Question: Done with caring???

Answer: Fine by me...until March.   Honestly, because of the state of the MAC and our current W/L all that matters is the MAC tourney.  (Players should ignore this because I don't think its possible to "flip the switch" and they need to keep working on improving)...but in reality, what does it matter til March?  

Flo, do you really see this roster chalked with talent?

As I think I pretty clearly explained across multiple posts above, I think that we have more talent on the roster than our regular season records over the last three years would suggest, especially considering the pitiful state of the MAC right now.  Just because this team isn't stacked with talent doesn't mean that 8-11 and 1-4 in the MAC is the best we could have hoped for right now.  We are underachieving.  There is no excuse for this team to not be at least .500 in the conference, and yet that is going to take a miracle with 6 tough roadtrips left.

Similarly, there was no excuse for us finishing 7-9 in a watered down MAC last year, even with our inexperience.  We should have been better, and a good coach would be doing better. 

Especially since I don't think anyone would look at this team and say, "if we could just get Washington, Sayles and Freeman out of this program, they are really holding back this team and our growth."

Good thoughts

I ventured over here to see what is up. Tough Crowd. After reading the entire Butler board for the last week and now coming here and wading through the last weeks posts I am flabbergasted with the similarity.

The defending National Runner up loses a 23 point lead but still manages to win a game the fanbase goes crazy. The defense is not up to par and while they are leading the league with a 74% team FT average the fans are not happy about the misses. On Sunday they turn around and are swept in a season by  a Horizon team for the first time in years and it serves to make some Butler fans so disgusted they are thinking of giving up their tickets.

Looks like the same general tenor here.

I suppose it is all about expectations but looking at Valpo, Oakland and IUPUI I see three teams that have been or are tearing their respective conferences up. Have not had much a chance to see what the history here holds but most home losses may not mean as much when you sit back and look at the fact that for the first time in what looks like 2 decades that Ohio played at home most of the pre MAC season. Would you have been more tolerant if indeed those losses came on the road? Tough Crowd. 

Looks like to me that the attendance numbers were pretty pitiful even thoughthe team got to stay home in front of their fans. I am not sure what kind of home court advantage there is for a team that plays in front a student section the whole month of December that looks more like an OVC crowd than the mighty MAC leader in attendance.

It is good to see that there is a minority who are not so fickle (up there in quotes) and from what I can see running this game back over and over there was a super crowd down there on Saturday. From what I take away the biggest problem on this team is not toughness or problems with an offense but mental errors and technique problems as well as changes in what you were getting accomplished in the first and second halves. Good thing I taped the game to go back over and maybe get a better idea of what is happened. I may just break it down and see what I can see of what I think may be an excellent adjustment by the Buffalo coach at halftime or a silly mistake by Ohio in the way they fundamentally got out of what was keeping them out in front the first half.

There are lots of fans around the NCAA that would love to be where Ohio is as a program. I am not sure that the rumble and grumble is worth getting so worked up over. Flomo and a couple of others make pretty sophisticated and noteworthy arguments but there is a lot of the same over the top fandom going on here just like I read on the local boards, you want to see suicidal tendencies go to the Indiana site.  Coach Crean was a good hire as was Stevens and Groce and Billy Taylor. All good hires. Just got to let them go forward and hold their feet to the fire for what is happening.

tipton, part of the problem is that for the longest time it seemed shocking anytime Ohio would lose more than two games at home. We're obviously now at 8. Every team we've lost to at home is a respectable, and in most cases a very good team. However winning at home was hardly ever thought of as the questionable result that I feel like it is this season. While Oakland, IUPUI, Valpo, etc. are all doing very well this year those are still teams that we should be beating at home every single season given our programs history. 

Another possible reason for the jumping off the cliff mentality is the way we're losing games as well. Aside from the Oakland game I'm pretty sure Ohio had the lead in the second half at some point only to slowly see it get chipped away at and ultimately lose. That's a very troubling sign to say the least.

We have the best PG in the league, and arguably the best player overall, in DJ Cooper.  That is a huge starting point, talent wise.  We have arguably the best spot-up shooter in the nation in Tommy Freeman.  We have a pair of athletic forwards in Ivo Baltic and DeVaughn Washington that have each developed into fairly reliable 10 PPG/5.5 RPG guys.  We also have one of the best freshmen in the league in Nick Kellogg who, while not completely reliable, has shown the ability to give us some additional scoring punch from the perimeter.  Not to mention the fact that Asown Sayles is a pretty versatile and steady defensive role player.

Is that a 25-win team?  Of course not.  But again, given how far the MAC has fallen, it isn't a last place in the East Division team either.  While our talent isn't on par with what it was in the mid-90s or early-00s, neither is the rest of the league.  Our squad should not be losing consecutive home games the likes of Miami, Kent, and Robert Morris, none of whom are top 100 teams.
 
While Vegas odds are obviously not an infaliable measure of team strength, it is nevertheless instructive to note that we have (I believe) been favored in all but one of our 8 home losses (Temple).  It's not just me thinking that we have the talent to beat the teams were losing to.  We should be doing better than we are.

Do you really believe we've had the worst talent in the MAC East each of Groce's three seasons?  Because if not, we shouldn't be headed towards our third straight last place finish.  You made this same argument last year, and I believe our March run pretty emphatically illustrated that we did have more talent on the roster than you believed.  Just like last year's team was better than a 7-9 finisher in a watered down MAC, this year's team should not be 8-11 overall, and 1-4 in the league. 

Who exactly were the defensive stoppers we lost from last year's run?  Sure KVK provided some valuable interior defense at times, but AB wasn't exactly a defensive stopper on the perimeter. 

I agree we lack a significant post presence, but again that appears to me to be as much of a system issue as a talent issue.  This staff has not made it a priority to recruit low-post players, nor do we have any help coming in for next year.  The overwhelming majority of bigs we have recruited have been high-post bigs.  Jon Smith will effectively replace DeVaughn, and is himself a high-post guy. 

Finally, sure spot-up shooters can be stopped.  But usually when a opponent emphasizes shutting down a spot-up shooter, that opens up scoring options for other guys on the court.  We have generally failed to make those type of adjustments, hence why I believe we aren't seeing elite-level coaching here.

A. Kellogg was nowhere near 6'10".  He is 6'7" or 6'8" tops.  And I don't agree that his departure was totally unforeseeable, as I think the coaching staff should be expected to better gauge whether a player has the commitment necessary to contribute for the length of his career.  Maybe if this was the only guy we'd lost I'd be more generous to the coaching staff, but again when he's the 4th of the first 7 players signed to leave the team within his first season, JG and Co. shoulder the responsibility for that one.  Even then, it was unclear just how much he'd contribute given his lack of production at Providence.

As for missing Bassett on the defensive end, we'll have to agree to disagree.  While AB occassionally contributed a few steals, more often than not he was out of position or getting beat by his man, causing a defensive breakdown. 

The difference between Tim O'Shea, Larry Hunter, and John Groce is that while all three have had more than their fair share of player departures, the first two were nevertheless able to still win more than they lost.  Groce has been unable to even break-even in the MAC, during the midst of the MAC's worst three year streak in recent memory.

As for Kellogg and Coleman, those are two different cases in my book.  I'm willing to give the staff more of a pass on Coleman, seeing as how they didn't recruit him.  With Kellogg, again, ultimately I think that it is incumbent upon the staff to do a better job of determining whether players they are bringing into this program have what it takes to stick.  To bring in a transfer, eating a scholarship for a year while he sits out, and then have him walk before ever suiting up, is a major mistake.  You also bring up Pearson, who I haven't once blamed the staff for.  Even there, though, I know some would argue that perhaps an incident like that wouldn't have occurred had the staff done a better job of implementing discipline and maintaining an on-campus presence early on in their tenure, rather than have the entire coaching staff on the road recruiting all weekend long.

Look, we can argue all day long about whether the staff could or should have done a better job is any of these cases, but ultimately it's irrelevant.  Because at the end of the day, it is all about results.  This staff isn't getting the job done from an W-L standpoint, yet all you want to do is make excuses.

If the exact same scenario had played out on TOS's watch, you would not be anywhere near as accommodating as you are to JG.  You are letting your personal feelings shade your judgment.

Great post .

I don't see Freeman, Kellogg or Hall as purely spot up shooters.Looking at the Miami game I saw Freeman and Kellogg bust 3's off screens. I just rewatched  Saturday's game in detail and saw Freeman catch and duck under a pursing defender from the top of the key using a ball fake and a dribble. I have seen both of them dribble off a curl stop, elevate and finish a jumper.  You can keep calling them spot up shooters if it makes you feel good but the reality is all can work off screens the dribble or catch and shoot. What's easy to defend is the actions they perform in the offense which is pretty simple and pretty predictable. Put them in an offense like Alford had at Indiana these guys would be very productive. Fact is though spot up shooters have been around for years and yet schools like Butler, UCLA with Kapono, UF with Miller or similar have still freed these guys up to the point where they really did not move while the offense constantly found them open shots.

Walsh is also #1.