I've seen enough. Saul Phillips can coach. He hasn't put it all together yet for a variety of reasons. But I don't believe it's because he doesn't do a good job at what he's trying to do on the court.

So I say extend his contract right now. Take the pressure off so rival schools won't be able to use contract uncertainty as a tool to scare prospective recruits from seriously consider coming to Ohio.

Tightening up recruiting is a must, as it seems like we get one MAC-to-high mid-major player each year after the nice haul that netted Dartis, Taylor, Block and Gollon. It seems like we gamble on projecting a lot of guys who will blossom as high school seniors after we've already signed them. Some do, some don't.

Winning certainly will help the recruiting narrative. Granted, it's taken longer than usual and expected, and injuries have certainly hampered the cause. But I do believe coach Phillips can get it done here.

So I say sign him now. Curious to hear what everyone thinks...

This isn't anything per se to do with Coach Phillips but why any university would offer a coach an extension unless he or she is doing a phenomenal job is beyond me? Wasn't Coach Phillips contract at the time of his signing making him one of the highest if not the highest paid coach in the conference? If you get those kind of numbers you have to win championships. No reason to even discuss an extension unless something along those lines occurs.

The arms race of college sports has a lot to do with ballooning coaching salaries. I don't feel that ancient, but I am old enough to remember teaching and coaching in high school and having MAC assistants leave to come back to coach high school sports because they weren't making enough to support a family in the MAC. Now I don't want to go back to those days, but the arms race of coaching salaries is hurting college athletics, especially when it doesn't involve merit pay. They call it merit pay for a reason, you have to show merit for getting an extension.

If, if’s and butt’s were candy and nuts, everyday would be like Christmas.

We are done recruiting for the year, there is no pressure and we are not out recruiting anybody anyway. Saul needs to perform or depart. There is absolutely no consistency with him. I hope he can pull it together. The AD needs to do what’s best for the program, we will have no buyout if we move on this year.

Coaching and business go together, they are both performance driven jobs. Coaches are CEO’s, there are no excuses like some want to make. Coaches know this and they strive to produce. Coach works his ass off to get better and to succeed, yet he wins a game closer than the “experts want” and some get all edgy. Remember this, this is not a game to coaches, it’s how they feed their families and put a roof over their kids head at night.

Billy I can't speak for anyone else, but I am not asking for anyone to get fired just not get a contract extension unless they are truly doing an exemplary job. The idea of even MAC coaches who are getting north of a half a million not being able to feed their families in mainly small market cities is beyond me. Unless I am completely oblivious to the average salary/wage of most Bobcat Attack poster, I am guessing few make that kind of money and even fewer are getting contract extensions. I can assure you I am nowhere near both of those categories.

I didn't see this as a coaching problem, Maddog13. I contend if you want to level criticism, it would be in not bringing in at least one certified outside shooter among the handful of recruits if you knew you may not have Dartis and Gollon available for part of the season. Especially considering we'll need a shooter to replace Dartis after this season anyway. Put Dartis and Gollon on the floor today and the game probably would have been a laugher. And coach Phillips probably would have looked like a genius...

I think everyone has said as much as they can on this topic. I have a pretty simple philosophy on this. If you are the head basketball coach at Ohio, you should be able to take your team to the Big Dance at least once in your first five years on the job. It has been that way with every coach since the Hunter Era. Hunter, O'Shea and Groce all did it. Christian gets an incomplete since he bolted after 24 months.

If you don't dance in March in those first five years, then you have to look at other factors. How many appearances in MAC Championship games did that coach have? How many signature wins did that coach have over that five year span? What is the coach's combined record against Buffalo and Akron? Is recruiting better in year five than it was in year one?

Bottom line....there have been zero MAC Championship game appearances in the Saul era. Off the top of my head, I guess Saul's biggest wins were at Georgia Tech and do we say Radford at home? Does anything else really stand out? Current record against Buffalo and Akron is 7-10. As far as recruiting...we have many guys on scholarship who aren't even a threat to hit the floor. I get it...you can't play 12 guys..but Saul's misses are glaring. As the poster above mentioned, we definitely have 3 new players (James, McMurray and Springs) on scholarship this year who won't contribute at all. The jury is still out on Murrell.

Add all this up and it's it's been a pretty mediocre four years of #SaulBall. He has to win the MAC tournament to keep his job. That certainly appears to be the message Schaus is sending with no contract extension after year four and can you really blame our AD for that thinking? But the AD has to look in the mirror too...he hired him. This just doesn't seem to be a good fit for anyone.

I believe Schaus already has his mind made up on Saul, that's why there's no extension on Saul's contract, Injuries or not, you recruit to have a deep bench and play those bench players which Saul has not in 5 years now, I hate to be the one to say this but, its gonna get worse before it gets better.

Who won the game? Send in the clowns. There ought to be clowns. Don’t bother they’re here.

I basically agree with FlashGary. I also think it's not reasonable not to consider the injury situation. Two years in a row Saul had this best player out with a season ending injury. He's now got the one guy back. Has anyone else noticed that Saul has given him (Carter) fairly limited minutes in every game. I think Saul wants to make sure that he doesn't re-injure himself and that he continues to heal. Also, he probably wants him in peak condition for MAC play.

I think if Saul was Johnny Wooden early in his career and he'd been hit with these kinds of injuries to key players that the BA lynch mob would be asking for his head. I'm not saying Saul is Wooden 2.0, but I'm saying that I think he's a good coach whose best days are yet to come.

I agree with Maddog13 that we didn't handle the zone too well, but I disagree that Saul is clueless about how to deal with it. I think at times, it's more a matter of our execution. If we could reliably hit the three, we'd force them out of the zone quickly. But we can't at this time do that with any consistency at all. So, we were trying with ball reversal and various pick and rolls to get in back of the zone for layups. It worked better sometimes than others, which was less on the coach than on the players execution.

I also agree that TK has become somewhat of a liability in his current role, which I think needs to be redefined. Preston, IMHO, is fast becoming the better distributor. He should be the PG going forward. TK is at his best slashing to the rim. I'm not enough of an Xs and Os guy to know best how to switch these roles, but something should be done. I trust that Saul will make changes as the season unfolds.

I love the self awareness!

Maddog 13 I am just wondering what it would take for some folks not to give someone a $500,000+ contract extension? I am not talking about firing people, just assessing their performance when their contract is up and seeing if they have met any of the key objectives?

I mean is showing up and winning some games all it takes? I mean if that's what it takes, off the top of my head I can name a dozen high school coaches I coached with who could do that in the MAC. Some of those coaches lost their best players to mono, bad grades, disciplinary issues etc and they still managed to win district championships, regional championships, and one even made a state appearance. Sadly the East German analogy I used in my previous post might be more relevant than I had imagined, which is really troubling.