Before I start addressing the subject of this thread, I think that it makes sense to reveal a few things about myself. I, like many on these boards, have lived through the varied dark days of Tribe Basketball over the last almost 50 years at this point. I survived the Swenson years, the Boyages years, and any and all of the lean years that Barry Parkhill, Charlie Woollum, and Tony Shaver served up. But, on the other hand, I was at the Robins Center in March 1983 when we lost the ECAC South championship game in the last minute to JMU, the miracle tourney run in 2008, the wonderful tourney run in 2010, and the tournaments in Baltimore that saw us lose on championship nights in consecutive years to Delaware and Northeastern.

While they have sadly been few and far between over the years, I do have my favorite memories. My favorite group of consecutive days was our 4 day tourney run in 2008.To see our fan base grow from the few of us that were there to see David Schneider hit the winning shot to beat Georgia State to the crowd that we had on championship night took my breath away. My favorite tournament moment is Daniel Dixon's buzzer beater in double overtime to beat Hofstra. I still pull that video up to this day when I want to feel better. But to this day my favorite moment as a Tribe fan was sitting in my seat in sold out William & Mary Hall on that cold winter night in December 1977 when the Tribe took down #2 UNC.

I have one final initial revelation to make up front. I am one of the Pro Shaver posters on these boards. While most of us knew that the last two years carried with them the prospect of being leaner than we had become accustomed to, the degree of painfulness of the last two seasons falls largely at the feet of our former AD. No one on these boards wants the Tribe to go to the Big Dance more than me. If I close my eyes I used to be able to imagine what it would feel like to dance like a teenager on the court after we won the championship game and what it would feel like to hear our name called on Selection Sunday. But no amount of desire to go dancing would have led me to seek that goal by sacrificing the feeling of having a chance every year. I do not feel for one moment that Tony had earned the right of tenure, and if he had failed to get us to the Dance with what looked to be a loaded 2019-20 team, perhaps then it would have been time for a change. But Huge's poorly timed decision not only cost us potentially the deepest roster that we had ever had in 2019-20 but negatively impacted the makeup of our roster for the 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons in a way that would have made winning a challenge for any coach, much less a rookie head coach.

I am, by nature, sadly a "glass is half empty" guy. But no matter what, I have always tried to be a "half full" guy when it comes to Tribe basketball. But the last two years have worn me out and for the first time ever, I was not sad when I watched us lose in person on Saturday night. I am in the camp that feels that Dane should be given another year to right the ship as I feel that firing another coach at this moment might sink the program even lower. But I do not feel much fairness these days and the excuses end after the year that just ended. Dane must thoroughly address what went wrong the last two years, aggressively reshuffle the deck of cards that was stacked against him, and put a contender on the floor in year 4 of his tenure. I am going to give him one more get out of jail card because I truly believe that he has had to swim upstream the last couple of years because of the timing of THE DECISION, as I will attempt to detail below, but it is time for him to put on his big boy pants and add two more values to his list; Passion and Urgency.

Our "Journey into the Abyss" can, to some reasonable degree, be explained by the following sequence of events:

2019-20 SEASON:

Tony is fired in March 2019. Rising Senior starters Justin Pierce and Matt Milon leave the team in the spring, as do rising sophomores L J Owens and Chase Audige. Tony's one Freshman recruit, Cameron Brown, is released from his LOI. Rising Junior Luke Loewe enters the portal. Rising Senior Nate Knight explores the NBA draft. Dane Fischer is hired as head coach and is immediately staring at a roster that might only contain 5 scholarship players; Redshirt Senior Andy Van Vilet, who had never played a game for W&M, seldom used rising Junior Jihar Williams, and the three remaining members of Tony's final recruiting class, Thornton Scott, Quinn Blair, and Mehkel Harvey.

Down to potentially five scholarship players, Dane understandably panics. Faced with the reality that the vast majority of high school seniors are signed during the November signing period, he is left with the prospect of having to fill the pantry during the late signing period. Nate and Luke eventually came back to get us to seven players, and Tyler Hamilton and Bryce Barnes were eventually signed as Grad students, but Dane could count on none of this when he desperately started signing high school seniors to LOI's. The end result was a hurriedly signed 4 man class of Ben Wight, Thatcher Stone, Miguel Ayesa, and Rainers Hermanovskis. Four (4) scholarships handed over out of desperation that not only led to only one starter but to only one rotation player. In hindsight, if Dane had known all along that Nate and Luke were going to return and Tyler and Bryce were going to sign, he might have only added two incoming Freshmen at most. But he did not know this and he ended up using 4 valuable scholarship roster spots for potentially a 4 year future period for ONE STARTER!!

2020-21 SEASON:

Nate, Andy, Bryce, and Tyler graduate while Jihar leaves the program before the season ever starts. Conner, Yuri, and Jake come in as incoming Freshman. The roster now sits at 11. Covid hits so the already young team does not get to gather on campus prior to the start of the season, and the season becomes a Covid induced nightmare. Thornton Scott leaves the team in mid season so now we are down to 10 scholarship players.

2021-22 SEASON:

Covid becomes the gift that keeps on giving because of two VERY IMPORTANT RULINGS BY THE NCAA during the latter part of the 2020-21 season that W&M was in the position to only marginally take advantage of. First, the NCAA gives every player on the 2020-21 roster an extra year of eligibility. You get to expand your roster above the 13 player limit to accommodate any of your own players that want the extra year, but you must find an open place on your existing 13 scholarship limit to accommodate players coming from other programs. And to make matters worse, the NCAA passes a rule that allowed every student athlete to transfer their first time WITHOUT having to sit out a year. This motherload of players allowed teams to restock rosters with 5th and 6th year Seniors, and W&M had almost ZERO flexibility. As I noted above, Thornton Scott's departure meant that we ended the 2020-21 season with only 10 scholarship players. With only Luke graduating, we had 4 scholarships available for incoming Freshmen for the 2021-22 season but three slots were already taken by the LOI's signed by Lewis, Rice, and Hatton, long before the NCAA passed its two rule changes. Through no ones fault, we only had one open scholarship to use to take advantage of the new rules, and that went to Brandon Carroll. And we only had one senior that could have stayed an extra year, Luke Loewe, and he went to Minnesota. The problem was not that we became younger, because our three incoming Freshmen filled open slots from the previous year's roster and we traded one senior for another senior. The problem was that almost every other school was able to load up on 5th and 6th year seniors while we had no open spots to do so, and like it or not, this was not Dane's fault.

2022-23 SEASON

This is where the rubber hits the road for Dane He currently has two open scholarships to fill and he better go out and fill them with experienced Grad school students. If another scholarship opens up, add a third. And he needs to coach up the players to return.No excuses now!!!