At the 1st of the year I would have told you that we would be at least middle of the pack. Steve always gets the most out of his players. 9 games decided by about 7 points (free throws always more close games to this range). We have won those games in the last couple of years. This year we lack a Fowler/Patterson combo to shut down the other side’s good players and we just don’t come up with stops when we need them.

Today we play to decide last place in the conference. I have no doubt that Steve will get the kids to play hard and I really think we will win holding off a 23 win to 23 lose swing. The win will place us playing WKU in the 1st round of the tournament probably. That is bad. I take my chances against FAU, UNT, etc but the WKU team that came in here a few weeks ago was peaking at the right time.

Steve’s future at this program has probably already been decided before this game. He has won 43 games over the last two years but had 3 losing season in the last 5. That is a real mix of up and downs.

I had another fan on the way out the other night tell me that this team was a couple of players away. He is right. With Mike Smith I think we would have won about another 5 or 6 games which would have put us at about .500. Throw in a real pg and we in 3 or 4 more (no, we don’t have a real serviceable pg. foster is great but his limited ability to score hurts us).

.500 is pretty reasonable rebuilding year after a couple of good years.

We return this whole group next year. We are one over on scholarships but Bails has to pass 13 hours this summer to make it back, so that maybe the reason we signed one more than we had to give. With or without Bails I don’t see this group winning anymore games next year due to the lack of big men. Are we going to be better in the paint next year? This year’s group compared to next year’s group looks like this:

Bails Marlon
Burton Money
Money Leeper

I don’t see any improvement there. Money can’t play in front of Burton who fouls every time down the court and has a tough time shooting free throws. Marlon is reported to be really good, so that gives me hope but, like Bob, I have moved to the point that I have to see it to believe it. Leeper will be a freshmen big. Impact freshmen bigs just don’t come to mid-major programs, so I would think you would red shirt and develop him but we will not have that luxury.

To not have a repeat of this year next year, you really have to get one more big and a pg in here. The program is a turning point. If we have two back to back 20 loss seasons are we going to be able to recruit 6 players for the 2012 class.

Coming off of 2 losing seasons and if you can’t recruit 6 SBC caliber players for the next class you could be staring down 4 seasons of 20 loses. I just hope we will do what it takes to get another big and real pg in here for next year.

My goals for this program (and I am sure these are Chris’ too):

1. Win the regular season (we have done that several times)
2. Get to the conference finals
3. Make post season in some form
4. Win a big game in ooc every year

Thoughts? Am I asking too much?

Good post. Couple of things. While winning the regular season is an appropriate goal, it's not realistic year in and year out. I suspect every other team has the same goals too. I would add:

5. Continue to schedule quality OOC teams and win half of them.

Regarding our bigs, I agree that getting a true 5 is critical given the inside-inside style Coach Shields plays. If we can't get that 5, change the style that we play. Big 10 schemes are hard to implement with SBC guys.

Ought to be a good game tonight.

Good posts. Thanks.