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MEN'S BASKETBALL: JOURNEY INTO THE ABYSS
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WMTRIBE75 Offline
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MEN'S BASKETBALL: JOURNEY INTO THE ABYSS
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!!!
03-08-2022 07:29 PM
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mrjoolius Online
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MEN'S BASKETBALL: JOURNEY INTO THE ABYSS
Excellent recap of how we got here. Well thought out and well remembered.
03-08-2022 07:40 PM
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Zorch Offline
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RE: MEN'S BASKETBALL: JOURNEY INTO THE ABYSS
I especially liked the “initial revelations” section; those truths apply to many of us on this board. And it is easy to see why many of us long-term fans can become “glass-half-empty” type personalities.
03-08-2022 07:55 PM
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ScottyB757 Offline
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RE: MEN'S BASKETBALL: JOURNEY INTO THE ABYSS
(03-08-2022 07:55 PM)Zorch Wrote:  I especially liked the “initial revelations” section; those truths apply to many of us on this board. And it is easy to see why many of us long-term fans can become “glass-half-empty” type personalities.

I always thought “glass-half-empty” was a prerequisite at W&M. If not, it was definitely learned by most of us.

Great post, 75.
03-08-2022 09:22 PM
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FauqDawg10 Offline
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RE: MEN'S BASKETBALL: JOURNEY INTO THE ABYSS
You've done a good job explaining why it was highly improbable that *any* outside coach would have been successful in the first couple years. The depleted roster and bottom-of-the-barrel recruits were foreseeable. The Covid changes were not, but made it increasingly worthless to be a "young team."

That is not really on Dane. What's on him is how bad his first two full recruiting classes have looked so far. Freshmen are generally excused, although the depth of the struggles are uninspiring. The sophomore class is a much bigger indictment; we're getting less than nothing from Covington and Milkereit, and although Kochera looks like one of two best players purely by default, he took a large step back this year. I think even people in the "Don't fire Dane yet" camp--and to be clear, I am in that--would agree that signs of progression from those guys has to show up quickly, or we're ready to start this process over again the next unknown mid-major assistant ready to prove himself (because if we're being honest, that's all we can draw right now).
03-08-2022 09:32 PM
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LeadBolt Offline
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RE: MEN'S BASKETBALL: JOURNEY INTO THE ABYSS
Great post. Well stated recap that captures where many of us long-term fans come down. We need to all root for Dane to be successful at W&M next year, and if not where ever he winds up.
03-08-2022 10:12 PM
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Blow Gym rat Offline
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RE: MEN'S BASKETBALL: JOURNEY INTO THE ABYSS
I don't disagree with anything 75 wrote, although (despite being a lifelong Tribe fan) I still somehow consider myself a "glass-half-full" kind of guy in most respects.

There's no disputing that Dane came into a very tough situation, one not of his own making, and I've always credited him for finding players to fill out the empty bench that first year. It's also true that the presence of the freshmen from that class, assembled at the last minute, has limited Dane's recruiting options in subsequent years, and that the COVID year brought additional challenges to team development.

But at the end of the day, a coach needs to play the hand he's dealt. What has been said elsewhere -- which perhaps is why 75 didn't bother to repeat it at length here -- is that this season, Dane took a bad hand and played it horribly. Back in November, after the American loss, I wrote that we would need to "watch, as the season progresses, for improvements both individually and as a team. The initial bar has been set pretty low for most so I’m sure we’ll see some -- but how much?"

OK, now we're at the end of that road -- can anybody point me to any improvements along the way? This year's roster clearly was not the most talented in Tribe history, but they were -- each one of them -- coachable young men with some degree of basketball talent and basketball smarts. They were coachable, but they weren't, to any visible effect that I could see, coached.

Dane is likeable, and I think he represents the College well as a person. I join everyone who hopes that he will somehow turn it around. With W&M's finances being what they always are, Dane will be with us for at least another season, and very possibly two, regardless of the results on the court.

This year certainly has been harder on Dane than it has been on anyone else, and I'm sure it's taken a lot out of him -- we sometimes forget that we're "just fans." He's been in the coaching business a long time, so he must have some idea what needs to be done. Maybe with a new season and a fresh start, he'll find himself. Maybe.

That's as full as my glass gets on this topic.
03-09-2022 10:28 AM
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wmmii Offline
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RE: MEN'S BASKETBALL: JOURNEY INTO THE ABYSS
I join with '75 down the memory road having shared the same experiences of both pain and joy. I would just add to the memory trail:

1.Watching on TV when W&M played in Blow Gym in the 1960's with dead spots on the court and the students shacking the backboard attached to the balcony when the opponent was shooting free throws

2. Watching on TV W&M taking WVA into double OT to lose 70-67 in the Southern Conference finals on 2/27/65

3. Watching on TV first game played in W&M Hall on 12/5/70 against UNC when the teams used buses as the locker rooms since the HVAC was not working yet.

4. Attending the loss 3/6/75 at Furman for the Southern Conference finals.

Hopefully Dane has a retired or active successful coach that he considers his "mentor" that he never worked under and they can analyze the current situation and determine what the correct next steps should occur. It is clear he knows that the last two scholarships need to go to impact players that are found thru the portal.
(This post was last modified: 03-09-2022 11:37 AM by wmmii.)
03-09-2022 11:31 AM
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RE: MEN'S BASKETBALL: JOURNEY INTO THE ABYSS
When I think about coaching at the collegiate level it comes down to four things:

Recruiting - Dane has recruited some good players and some that aren't really D1 caliber. I'll almost give a pass on this one given the situation, but I want to see how this year's class works out.

Team/Player Development - Big fat F here unless I'm missing something. Players like Ayesa, Harvey, Blair, and Hermanovskis have regressed. Players like Kochera and Covington have stayed about the same. Milkreit and Stone never developed. Wight has improved year over year. Hard to tell about the freshman class. The team has won 21/10/5 times over the last three season. Finally, I don't think his assistant coaches are doing him any favors either. Losing Kemp hurt.

Xs and Os - Scheme doesn't appear to have any rationale to it. He's running an offense that the pros run in the NBA, but we don't have that type of talent. I have no clue what we're doing on defense other than man to man. Zone? Zone press?

Game Management - Not great. He doesn't seem to adjust well. He appears to do everything in a very scripted manner with little energy. He never really gets into the refs' ear much and has been outcoached. Clock management is again by the book, but why do we wait to start an offensive play at 8 seconds at the end of a half? In the NBA or even at places like Duke, that might work, but not here. We just don't have the offensive play makers to take the last shot with that little time. No margin for error.
03-09-2022 11:43 AM
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WMTRIBE75 Offline
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RE: MEN'S BASKETBALL: JOURNEY INTO THE ABYSS
(03-09-2022 11:43 AM)Tribe32 Wrote:  When I think about coaching at the collegiate level it comes down to four things:

Recruiting - Dane has recruited some good players and some that aren't really D1 caliber. I'll almost give a pass on this one given the situation, but I want to see how this year's class works out.

Team/Player Development - Big fat F here unless I'm missing something. Players like Ayesa, Harvey, Blair, and Hermanovskis have regressed. Players like Kochera and Covington have stayed about the same. Milkreit and Stone never developed. Wight has improved year over year. Hard to tell about the freshman class. The team has won 21/10/5 times over the last three season. Finally, I don't think his assistant coaches are doing him any favors either. Losing Kemp hurt.

Xs and Os - Scheme doesn't appear to have any rationale to it. He's running an offense that the pros run in the NBA, but we don't have that type of talent. I have no clue what we're doing on defense other than man to man. Zone? Zone press?

Game Management - Not great. He doesn't seem to adjust well. He appears to do everything in a very scripted manner with little energy. He never really gets into the refs' ear much and has been outcoached. Clock management is again by the book, but why do we wait to start an offensive play at 8 seconds at the end of a half? In the NBA or even at places like Duke, that might work, but not here. We just don't have the offensive play makers to take the last shot with that little time. No margin for error.
As Blow Gym Rat correctly points out above, I intentionally left out of my thread any sections that dealt with Dane's coaching this year because I wanted to lay out, as best I could, the mitigating factors that he has had to deal with for which I felt it would be unfair to hold him accountable for....cleaning up the equation so to speak so that it would leave us with those things that we have every right to hold him responsible for and those things that I feel that he must aggressively address NOW. Wonderful posters such as you have taken the ball and moved on to the areas that I really hoped we would gravitate towards. I think that the points that you have made in your post are spot on.

In my initial post, I said that there were two things that I am really looking for from Dane at this point; PASSION and URGENCY!! I feel confident that he lacks neither, but an outward display of both would make me feel better. I cut my teeth as a Tribe fan watching Bruce Parkhill coach. Passion and urgency was never missing when Bruce strolled the sidelines. Sadly for my family members who have had to sit around me all of these years, my occasional outbursts over the years have sometimes made me look like Bruce trained me to be a fan in his likeness. But I always knew that Bruce left everything that he had on the court when he coached.

I am not looking for Dane to take on Bruce's personality, but showing a bit more emotion while both coaching the game and addressing our deficiencies would have made me feel a bit better. Passion and Urgency!!

I fully understand that we were one of the youngest teams in the country this year and had to compete against a bunch of teams filled with 5th year, and, in some instances, 6th year Seniors. But the simple truth is that by the end of the 2020-21 season we were down to competing with a 7 man rotation. Only Luke left from that rotation, granted a huge loss in retrospect. We plugged Brandon into Luke's open spot and then added 3 Freshmen to the rotation to give us potentially a 10 man rotation. I know that this made us very young, but if things had been handled a bit differently one could argue that the 3 Freshmen were replacing no one from the previous year's rotation and that their additions were gravy. Clearly we never got close to that being the case.

The mistakes that we saw the first half of the year were understandable. The fact that they were repeated over and over and over again became just plan maddening and exhausting as the season went on. We can call into question all we want about how our talent and experience stacked up against the rest of the conference this year, but that team that beat Hofstra and Northeastern to start the season was a high level CAA team for a brief moment, and, as I pointed out in another thread, we could have easily won 8 conference games this year just by playing slightly less poorly than we did.

Have a plan. Execute it. Get better. None of these 3 things got checked off this year.
03-09-2022 12:48 PM
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Tribe32 Offline
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RE: MEN'S BASKETBALL: JOURNEY INTO THE ABYSS
I remember a game when one of the Parkhill brothers go so animated on the sidelines that he actually split the back of his suit coat all the way from the vent up to his shoulders. I can't remember which Parkhill it was, but they were both on the sidelines at that point. To your point, he recruited some pretty rough and tumble players who thrived under that coaching style. Our teams under the Bruce were always tough, especially under the boards. How do you think a 6'5" inch player who couldn't jump like John Lowenhaupt led the team in rebounds. Effort and grit. That mentality wears off on others too. Basketball is a contact sport.
03-09-2022 01:02 PM
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RE: MEN'S BASKETBALL: JOURNEY INTO THE ABYSS
(03-09-2022 11:43 AM)Tribe32 Wrote:  ...The team has won 21/10/5 times over the last three season.

Fischer won CAA Coach of the Year his first year ('19-'20), winning 21 games. The question was whether the success was due to coaching or to having Nate Knight, Andy Van Vliet, et al on the roster. I, and I think most Tribe fans, attributed it to the players.

Now, after two more seasons, I don't think that there is any question. Fischer, in my opinion, can't coach Div. I basketball. He is probably a great assistant coach but I don't think he is a good head coach.

Since I don't see the current players getting any better under his tutelage, he would need to recruit some real studs --- which I don't see happening at W&M. Without true studs, Fischer would need to "coach em up" to perform at a winning level...and he has not exhibited any talent for that in three years.

Saving $300,000-$400,000 salary is not enough to compensate for just throwing away another year. The sooner we get someone else and start winning then the sooner more donations will start rolling in.
(This post was last modified: 03-09-2022 02:45 PM by Zorch.)
03-09-2022 02:44 PM
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Sic Semper Tyrranis Offline
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RE: MEN'S BASKETBALL: JOURNEY INTO THE ABYSS
(03-09-2022 12:48 PM)WMTRIBE75 Wrote:  
(03-09-2022 11:43 AM)Tribe32 Wrote:  When I think about coaching at the collegiate level it comes down to four things:

Recruiting - Dane has recruited some good players and some that aren't really D1 caliber. I'll almost give a pass on this one given the situation, but I want to see how this year's class works out.

Team/Player Development - Big fat F here unless I'm missing something. Players like Ayesa, Harvey, Blair, and Hermanovskis have regressed. Players like Kochera and Covington have stayed about the same. Milkreit and Stone never developed. Wight has improved year over year. Hard to tell about the freshman class. The team has won 21/10/5 times over the last three season. Finally, I don't think his assistant coaches are doing him any favors either. Losing Kemp hurt.

Xs and Os - Scheme doesn't appear to have any rationale to it. He's running an offense that the pros run in the NBA, but we don't have that type of talent. I have no clue what we're doing on defense other than man to man. Zone? Zone press?

Game Management - Not great. He doesn't seem to adjust well. He appears to do everything in a very scripted manner with little energy. He never really gets into the refs' ear much and has been outcoached. Clock management is again by the book, but why do we wait to start an offensive play at 8 seconds at the end of a half? In the NBA or even at places like Duke, that might work, but not here. We just don't have the offensive play makers to take the last shot with that little time. No margin for error.
As Blow Gym Rat correctly points out above, I intentionally left out of my thread any sections that dealt with Dane's coaching this year because I wanted to lay out, as best I could, the mitigating factors that he has had to deal with for which I felt it would be unfair to hold him accountable for....cleaning up the equation so to speak so that it would leave us with those things that we have every right to hold him responsible for and those things that I feel that he must aggressively address NOW. Wonderful posters such as you have taken the ball and moved on to the areas that I really hoped we would gravitate towards. I think that the points that you have made in your post are spot on.

In my initial post, I said that there were two things that I am really looking for from Dane at this point; PASSION and URGENCY!! I feel confident that he lacks neither, but an outward display of both would make me feel better. I cut my teeth as a Tribe fan watching Bruce Parkhill coach. Passion and urgency was never missing when Bruce strolled the sidelines. Sadly for my family members who have had to sit around me all of these years, my occasional outbursts over the years have sometimes made me look like Bruce trained me to be a fan in his likeness. But I always knew that Bruce left everything that he had on the court when he coached.

I am not looking for Dane to take on Bruce's personality, but showing a bit more emotion while both coaching the game and addressing our deficiencies would have made me feel a bit better. Passion and Urgency!!

I fully understand that we were one of the youngest teams in the country this year and had to compete against a bunch of teams filled with 5th year, and, in some instances, 6th year Seniors. But the simple truth is that by the end of the 2020-21 season we were down to competing with a 7 man rotation. Only Luke left from that rotation, granted a huge loss in retrospect. We plugged Brandon into Luke's open spot and then added 3 Freshmen to the rotation to give us potentially a 10 man rotation. I know that this made us very young, but if things had been handled a bit differently one could argue that the 3 Freshmen were replacing no one from the previous year's rotation and that their additions were gravy. Clearly we never got close to that being the case.

The mistakes that we saw the first half of the year were understandable. The fact that they were repeated over and over and over again became just plan maddening and exhausting as the season went on. We can call into question all we want about how our talent and experience stacked up against the rest of the conference this year, but that team that beat Hofstra and Northeastern to start the season was a high level CAA team for a brief moment, and, as I pointed out in another thread, we could have easily won 8 conference games this year just by playing slightly less poorly than we did.

Have a plan. Execute it. Get better. None of these 3 things got checked off this year.

I think you are right on almost everything.
I think you are wrong that we could have won 8 conference games. I think what you saw was a Tribe team that opponents played down to the Tribe level. If our team could have played better they would have. If they did the other teams would have as well. Arguably our 2 wins were 1. Lucky and 2. At home against the other worst team that then shellacked us ton28 points when we had their attention.

If Dane sees this team for who they really are he will recruit over anyone on the team.

At present this team won’t win a game next year. Not 1.

Doesn’t mean they cat represent the school well as student athletes in every other respect. But not in wins.
03-09-2022 11:16 PM
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RE: MEN'S BASKETBALL: JOURNEY INTO THE ABYSS
(03-09-2022 11:16 PM)Sic Semper Tyrranis Wrote:  I think you are right on almost everything.
I think you are wrong that we could have won 8 conference games. I think what you saw was a Tribe team that opponents played down to the Tribe level. If our team could have played better they would have. If they did the other teams would have as well. Arguably our 2 wins were 1. Lucky and 2. At home against the other worst team that then shellacked us ton28 points when we had their attention.

If Dane sees this team for who they really are he will recruit over anyone on the team.

At present this team won’t win a game next year. Not 1.

Doesn’t mean they cat represent the school well as student athletes in every other respect. But not in wins.

So our close wins were lucky and our close losses were us performing to standard? Seems like a loose definition of luck.
03-10-2022 09:44 AM
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RE: MEN'S BASKETBALL: JOURNEY INTO THE ABYSS
others can have a different opinion:
Sorry if this is negative, I want the coach and team to succeed.
Overall:
Hampton L by 1 on road to 10th place team in Big South
Hofstra W by 1 at home lost by 16 in rematch
northeastern W by 1 at home lost by 34 in rematch
JMU L by 4 in OT at home lost by 14 in rematch
Drexel W on road - good win lost by 15 in rematch
Elon W by 4 at home lost by 13 on road
Charleston L on road by 1 lost by 23 in rematch
UNCW OT loss lost by 12 in rematch
OT Loss in CAA a game we could have won, consider why we did not

So I guess we could have had 4 more games go our way (3 Reg season conference) and we would have been 9-23/7-11 (12) in CAA …. And been the 7 seed (instead of 8) and avoided Saturday and I think lost on Sunday
Or we could have had 4 more losses and our only win would have been Mary Baldwin ….
Not sure I see much meaningful difference either way. I think it is pretty clear we are what we are and what that is …
03-10-2022 10:34 AM
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tribegov72 Offline
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Post: #16
RE: MEN'S BASKETBALL: JOURNEY INTO THE ABYSS
(03-09-2022 02:44 PM)Zorch Wrote:  
(03-09-2022 11:43 AM)Tribe32 Wrote:  ...The team has won 21/10/5 times over the last three season.

Fischer won CAA Coach of the Year his first year ('19-'20), winning 21 games. The question was whether the success was due to coaching or to Fischer, in my opinion, can't coach Div. I basketball. He is probably a great assistant coach but I don't think he is a good head coach.

Since I don't see the current players getting any better under his tutelage, he would need to recruit some real studs --- which I don't see happening at W&M. Without true studs, Fischer would need to "coach em up" to perform at a winning level...and he has not exhibited any talent for that in three years.
having Nate Knight, Andy Van Vliet, et al on the roster. I, and I think most Tribe fans, attributed it to the players.

Now, after two more seasons, I don't think that there is any question.
Saving $300,000-$400,000 salary is not enough to compensate for just throwing away another year. The sooner we get someone else and start winning then the sooner more donations will start rolling in.

Alum David Cox is available...any thoughts??
03-11-2022 06:40 PM
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Tribester Offline
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Post: #17
RE: MEN'S BASKETBALL: JOURNEY INTO THE ABYSS
He would be great, but he was making over 700K at Rhody. Maybe he would give us a hometown discount?
03-11-2022 08:14 PM
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WMInTheBurg Offline
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Post: #18
RE: MEN'S BASKETBALL: JOURNEY INTO THE ABYSS
Would he be great? He'd check all the off-court boxes for sure, but didn't have a great record with his recruits at URI. I mean, I'm on board with coaches that connect to better times for sure. Not sure if he's shown a whole lot better than what we have though.
03-11-2022 10:00 PM
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mrjoolius Online
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Post: #19
RE: MEN'S BASKETBALL: JOURNEY INTO THE ABYSS
(03-11-2022 10:00 PM)WMInTheBurg Wrote:  Would he be great? He'd check all the off-court boxes for sure, but didn't have a great record with his recruits at URI. I mean, I'm on board with coaches that connect to better times for sure. Not sure if he's shown a whole lot better than what we have though.
He's shown to be an above .500 coach in the A10. He has a history of recruiting well but that has lost a lot of talent through transfers. He recruits the DC area hard, which would be a welcome change. It is a whole different animal recruiting for Rhodey as opposed to W&M. I'm guessing he's in no hurry for his next gig. URI bought him out and I'm not sure if he loses that by taking another job.
I agree he'd be a good coach. I think he would bring a higher level of talent in. I also agree that we can't afford him.
03-12-2022 03:33 AM
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bubbadog57 Offline
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Post: #20
RE: MEN'S BASKETBALL: JOURNEY INTO THE ABYSS
It would appear that Dane will be back for another season.

There was a big event at the new Alumni House yesterday and both Mann and Fischer addressed the attendees...if Fischer was leaving it would not seem that Mann would be introducing Dane and they would be speaking together.

Fischer mixed with everyone before his presentation...which said nothing new...so we can assume he's back.
03-12-2022 07:37 AM
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