The board has been very active this week with a lot of doomsday type of feelings, so trying to chime in with a little bit of a glass half full mentality.
The last two years have been genuinely painful to watch and nobody is going to sit here and pretend otherwise, but Jeff is the coach right now. Given where the athletic department is, they were never going to approve a $900K buyout just to turn around and pay a new coach that same salary. If this really is the last chance for a guy who is still the last MAC coach to win in the NCAA tournament (play-in's don't count), you're better off taking that buyout money and putting it directly into the roster.
Let's think about where we are in the portal process. The reason we're seeing so many D2, NAIA, and JUCO names right now is simply because those seasons end earlier. Only 14 guys from the MAC are in the portal compared to 72 last year by the time it closed. The D1 floodgates haven't opened yet. The staff doing homework on high production lower level guys this early is just how the process works. You cast a wide net while you wait for the D1 market to fill up. A staff follow is nowhere close to a scholarship offer.
Also keep in mind who actually left. Fisher and Evans couldn't crack the rotation on a bad team. Elliott has real potential that we have all seen in flashes but it never developed into anything consistent enough to justify paying to keep him.
There's been a lot of talk about these three being symptoms of a talent evaluation issue but Jordan Fisher had offers from Toledo, Akron, and Kent State, Ayden Evans had offers from five power programs, and Elliott was Dusty May's recruit at FAU. We can't praise those other MAC programs for their recruiting and then hammer Jeff when they all wanted the same guys. If you want to criticize him for not developing them once they got here, that's a completely fair and separate conversation.
If Simmons or Kelly hit the portal then sure, that's likely indicative of some real issues. Even if Kuany or Burris go portaling, is starts to be a little more worrisome. But right now we're losing our minds over guys who were already on the fringe.
Jeff basically telegraphed significant changes coming in his MAC tournament post game presser. After years of continuity that clearly ran its course, a near complete roster turnover is the quickest way to flip things around. Let's give it some time and see what the roster actually looks like before going full doom and gloom.
Solid post. We went through this last portal season before it really opened up. Diligence on lower level players before actually adding D1 talent.
There’s only one person on this board melting down across different threads over the prospect of adding a D2 or lower level player. I think most of us are pretty open to it. I’m intrigued by a few that we’ve been connected to.
The reality is this offseason we have 6/7 spots to fill. Last year we had 3. It’s unlikely all of those will be filled by D1 portal additions. We’ll probably see a blend. One thing to keep in mind, we’re going into year 5 of the portal. Some of these lower level kids with gaudy stats might have just not had D1 opportunities coming out of HS, due to most teams favoring a polished product out of the portal.
If you’re putting up +20ppg with strong shooting % numbers at the D2 level, you can probably crack a MAC rotation or better. There’s a reason some of them have flush lists of suitors.