After this game, let's face facts.

ETSU is 8-8. There are 14 games left. ETSU will NOT win 20 games this season.

ETSU cannot hope to waltz through the conference, even though the conference is terrible. The Bucs first three games, all at home, have not produced a single dominant result despite playing the poorest competition of the season.

Thinking optimistically, the best one can hope for is 16 or 17 victories heading into the A-Sun tournament. Winning the A-Sun tourney seems unlikely due to the Bucs' inconsistent shooting and lack of post players.

Now, we've all given up hope for the Bucs to return to the Top 25 anytime soon.

We've also, realistically, given up hope that even if the Bucs should catch lightning in a bottle in the A-Sun tourney anytime soon that they'll be able to be competitive with their opponent in an NCAA or NIT tournament.

What we're looking at- this season- is a best-case scenario of a 9-5 record down the stretch, a victory in the A-Sun Tourney, and therefore an 18-14 record.

Sound about right? Sound realistic?

And let me ask you- is that good enough after a 24-victory season and regular season title?

Shouldn't 18-14 in the next-to-worst conference in America be a disapointment for ETSU?

Shouldn't the Buccaneers' men's basketball standards be higher than this?

Where I'm going with this is that unless Bartow can have a stellar recruiting class this next season, and he may be able to have one because he has the time on his contract now, and the two redshirts pan out, this is what it's going to be like at ETSU for awhile.

Because Mullins is staying for four years and Stanton until 2011. They are putting an athletic path in place that is going to be very hard to break up in the future.

So how long do you think it's going to be like this? Seven years? 10? 15?

Again, I would not be surprised if somewhere during the next 15 years ETSU returned to the NCAA Tournament. That's a long time and you can always catch fire in a Conference Tournament.

But what I'm saying is that I think ETSU fans would like to think in the next 15 years there's a chance at a national ranking- there's a chance at a line of successive post-season tournaments- there's a chance to make a George Mason run- there's a chance to be "The Next Gonzaga."

And that's not going to happen again. I thought DeChellis had them on the path for that to happen, but it was stripped away by Mullins' and Stanton's philosophies.

So how long will we have to put up with this?

I am guessing a minimum of seven years. Bare minimum of seven before we can even think of the Bucs as being what they once were again.

Yet we have some talent...just not a team

Not really. We have an above average team for the Atlantic Sun Conference. We have finally came down to the talent level of the conference, where we are no longer the hands down best team. Probably will finish 2-3 in the conference this year.

Lets keep our "talent" in perspective. If we were a dominant team in the Southern Conference, Pigram, Tiggs, Strong, and maybe Reed would be the only ones on our roster good enough to make our team. Jacolby Davis playing point guard in the Southern?

We do not have a true center or decent point guard at this point. Not really all that diverse in talent after all.

Lots of 2-4 guys but no depth at 1 or 5. I think Bartow wants to put five 6' 3" guys out there and play.

Mister must be in deep pain sitting on the bench watching all of this , knowing that he would have easily beaten all of these asun teams by 30 plus a night.

Twiley could have played in the southern....I also beleive Micah Williams could play in the southern. Mike Smith could most certainly play in the southern.

I agree we don't have a center....and now are without a real point guard. But there is still talent on this team. More so than what I've seen on the A-sun level thus far

We obviously had better talent than GW and managed to play bad enough on our home court to lose to them.

The naysayers need to take a deep breath. Undefeated? That's hard to do in any league. Don't get crazy with the expectations.

As for dominating the Southern, I wonder sometimes what we as ETSU fans are smoking. A lot of revisionist history here. We had two OVERALL conference championships (not just North Division) since 1992 with the 2003 and 2004 seasons. DeChellis posted the 20-win season and Bartow took basically that same team and won 27 the next year.

Sure, everyone knows this team could be 11-5 right now with a couple of games where we don't completely lose the offense. However, to say the overall program is having an effect on the men's basketball team is just a stretch by those already with an agenda.

Look at the FACTS. Bartow right now has the best winning percentage of ANY coach before him at ETSU. Better than Robinson, better than LeForce, better than Brooks.

And this talk of Top 25? While that's what we would all like to see, remember that has only happened twice in our program's history: 1969 and 1991. Even during the good old days of 1989 to 1992 we only cracked the Top 25 in one of those seasons. Even in those years we would lose 2 or 3 games in conference play.

It was a bad game and bad loss, but don't forget this team just won three in a row prior to yesterday despite playing poorly. One has to believe when they put it back together like they did against Georgia, Eastern Kentucky, UNCA and others, that there is still a great season ahead.

In fact, the Bucs could still go 12-5 the rest of the way with three straight in the A-Sun Tournament and finish with a 20-13 record heading to the NCAAs. And I don't think it will be 12-5. More like 14-3 to be 22-11. Remember, 20-11 in 2003 was considered a GREAT season. We've gotten spoiled by a 27 and 24 win season since then.

How soon we forget.

If DeChellis was around in 2004, does anyone NOT think the Bucs would have won 27 games?

Shouldn't we attribute that season to Fields and Wadood maturing and peaking as seniors? If Murry Bartow was here he'd admit that had more to do with the 27 victory season than anything he did.

I'll go so far as to say I think if DeChellis is the coach against Cincinnati, the Bucs have a better chance of winning? Certainly he'd remember what happened when he let Smith try to improvise a tying score against Wake Forest the season before. Don't you think DeChellis would have drawn up a set play for a 3 in the closing seconds against the Bearcats, instead of having "ME FIRST" Smith improvise AGAIN?

Watching Smith go for the 2 against Cincy was the equivilent of a Boston Red Sox fan watching Bill Bucker make a game-deciding error in the seventh game of the 1986 World Series as well.

Doesn't the 7-19 season the following year in the Southern Conference back that up, as well as the fact this team would struggle to be even a respectable team in the So Con?

Finally, I speak of ETSU setting a goal to be a Top 25 team, and yet 2002 says I'm a naysayer?

Some other things-

The administration IS pulling the program down. There's no debating that.

I mentioned earlier that what ETSU is trying to sell us would be akin to Northwestern dropping down to Conference USA and the Wildcats AD telling their few fans left how much better off the program is. I think most Northwestern fans would rather go 4-8 in the Big Ten than 6-6 in C-USA, don't you?

In fact, I'll ask. If the Big Ten wanted to bring in ETSU tomorrow, wouldn't you go? I mean, sure, you'd be the Natalie Green of the conference (NOW- THERE'S A REFERENCE!), but wouldn't there be more POTENTIAL for growth there?

Only, as you pointed out, ETSU isn't even doing as well as they were before. ETSU was an NCAA team before the administrative changes were made.

They are, at best, an NIT team now- despite playing an easier schedule.

This is progress?

Furthermore-

Citing Bartow's record after four years is meaningless at best and propaganda at worst. For instance, Alan LeForce had a better record after two seasons than Bartow did and they both inherited strong teams.

Had ETSU dropped to the then Trans-America Conference after the 1993 season, it is likely LeForce would have had better records than he did.

Furthermore, whereas Bartow inherited a can't-miss team in 2004, when Robinson and DeChellis got the job, and perhaps guys like Dowd and Brooks as well, they had to BUILD the program. You could have hired John Wooden and he wouldn't have been able to win 27 games in his first year under any of their circumstances.

I mention the Top 25 because I want to see ETSU build off it. Sure, it's tough- no school makes the Top 25 every season.

But the philosophy has been one in which when the Bucs do well on the court, they act as if the fame is fleeting.

Even if the successes of the early 90s and 2000's weren't built off of, certainly we could expect more than to see ETSU kicked off their flagship radio station in the mid-90s and then their own CONFERENCE in the mid-2000s!

As I remember Dowd built the program into NCAA Probation after a winning season or two.

And they fired Dowd... If Mullins were around he would have extended his contract. At least back then they knew enough to get rid of the cancer before it drags the whole body down. Now we just extend them. Arrggghhh!!

My point in including Dowd was to include the name of a coach who took over the Bucs when they were less-than-stellar.

Again, the "Bartow has the best record of any coach through the first five years" is meaningless.

He's inherited a better situation and played an easier schedule than any of his predecessors. The news here is if he DIDN'T have the best record, and how the program could be 7-19 just a season after he was hired and in significantly poorer shape than it was when he was hired.

I say the reason is his administration has significantly weakened his product.

Pitt,

Your missing the point. We actually agree on the idea of making ETSU a Top 25 contender year in and year out. That's a respectable goal and one that should always be present. It's the ideal.

But there's a difference in idealism and realism. You act as if ETSU has been there often in the past. This is honestly not the case. It was rare -- once every 30 years or so. And the truth is we could argue which coach is best until the world ends. For instance, I would suggest that Bartow's non-conference scheduling (especially this year), has been consistently more challenging than DeChellis ever was. So while he may play an easier conference slate, it's probably a wash in the end.

Truth is, if you want to point at the administration, the fact is they dropped football and have reallocated those dollars into other programs. Men's basketball gets anything it wants and has the resources at hand to win. If they don't do it, then yes there is a right to point the finger at the coaching staff and players. At some point, there should be questions asked, but I don't know if it's time when a man is coaching our team that has been "Coach of the Year" twice in five seasons, won two regular season titles and made two postseason trips. Plus, trying to pull the administration in the argument is simply a stretch at the least, and a farce at the worst.

Again, we go through this on the board after every loss. Everyone immediately begins bashing. Look, it's sports. There are losses and there are times when teams struggle. Like I pointed out before, this team was 9-7 at this time last year and had one loss in league play. We're 8-8 and have a loss. We ended up with a 24-win team and a shot at the NCAAs. That's a great season by any measure.

We simply don't need to be waiting like tigers prepared to pounce every time there's a disappointment.

Disapointment was the So Con Tourney Game a few years ago ETSU lost to C of C 71-70 in overtime at Charleston.

The loss to Gardner-Webb, at home, by not scoring a point for the last five minutes FOR THE SECOND TIME THIS SEASON to blow a game is hardly a disapointment.

That's a call for Bartow to go to his playbook and start drawing up a few new sets.

That's when you say you're running 5 a.m. practices. That's when a coach looks at new starters.

That's when you go into the ADs office and say "You know, if you weren't so cheap and would actually have given me the extension before recruiting season this might not have happened!"

Now, a few other points-

A- Realistically, ETSU has made the NCAA Tournament more than roughly two-thirds of the teams playing Division I basketball. While that includes a lot of teams that haven't been playing D-I for as long as ETSU has, it means to me that ETSU can set a VERY realistic goal of being one of the Top 100 basketball programs in the NCAA year in and year out.

Now, mind you, for that vision to come true a lot of things will have to change. You'll need a new arena, for instance. You'll need a larger athletic budget.

B- I HAVE NEVER SAID THAT ETSU WAS A CONSISTENT TOP 25 TEAM.

What I have said, however, is that when the Bucs have had success that has led them to the NCAAs, they could build off it. It is simply not unrealistic for ETSU to say "We want to do this every year, Mountain Empire! But in order to do that, how about giving us some green?"

ETSU has never done that. They've acted pretty much like you have- that those seasons were aberrations and we should instead just be satisfied with a 17 or 18 victory season with no cherry on top.

C- Scheduling. HO! HO! HO! I'm going to say right now that I think the A-Sun is worth about five extra victories than the So Con is.

I'm also going to disagree with you on out-of-conference scheduling. A typical ETSU out-of-conference slate would feature Vandy, Clemson, and Tennessee on the road.

This year it was Syracuse, Oklahoma State on the road and Georgia at a neutral site.

I don't see it.

Furthermore, let's not forget DeChellis got Michigan State, during one of their NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP SEASONS, to play down here.

I don't see Bartow doing that, even with Mullins holding a gun to his head for big revenue games.

D- ETSU basketball does NOT get everything it wants. If that was the case, we'd see a nice new arena being built instead of soccer and softball venues.

We'd see overseas players on the basketball team. They'd have a venue where they could sell more than one ticket for every two seats. We'd see a "Murry Bartow TV Show."

And the program most definitely would NOT be in the Atlantic Sun Conference.

The ETSU athletic budget is 1/11th of what Tennessee's is. Now, I understand that's going to limit what you're able to do.

But even if the basketball program got all $6,000,000 of the athletic budget, it wouldn't be "everything it wants."

As it is- the ETSU men's basketball program has a budget of roughly $800,000, if memory serves. That's not a big cut for a men's basketball program (it's not even 1/7th of the pie) and it's not even the biggest cut in the 30th ranked conference in the country.

E- Coach of the Year. This I always felt was a meaningless award. It is an award that is basically a way for the media, who misjudged the talent of the team, to save face when they exceed expectations.

And that goes for just about any "Coach" or "Manager" of the year award.

That said, with the exception of the A-Sun final, I don't think Bartow did poorly last season.

But the award might have worked against him this summer.

I'm a recruit looking at ETSU out of high school. I see where this really personable guy who is promising me playing time in 2010.

But at first glance, I see where the "Coach of the Year" isn't guaranteed to be around in 2010.

I have to ask "What is up with that?"

I have to ask why the supposed best coach in the conference is thought so little of by his own college.

It doesn't help if he's NOT the coach of the year. But when he is, it really makes me think something is fishy.

Hence, the administration is PLENTY to blame.

F- The record may be comparable to last season, but that's about it.

Last year the Bucs were able to give Tennessee a game in Knoxville before losing by six.

This year the Bucs go to Syracuse and lose by 50.

We've been through the game against Georgia. And yes, if opponents come into the game fatigued and suffer from five-hour jet lag and shoot 50% from the free throw line and make a lot of turnovers against the Bucs, I think ETSU will do well this season.

And that's not going to happen again.

Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree. Again, I think we agree that we want ETSU to strive for more out of its athletic program. We just don't see eye to eye on how to get there.

We both would be happy to see the Bucs back in the NCAAs with a 20-win season, though, wouldn't we? Why not expect the best while we're in season. If there are reasons to discuss a monumental collapse, then the time for that conversation is in April. Right now, ETSU is still the defending league champion, has a chance to win 20 and capture a trip to the NCAAs.

The reason why not to talk about the Bucs winning 20 and going to the NCAAs is because it's like talking about the Pittsburgh Pirates winning the NL Central this season.

I never understand why I have to always teach courses out of "Sports Fandom 101" on here. I just naturally come to the conclusion I'm surrounded by lug nuts.

But, I will begin my latest lesson by stating you are just setting yourself up for disapointment if you believe this is a NCAA caliber team. Honestly, 2002, if you had to bet your life right now on the A-Sun team that made the NCAAs, would you bet it on ETSU?

I didn't think so.

You might as well ask- "Why not be a cockeyed optimist? Why not be totally naive? Why not let Charles Manson babysit your kids?"

There is this thing we have to get over in this area is that being critical means you're a bad fan or rooting against your team.

Why would you want to wait until April to be critical or make changes? If players transferring in mid-season, a .500 record, and current underachievement is what you want- sure- I agree. Let's keep our mouths shut.

But the only way to save this season is to make some changes.

Starting Hamlin?

Pigram to the point?

A three-guard look?

More man-to-man?

2002- I honestly don't know. Truthfully, even if the current crop of talent has it in them under some sort of combination to win 20 games I think ultimately the program is doomed as long as the current athletic philosophy- not just administration but PHILOSOPHY- is in place.

You mentioned a monumental collapse. Are you honestly saying that a .500 record in a garbage conference isn't a monumental collapse from 2004?

Buc2002 Wrote:Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree. Again, I think we agree that we want ETSU to strive for more out of its athletic program. We just don't see eye to eye on how to get there.

We both would be happy to see the Bucs back in the NCAAs with a 20-win season, though, wouldn't we? Why not expect the best while we're in season. If there are reasons to discuss a monumental collapse, then the time for that conversation is in April. Right now, ETSU is still the defending league champion, has a chance to win 20 and capture a trip to the NCAAs.

Happy to see the bucs go to the NCAAs and get beat stomped on like dirt? No. '02 has no idea what ETSU has been. Just to say they've ONLY been in the top 25 twice in the last thirty years...geesh.

We were close a LOT of years. How bout the year we beat Arizona in the NCAAs. Man, what a game. That wasn't a year we were ranked.

I saw a few minutes of the Lipscomb/Belmont game on CSS yesterday. Looks like they were playing in Freedom Hall. Never been there. But on tv, it looked like a one-level arena that seats around 5,000 fans. And that's the PREMIER rivalry in this league.

Schedule tougher? That's laughable. We used to have great teams come to our place. When was the last time you saw that happen?

'02 either works for ETSU, is related to Bartow, or just doesn't have a clue.

Buc2002 Wrote:Truth is, if you want to point at the administration, the fact is they dropped football and have reallocated those dollars into other programs.

I am shocked to read this. I thought Stanton/Mullins dropped football to save money. You mean they actually dropped football to spend more on tennis, baseball, track, soccer, volleyball and other sports that attract less paying fans (when combined for an entire season) than one football game.

Yes, Buc. That's actually common knowledge.

It's exactly what I projected would happen when they made a tennis coach the AD.

And, it's exactly what you would consider from a Doctor President.

You know doctors and what's important to them? It's almost stereotypical!

No football at ETSU. We have to have overseas golf players.

No Wednesday afternoon appointments. I have tee time.