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(12-12-2017 05:23 PM)marcuscan Wrote:  

(12-11-2017 08:04 PM)jarr Wrote:  

(12-11-2017 09:01 AM)marcuscan Wrote:  

(12-10-2017 11:48 AM)UCGrad1992 Wrote:  

(12-10-2017 09:09 AM)CliftonAve Wrote:  Barring scandal, Mick had a job for life here.

1/3 of the fan base thinks he is a HOF coach
1/3 thinks we can’t get anyone better
1/3 wants to move on to someone else

If that's true, I have some "investment options" I want to sell to those folks.

Here's my take. Mick gets more than his share of a coaching "pass" because of the following:

He's from here and a graduate of UC.
His dad's high school career.
He's a solid character guy.
Coached under Huggs.
Runs a clean program.
Transitioned the program through the initial dark years post Huggs.
He is well respected by other NCAA head coaches.
7 straight years to the NCAA tourney.

I may have missed a few but what I didn't list was actual PERFORMANCE. It is well documented during his 11+ seasons at the helm:

1 trip to the second weekend in March (S16)
1 regular season conference championship
0 conference tournament championships
4-8 record against Xavier
.640 overall winning percentage

Mick is a quality dude and a high character guy but I don't see him as a high ceiling coach and for poop's sake he's not even in the ballpark for a HOF coach. This is what our university has to determine - do we want a quality character guy that does good but not great or do we recruit someone who we believe has a higher ceiling?

As several have posted, this remains a long year. There's time for the team to get better and make adjustments but we've seen this movie before. I think most of you felt the Cats would go 2-2 in these four big games. So, that is still possible but from what I've seen the past two games 1-3 is most likely. I have no confidence that we will win the AAC either. For those of us that felt this was one of Mick's better teams we weren't alone: the national sports media and AAC coaches agreed as well. That is what is so maddening and disappointing. We are underachieving and underperforming right now. Who's fault is that?

the blind allegiance to Mick is truly baffling to me. As the data points against Mick have continued to accumulate over the years there has been this constant strain of resistance against the ugly truth.

I just can't see what else there is to be said and/ or done. The fact of the matter is Mick is highly unlikely to push us through to the next level. Equally true, and to his credit i suppose, he's unlikely to allow us to bottom out. So we're just stuck with him. We raced to save him from going to UNLV. I mean, c'mon.....it woulda been such a win-win to let him go there. Ugh.

Basketball season at UC is just Groundhog Day now. As crappy as the football team was this year i STILL had more excitement for it than hoops. we're going to win 20 games, mostly vs scrubs, lose overwhelming majority of big games, be offensively inept, make the big dance, and bow out early. Zzzzzzz






mc

This is exactly how I feel. Basketball is just stale. The early season cupcake buffet is boring and we lose virtually every major game that draws a national audience. Micks style of play is based on overwhelming less talented teams, but consistently losing to equal or more talented teams.

Even though Bob had some very disappointing tournament results his last 9 years, I still felt like in at least half those years we had a shot to make a final 4 or go further. Mock has yet to produce a team that I had any confidence can do that. I am still holding out hope for this team, but I haven't seen any evidence.

Here, here.

Anyone who's known me on these UC sports boards streets knows I'm not, and will never be, a Huggs apologist. I thought it was time for him to step aside. That said, Mick is even worse. Far worse...IMHO. He hasn't anywhere CLOSE to the same highs Huggs did. We're not a brand. We're not a nationally feared team. Heck, we're not even really relevant.

He hasn't made any mark in the post season, his teams are terrible to watch, he doesn't even send guys to the pros. FWIW I am, however, kinda encouraged by the growing groundswell of people seeing through his hocus pocus.

Idk how much it matters tho. the administration is staunchly behind him, and we don't have spare millions to throw at him AND hire an up & coming coach. So....here we are. Stuck with coach with a low ceiling, and a decent floor. We're going nowhere....fast. It indeed makes for a stale existence. We're the Atlanta Hawks. Just an also ran squad that's never really a threat...and typically a consistent performing team.




mc

Well written. Who really knows what happened with UNLV but my fear is that Ono intervened and thought he could please the fans by convincing Mick to stay. From what I've observed, Ono was mostly about pleasing and appeasing during his tenure here rather than making the tough decisions.

(12-13-2017 08:13 AM)OKIcat Wrote:  

(12-12-2017 05:23 PM)marcuscan Wrote:  

(12-11-2017 08:04 PM)jarr Wrote:  

(12-11-2017 09:01 AM)marcuscan Wrote:  

(12-10-2017 11:48 AM)UCGrad1992 Wrote:  

If that's true, I have some "investment options" I want to sell to those folks.

Here's my take. Mick gets more than his share of a coaching "pass" because of the following:

He's from here and a graduate of UC.
His dad's high school career.
He's a solid character guy.
Coached under Huggs.
Runs a clean program.
Transitioned the program through the initial dark years post Huggs.
He is well respected by other NCAA head coaches.
7 straight years to the NCAA tourney.

I may have missed a few but what I didn't list was actual PERFORMANCE. It is well documented during his 11+ seasons at the helm:

1 trip to the second weekend in March (S16)
1 regular season conference championship
0 conference tournament championships
4-8 record against Xavier
.640 overall winning percentage

Mick is a quality dude and a high character guy but I don't see him as a high ceiling coach and for poop's sake he's not even in the ballpark for a HOF coach. This is what our university has to determine - do we want a quality character guy that does good but not great or do we recruit someone who we believe has a higher ceiling?

As several have posted, this remains a long year. There's time for the team to get better and make adjustments but we've seen this movie before. I think most of you felt the Cats would go 2-2 in these four big games. So, that is still possible but from what I've seen the past two games 1-3 is most likely. I have no confidence that we will win the AAC either. For those of us that felt this was one of Mick's better teams we weren't alone: the national sports media and AAC coaches agreed as well. That is what is so maddening and disappointing. We are underachieving and underperforming right now. Who's fault is that?

the blind allegiance to Mick is truly baffling to me. As the data points against Mick have continued to accumulate over the years there has been this constant strain of resistance against the ugly truth.

I just can't see what else there is to be said and/ or done. The fact of the matter is Mick is highly unlikely to push us through to the next level. Equally true, and to his credit i suppose, he's unlikely to allow us to bottom out. So we're just stuck with him. We raced to save him from going to UNLV. I mean, c'mon.....it woulda been such a win-win to let him go there. Ugh.

Basketball season at UC is just Groundhog Day now. As crappy as the football team was this year i STILL had more excitement for it than hoops. we're going to win 20 games, mostly vs scrubs, lose overwhelming majority of big games, be offensively inept, make the big dance, and bow out early. Zzzzzzz






mc

This is exactly how I feel. Basketball is just stale. The early season cupcake buffet is boring and we lose virtually every major game that draws a national audience. Micks style of play is based on overwhelming less talented teams, but consistently losing to equal or more talented teams.

Even though Bob had some very disappointing tournament results his last 9 years, I still felt like in at least half those years we had a shot to make a final 4 or go further. Mock has yet to produce a team that I had any confidence can do that. I am still holding out hope for this team, but I haven't seen any evidence.

Here, here.

Anyone who's known me on these UC sports boards streets knows I'm not, and will never be, a Huggs apologist. I thought it was time for him to step aside. That said, Mick is even worse. Far worse...IMHO. He hasn't anywhere CLOSE to the same highs Huggs did. We're not a brand. We're not a nationally feared team. Heck, we're not even really relevant.

He hasn't made any mark in the post season, his teams are terrible to watch, he doesn't even send guys to the pros. FWIW I am, however, kinda encouraged by the growing groundswell of people seeing through his hocus pocus.

Idk how much it matters tho. the administration is staunchly behind him, and we don't have spare millions to throw at him AND hire an up & coming coach. So....here we are. Stuck with coach with a low ceiling, and a decent floor. We're going nowhere....fast. It indeed makes for a stale existence. We're the Atlanta Hawks. Just an also ran squad that's never really a threat...and typically a consistent performing team.




mc

Well written. Who really knows what happened with UNLV but my fear is that Ono intervened and thought he could please the fans by convincing Mick to stay. From what I've observed, Ono was mostly about pleasing and appeasing during his tenure here rather than making the tough decisions.

Yep.. for those that remember, when Mick was interviewing for the job some were reporting that Mick and Bohn were at odds.... the Mick acolytes were on social media calling for Ono to intervene and were threating to cancel their season tickets if Cronin left town... they wanted Bohn fired for not building a new locker room for Mick at 5/3rd (despite the new project starting in a 1-2 years). Ono personally met with Cronin, extended his contract (and Tuberville's too fwiw).

The problem with the current anti-Cronin argument--that he cannot get over the program over the hump--is that the people putting it forward are the same ones who said he should be gone after year 4 because he was a terrible coach who could never get the program turned around. Now that he's reached the current level of success, they have moved the goalposts and claim that Cronin can't make UC a brand or make deep runs in the tournament or whatever. They never acknowledged that they were wrong, and they never let go of their original assessment, and now, after a couple awful losses, they are popping up again, as they always do. There's really no reason to give their opinions any credence.

I've been critical of Cronin's recruiting, in that I think it's almost impossible to build a Final 4-type team without top talent, and top talent is almost always obvious, so if you aren't getting top-rated recruits then you are not going to be able to consistently beat the teams that are (as we saw last year against UCLA). I'm also aware of structural problems facing this program that make that difficult. If UC is getting the same results after making the arena investment, fine, you guys win, fire Cronin, and we can hope to find a better coach. But to even be talking this now is ridiculous.

(12-13-2017 10:32 AM)levydl Wrote:  I'm also aware of structural problems facing this program that make that difficult. If UC is getting the same results after making the arena investment, fine, you guys win, fire Cronin, and we can hope to find a better coach. But to even be talking this now is ridiculous.

I would agree. With the conference crumbling around us and one of the worst arenas in the country to build a consistent winner has been a pretty substantial overachievement by Mick. Basically both those excuses go away in the next few years. While not a great conference we know where we're going to be and the conference has helped us by adding Witchita and limiting us to one game against the dregs of society. By no means is it a great conference but in hoops conference isn't as important and you can build a championship level program outside the P5 (see Gonzaga).

The arena by all accounts should be incredible.

I'm very excited about the future of this program. If we don't take a step up over the next few years it'll be time to have a difficult conversation. At this point switching coaches my guess is there's a 90+% chance we'd end up with a worse coach.

With the new arena, the success of the last seven years and addition of WSU hopefully we are going to go to the next level.

If Uconn and Memphis could return to form along with WSU, Temple and SMU the conferebce wont be a liability

(12-09-2017 09:07 PM)jarr Wrote:  Did Mick even look at local products Lamont West and James Bolden that Bob came in and got? They weren't highly regarded coming out, but they look like really talented offensive players. He passed them up for Justin Jennifer and Tre Scott?

Crazy, huh. Both have announced they are leaving WVU. Just saw that Lamont West is transferring to Missouri State. I haven't seen anything linking Bolden anywhere yet.