I feel like this thread should be titled "Saul Legacy: Missed Opportunities" instead.

That's how I'll look back on this era. Saul is a great guy, got a lot of us excited for the future of Ohio basketball, but completely missed on so many opportunities, sometimes due to unforeseen circumstances.

---------

Recruiting - contrary to popular belief, this staff actually recruited and identified talent pretty well. Go over to the recruiting page and look at some of the guys we offered during this time.

However, offering and landing are two different things. Their problem? They never landed the big star recruit(s) who could take Ohio to another level. Once they couldn't land the recruits Ohio is accustomed to, they had to settle for bad fits or guys not ready to play in this league.

They had two in Ryan Taylor and Jaaron Simmons, but part of recruiting is retaining talent as well. And the transfer outs of Rodney Culver and Zach Butler, two athletes that Ohio could have desperately used the past two seasons, really hurt the guard development.

The other two big ones I think Ohio missed on were Desmond Bane and Tyrese Haliburton. Bane got a late offer from a power 5 and headed that direction, and Haliburton ranked Ohio in his top 2 before he blew up in summer ball.

I won't even mention the whiffs in recruiting because we've heard enough about it.

----------

Injuries - Again, enough has been said about it, but the injuries to Tony, Jason, Jordy, Gavin, Jimmy G, Mike Laster, BVP and anyone else who fought lingering injuries throughout their careers killed any kind of development momentum. You can't control injuries no matter how much you think you can, and to no fault of the staff, these just gave the feeling like the Saul era was never meant to be.

-----------

The PG position - since Saul stepped on campus, the PG position has been a sore spot. The inability to control this position from Bean, to Stevie, to Jaaron, to TK to Preston has been a major downfall of this staff. It's troubling because now that Ohio finally has a team-first, pass-first guy in Preston, the staff is on the way out. Too little, too late.

------------

Game-management - mostly talking about the stubbornness of never switching the defenses, especially last season when Ohio was completed outmanned underneath and not athletic enough on the wings. We were still a pretty good defensive team regardless, but this was a huge mistake IMO. Especially since the thin front line would constantly get in foul trouble, forcing guys like Gavin to play out of position.

------------

I'm sure there are more things other people can add. But the lack of excitement in the Convo on gamedays coupled with the the results on the court make this a no brainer. Saul saying in his postgame press conference "I think we'll be pretty good next year" is the exact same thing he said this past offseason. It's time to move on, the program is stagnant.

^^^The thoughts on recruiting, defense, and the PG position will highlight the reasons for the last few season's troubles. Keep Taylor, Butler, Simmons, and Culver and the results on the court change for the better. Hit on one of those guys you mention like Bane, and the same thought applies, PLUS, the opportunity to get another player like that grows for future years.

The defensive thing has always bothered me. I've always been of the opinion that you need a base defense, while also having the ability to shift to a plan B to shuffle things up. Whether that's a zone of some kind, or shifting to a 3/4 court trap/press, or something else, I feel like a team has to have the ability to change their defensive look in the middle of the game at some point.

Not only that, but he never plays any kind of defense in the backcourt before the under 4 media timeout in the second half and we are down by several scores. Remember that Tulsa game in the Virgin Islands when Kenny was hitting boom balls and we had a 20 point lead. How did Tulsa win that game? They started pressing with 10 minutes left. At the end of the first half this year against Buffalo, UB had the ball with three seconds left and the length of the floor to go. They weren't even in the bonus, so there was virtually no risk in aggressively guarding in the backcourt. Instead, their guy gets a shot off in the lane which was fortunately blocked by Doug.

In my humble opinion the Coach Phillips era has been a miserable failure in every respect. Fail to get to Cleveland 3 out of 5 years, recruiting, man to man defense when we do not have the talent to guard man to man, free throw shooting & the list goes on. Good guy or not he didn't get the job done and got paid $2,500,000 in the process.

If anyone wants to get a "better, more productive" staff, unfortunately we have to open OUr wallets. its just how it is...

Now Randy,
Go back to cheerleading! You have to Stand the Whole game! If we brought Red Panda to every game, we would be undefeated! Fact check that. We need the Green and White Club back with 50/50 tickets to do that with, 3 points shot tickets for split the pot, Chili in those digs at halftime, Midnight Madness on Homecoming football weekend, bring in Trent on alumni with Geno back.

I agree