I agree that we should have been better the next year. Just clarifying that Levert was coming the year after the Sweet 16 run, but Bradds was going to be the year after that.

Really...anyone can get hot and make a run??! Funny, I’m still waiting for Billy Hahn, Larry Hunter, Jim Christian and Saul Phillips to make a run. Enjoy hanging that "JC won 74% of his MAC games" banner up in the Convo rafters. #14Months

Comical how people focus on Groce's "bad results" and JC's "good results". Who the hell is ever going to remember a 14-2 MAC season? I can't believe how so many get excited over solid years with no titles vs a run to the Sweet 16. One guy rose the program and had it positioned for serious national contention and the other guy killed it. I love all the excuses I'm reading here as to why Ohio was one made free throw away from the Elite 8. "It was the matchups"...one poster wrote. This is all very comical. Yep, Groce had nothing to do with it.

Go enjoy staring at the "JC won a share of the regular season conference title" banner every home game. I'll enjoy staring at Groce's two NCAA banners (one that reads Sweet 16) a hell of a lot more. Going to be interesting if Groce takes Akron to the NCAA's before Ohio. #14Months

He also had a lot to do with MAC mediocrity. Why do you ignore that? Never finished higher than 3rd in the East. Never won consistently on the road. Those things continued at Illinois. And like I asked, how did his Illinois tenure go? I mean, a coach that amazing, he must have done big things in the B1G, right? He was at least in the NCAA's every year at Illinois, right? Right?



*crickets*

"#14 months." Some of you seem confident that in 14 months that Saul will be gone. I wouldn't bet the farm on that. Sure he can't afford another poor season, but what if Ohio ends up with 20 plus wins and a 4th seed next winter and wins the league tourney or is in the finals? Don't bank on this #14 months.

I remember an Ohio Alumni event years ago in Southern California, where President Glidden went from table to table talking to people about their hopes for and concerns about the future of Ohio. Being a hometown boy from Athens, I asked him if there had been any backlash from him firing one of Southeastern Ohio's native sons, Larry Hunter, as the basketball coach. He said something along the lines that doing so had been unpleasant business, but that, according to the metrics that were being used at the time, the feeling in the corridors of power at Ohio University is that the Basketball program should be dominating the MAC year and year out. With that in mind, it seems that Christian was the kind of coach that they were looking for, though Groce certainly won points with his deep run into the NCAA tournament.

As for Tim O'Shea, it always appeared that he had one step out of the program from the very start of his tenure, and that Saul, though a better fit, now finds himself back to potentially having the same kind of bad season that marked the beginning of the end of the Larry Hunter era.

The real question now, us fans aside, is how Saul's relationship is going with those who have influence over the basketball program at Ohio.

You obviously cannot be a fan of the football program then.

It's true. All of it.

+1.

There are now 40 bowl games. More than half of FBS plays in one. The year you cited, Ohio was ranked 58th nationally by this guy:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/1742041

That's pretty much the definition of mediocrity.

Not in any way trying to make excuses for Saul but when so much of your roster is decimated by injury ANY program at ANY D1 program would probably be suffering a similar fate as ours.

Not downplaying Groce’s Sweet16 run but some things that stuck out to me:
- We won the MACC by the razor-thin call as whether Akron (Zeke) tipped in a free-throw or not
- The NCAA match-up was critical. Groce may still be coaching in Athens IF the 1st round match-up had been Mich.State and not Michigan.
- North Carolina’s starting PG was out with injury. Based on comments from some on this board Roy Williams must be a crappy recruiter too since he didn’t have another PG at the ready when his starter went down. Even though North Carolina had a roster of future NBAer’s they got spanked in the Elite 8 game by Kansas. I met North Carolina’s Director of BBall operations last year and he was completely complimentary of OHIO but stated they had NO chance against Kansas without their starting PG.

Go back to our NCAA run of 2010. For those who are critical of Saul’s freshman not being MAC first teamers, Groce’s freshman bigs Reggie and Ivo had 2 or 3 minutes of court time in the Georgetown or Tennessee game. Makes Carter’s performance to me last year all the more impressive when Tone went down. Also go back to Tone’s freshman year-he wasn’t an instant success. Nor was DeVaughn or KVK.

Kirk shows himself to be a scorer. The lack of assists is concerning. May he have been better served being an apprentice under Simmons?

I think the tenor of this board would be entirely different had Simmons came back and the rest of the roster been healthy.

Then what the hell does it mean? Don't give me the "body of work" argument. It doesn't mean a damn thing. It makes a lot of fodder for talking heads, but it's what you do on the court when your chance comes up that is most important. If you win, you are the better team; if you lose, you are not the better team. It's a one-and-done tournament. All participants know that. By your logic the team that wins the national championship isn't really the best team in the nation if some talking head makes a good case that the team they beat has a better resume, a better body of work, more All-Americans players, or would win nine out of ten games with the victorious team. Yes, OHIO was at least the 16th best team in the nation that year. Since there are sixteen teams that make the sweet sixteen, it's not possible to rank the eight teams that lost and didn't advance to the Elite eight level.

In FBS football, however, we are back to having polls and personal opinion determine who is the better team since UCF was left out of the playoff and beat Auburn during the regular season, the only team to beat both Alabama and Georgia during the regular session. It's a total mess. Basketball actually has a real tournament to determine the final rankings of teams. I, for one, prefer determining rankings via a tournament rather than by polls or talking heads.

So the runner-up can be the best team, while the winner is just the champion? This makes no earthly sense. Yes, if Duke didn't make the Sweet 16 cut, they were, in the final analysis, not one of the 16 best teams. Don't like it, Duke. Tough cookies!

Is the winner of the MAC tournament always the best team in the MAC...or the team that gets hot in Cleveland? It can be both, but it's often not.