & Mary is one of your teams’ 3 marquee wins! But this one is really hard to figure; the Huskies troubles started with Jim Calhoun on the bench, but even when he took an extended medical leave, they weren’t able to bounce back from the clearly weak coaching they had been getting from the man with 2 National Championships, 1 other Final Four, 5 Elite Eights & 4 Sweet Sixteens (with a grand total of 21 NCAA tournament appearances as a head coach). It must be really bad leadership to continue to affect a team even when he wasn’t there anymore!

It seems like only yesterday that everyone thought Roy Williams knew how to coach basketball, like, perhaps, last April, when he was celebrating a National Championship victory for North Carolina. Now, he is talking about his therapist visits to discuss his feelings about this season being a catastrophe, as the Tar Heels hold a 3-8 record in ACC games, and have conference losses this season to Clemson, Georgia Tech, Wake Forest, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Maryland & Duke including a stretch of 7 losses in 8 games. They also were witness to the College of Charleston fans rushing the court after an “upset” over UNC. At least Charleston is leading the Southern Conference now that Stephen Curry left Davidson to take his game to a higher level, so perhaps that isn’t a bad loss…but a team that started the season ranked #4 in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll, isn’t supposed to be miles away from even being on the bubble. Never mind the players they lost after last year’s championship; Roy Williams simply is not able to motivate this team to victory, as he has stated that the methods that worked with previous teams, just aren’t getting through to this team. Those methods clearly must be inadequate, as they only got him 2 National Championships & 5 other Final Four appearances between North Carolina & Kansas, plus 2 Elite Eights and 4 Sweet Sixteens.


If you haven’t yet caught the sarcasm dripping from these words, then I clearly am not doing any better with my writing than those 5 are with coaching, and I don’t even have any championships on my non-existent writing record. Perhaps, rather than jumping on the “Tubby is a bad coach this year” bandwagon, some other reasons for the disappointing (yet perhaps not underachieving) season should be considered, such as the missing recruits/players, struggles making shots in close games, an inability to get steals or make crisp & accurate passes without Al Nolen on the floor, a less impressive performance by the Top 10 team they beat a few games after Minnesota played them and numerous others that I may explore in future days if my brain cooperates.

Of course a coach has an impact on how a team is performing, and they have to take some responsibility even if they are doing everything “right” and it isn’t working, but to act as if Tubby has lost his touch, and start discussing if he can win & recruit here in the future, is almost as absurd as the Vikings naming Les Steckel as a head coach in the 80’s or Mike Lynn trading 321 draft picks for an aging Hershel Walker. Perhaps we have forgotten this team was 9-22 in 2006-07, that the ’07-08 NIT appearance was considered a “victory” for the program and that the ’08-09 team was never actually expected to be an NCAA tournament team until that big upset of Louisville.

I suspect this would be a much different season if Trevor Mbakwe & the 5 star top ranked recruit in the Big Ten, Royce White had ever stepped foot on the floor, even if Al Nolen still didn’t do his homework. But I guess that’s a scenario that is only happening in a parallel universe along with Brett Favre running for 4 yards and Ryan Longwell kicking a FG to go to the Super Bowl.

Urban Meyer...

I was sitting with my parents & aunt on Saturday night, discussing all the knee-jerk reactions the airline industry was already having to the attempted terrorist attack on the NWA flight in Detroit (which deserves a complete post of its own), when I looked to my phone & saw a new AP news alert text message out of Gainesville, FL "Urban Meyer is stepping down as coach of the University of Florida football team." I did a double, or possibly quadruple take on this text, and quickly switched to my ESPN text feed, to see that they had already posted two messages about Coach Meyer's decision. I'm only slightly exaggerating when I say that I would’ve been less surprised to see a leprechaun next to a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

 

I have always been a fan of both Florida St. & Florida football. I realize if I lived in Florida, that this could get me killed, but as a Minnesota resident, I felt I had the right to cheer for both (behind my favorite hometown Gophers, of course). Florida St. was usually my favorite of the two, especially when former Cretin Derham Hall QB Chris Weinke was there, even though the Gators were my favorite basketball team of the two (still bummed that Teddy Dupay & company did not pull out the 2000 Championship over Michigan St., but just reaching the finals helped me win multiple March Madness pools). That shifted when Urban Meyer arrived in Gainesville. Being a fan of the underdog, I was quite excited about Utah’s big BCS win (see the next paragraph), which somehow led to me becoming a big fan of a dynasty. Go figure. Tim Tebow’s arrival merely cemented the Gators position as 2^nd on my list of teams, ahead of the Seminoles, but Urban Meyer is why they would stay in the spot for me next year & beyond.

 

This is the same Urban Meyer, who brought an undefeated Utah Utes team to a BCS bowl game, in his 4^th year of being a head coach of college football (2^nd year at Utah following 2 years at Bowling Green). Utah is in the Mountain West conference, which makes them an outsider in the BCS conference party. Lead by QB Alex Smith & Meyer’s spread offense, the Utes pounded the Pitt Panthers (out of the BCS member Big East conference) to win the Fiesta Bowl & finish their season with no losses on their record, becoming the first non-BCS team to win one of these bowls. They joined Auburn & Boise St. as three teams undefeated before the bowl games that had no chance to compete for a National Championship, but that would take a few books to write about, not just a blog entry. (USC ended the 2004 season as the “National Champion” with their crushing of Oklahoma, and Boise St. lose their bowl game, leaving Utah, Auburn & USC as the only teams with no blemishes/e)

 

The once feared Florida Gators had been stumbling (especially by their standards) since legendary Coach Steve Spurrier had stepped down (and been humbled in the NFL), being replaced by Ron Zook, whose qualifications included something like being a high school gym teacher, if I remember correctly. The Gators parted ways with Zook after the end of the 2004 bowl season (which is actually in early 2005, which sometimes gets confusing), and courted the hot young Urban Meyer to move east to Gainesville. Meyer was barely 41 yrs old by the time he coached his first Gator football game, but he showed that age was not what mattered for coaching success, nor was a lot of time as a Division I head coach. The Gators finished 9-3 in his first season there, ranked #12 in the AP poll. This still isn’t a successful season in the eyes of Florida fans, but after not even being in the AP poll at the end of the 2004 season (and falling behind rivals Georgia & Florida St., as well as in-state school Miami), this was a leap in the right direction.

 

The 2006 season showed everyone why Florida President Dr. Bernie Machen had wanted Urban Meyer at Florida (Dr. Machen was the Utah president from 1998-2003, so he was very familiar with Meyer already). Behind the solid, but not superstar, senior quarterback Chris Leak, the 12-1 Florida Gators became a surprise contestant in the BCS National Championship game vs. Ohio St. Many thought that the 12-1 Buckeyes should’ve been playing Louisville (12-1), LSU (11-2), USC (11-2), Michigan (12-1, but their only loss had been weeks earlier to Ohio St.) or even the underdog Boise St. Broncos, who once again stood at 13-0 before the bowls, but the BCS computers chose Florida. Oh, I forgot to mention that besides that senior QB Leak, there was a highly recruited freshman out of Nease High School’s football team (he was home schooled for classes), Tim Tebow, who came in to play QB for some plays, including goal-line situations where he could plow through the line, or try one of his never-seen-before jump passes. Tebow would go on to be a decent QB after Leak’s eligibility was exhausted.

 

9 ½ out of every 10 “experts” predicted that Ohio St. would crush the “overrated” Gators. Perhaps Boise St. set the stage for Florida the week before. In the Fiesta Bowl, taking place in the same Glendale, AZ stadium where the National Championship would soon be played, the Broncos somehow found a way to beat the mighty Oklahoma Sooners, who even had the return of their injured running back, Adrian Peterson. Boise outplayed the Sooners, then fell behind late, before some of the most incredible plays in college football led them to an improbable win. Many sports fans would agree that was one of the most fun games (in any sport) that they had ever witnessed. Perhaps it was not merely a coincidence that the underdog wearing blue & orange uniforms pulled out the win.

 

I was lucky enough to be in Florida for a work trip for that National Championship, wearing my blue Gators sweatshirt as I watched the game with my co-workers from our hotel bar. If I believed in gambling of any sort, I might have placed a $5 online bet for the Gators to win, which might have paid out a whopping $20…if I’d ever done that sort of thing. After all the talk about if Florida even belonged in this game, they left everybody with the impression that perhaps Ohio St. didn’t belong in that game. As I recall, Buckeyes kick returner/wr Ted Ginn ran the opening kickoff back for a TD (and injured his foot in the celebration), but Florida didn’t blink, and just set out from there to win the game & finish #1. As a side note, this championship was sandwiched nicely between Billy Donovan’s men’s basketball team winning back-to-back National Championships. It certainly was good to be a Gator!

 

To avoid turning this into a full book, I’ll skip the play-by-play of the following seasons, but Urban Meyer definitely made his mark in college football. Sophomore QB Tim Tebow won the 2007 Heisman Trophy, becoming the first sophomore to win the award, and later became the first player to finish in the top 5 in Heisman voting in 3 different seasons. Urban Meyer has just had a standing flight to New York every year lately for the Heisman Trophy ceremony. They only finished the 2007 season as the #13 team, but they bounced back rather nicely in 2008, winning the National Championship over Oklahoma. This championship was part of an amazing 22-game win streak, started after Tim Tebow’s “Promise” following the loss to Ole Miss (“I’m sorry…I promise you one thing…you will never see a team play harder than we will play the rest of this season. God bless.”) Along with being a fantastic Head Coach & Quarterback combination, Urban Meyer & Tim Tebow had possibly the best bromance in the country! Perhaps this could be explored in a later blog as well.

 

Unfortunately for Gator fans, that 22-game win streak came to an end a few weeks ago in the SEC championship game vs. Alabama, relegating the Gators to the Sugar Bowl, rather than the storybook ending of Tim Tebow riding off into the sunset after a 3^rd National Championship. But while everyone knew that the Sugar Bowl would be the send-off of Tebow, no one thought it would be the last college football game for Urban Meyer. Sure, there were people who thought Urban (named for Pope Urban) would take the Notre Dame job, but he’d turned it down once before, and I had no concerns about that. I had no doubt that the Gators would re-load again next year, even if Coach Meyer was going through Tebow withdrawal (something I am trying to prepare for as well).

 

We have heard that Meyer has health issues, and wants to spend more time with his family, and while it is not life-threatening, the 27 hr a day/8 day a week head coach of football job, is one that provides enough stress to continually put his health at risk. So the man with 2 National Champions (& 3 BCS bowl game wins, hopefully 4 soon), winner of 6 different National Coach of the year awards in 2003 & 2004, and just named Sporting News Magazine’s Coach of the Decade, will be retiring now, at age 45. After the shock has gone away, I will just miss Urban Meyer being a part of college football. I am glad to see him putting his health, faith & family first though, as all too often, we sacrifice all of the above for the job, and somehow the job never shows the same dedication to us when the situation changes. His college-student daughter has already commented that she will be happy to get her daddy back. I wish him & his family nothing but the best, as he goes through this healing process, which will be both physically & mentally difficult. I have a feeling his players might be a little extra inspired for his final game on January 1, against the Cincinnati Bearcats, who already lost their head coach to Notre Dame. Go Gators!

Posted via web from trueliz's posterous

"Strandom" Thoughts of the Night: Timberwolves, NBA Refs, Gophers, Zags & Damages

I had a suggestion tonight from @olearychris on Twitter to call my blog Strandom Thoughts. I like it. I'm not going to change the blog name (yet), but I will use Strandom Thoughts as the title whenever I'm going to be jotting disjointed ideas, rather than writing about one subject. So here goes the debut of Strandom Thoughts:

• The Timberwolves are only 1-3 so far this season, but for some reason, they seem to be much more fun to watch than last year. GM David Kahn did promise me in the security line at the airport, that I would enjoy watching them play, so I had expectations, and so far they have been met. Obviously this is not a playoff year for the Timberpups, and they will likely have twice as many losses as wins, but learning the new system under Kurt Rambis, acclimating new players to the line-up, missing Kevin Love due to injury & having Al Jefferson & Corey Brewer returning after long injury rehabs, all indicate that it is a growing year for the team. But they are showing that "growing" does not need to be brutal to watch.
• Speaking of Corey Brewer...he is by far the most improved player on the team so far. I have been a fan of Florida Gators basketball for awhile; not ahead of the Gophers or Zags, but I've enjoyed watching them since the days when Teddy Dupay was running point (and apparently learning how to run bets at the same time). So I was excited for Corey Brewer to be on the Woofies. His rookie year was obviously a learning experience (and what the heck was with Randy Wittman not allowing rookies to wear headbands; Brewer had always worn one & felt like you & I might feel if we left the house without wearing shoes). Then last year, he was showing some huge strides defensively before that knee injury. This year, he is finally showing the whole package out there. After his career high of 19 points on Sunday night, he had 14 pts on Monday, plus 4 rebounds, 6 assists, 2 blocks and most impressively, 5 steals (with only 1 turnover). Now he just needs to get that shooting percentage up a little higher, but with his 2010-11 option picked up, he will have the opportunity to continue to improve his game.
• Final Timberwolves thought, about Monday's game in L.A. vs. the Clippers. When Ryan Hollins had a very athletic dunk to cut the Clippers lead to one point with under 20 seconds left, he was very clearly fouled, yet no call was made. This allowed the Clips to just hit their free throws & ride out the rest of the game. I'm not sure if the NBA refs spent their work stoppage time last month watching MLB umpires or SEC football refereeing crews, but they might want to wipe those images from their minds now...
• It is almost time for my attention to be focused on "real" basketball, as the college season is just around the corner. While I will always cheer for the Timberwolves, the overall NBA game is not my thing; too many isolation plays & not enough teamwork out there. College ball just makes me smile. The countdown numbers are almost in single digits now: 10 days until the University of Minnesota Men's Basketball team takes on Tennessee Tech, although it's only available to watch online (Fri. Nov. 13 at 7:00pm CST). Gonzaga Bulldogs kick off their season in 11 days vs Mississippi Valley St., which I can watch on FS Northwest thanks to the DirecTV sports pack (Sat. Nov. 14 at 7:00pm CST). Finally, it is 12 days until the Gopher women get started vs. Lamar, which is unfortunately, like most of their non-conference schedule, not available to watch on TV (Sun. Nov. 15 at 2:00pm CST).
• This leads to the other important countdown atop my list: 135 days until March Madness begins (meaning 131 days until the Christmas day of the sports year; Selection Sunday).
• Speaking of Gonzaga & Minnesota, they are once again linked, and this time it has nothing to do with Dan Monson. Osseo alum Sam Dower is a freshman at Gonzaga this season. As far as I know, he is the first Minnesota native to play for the Zags. He had a great game on Monday night in the exhibition vs. Alberta, getting 15 points & 5 boards. I'm not sure yet if he will be red-shirted for the season, but I'm looking forward to watching him play again. I enjoyed seeing him (along with current Gopher/Hopkins alum Royce White) during the MN State tournament a few months back.
• My writing time is up for the evening, so I will conclude with one non-sports thought. Find Season 1 of FX's show "Damages" (starring Glenn Close & Tate Donovan, my favorite former Space Camper accidentally launched into orbit) on iTunes or Netflix. I enjoyed the new USA Network show Royal Pains this summer, and got to like Campbell Scott, who played the millionaire Boris on that show. Upon reading that he would be in Damages Season 3, I decided to check out the first episode from Season 1, just to get an idea of what the show was, so I would have a clue of what was going on in Season 3. All it took was one episode for me to be completely hooked in this serial law thriller, with more twists than Chubby Checker (wow, that was way too cheesy). I just finished Season 1 and am ready to kickoff on Season 2 soon. Ted Danson was a main figure in this season, but the real scene-stealer was Zeljko Ivanek (who has also played Emile Danko on Heroes, JJ on Big Love, Governor Delvin on Oz & Andre Drazen on 24, as well as one episode guest appearances in about every hour-long drama on television in the last decade. Visit his IMDB page at http://bit.ly/4AgMkl if you want to count how many shows you've seen him on over the years). The Slovenian actor convincingly played a lawyer with a down south accent, and he managed to grab the spotlight from the bigger name stars in the show. I promise you won't regret checking this out (unless you find yourself missing your bedtime because you want to watch just one more episode before sleeping.)