The issue with Braun is that due to the contract extension, he is expensive to keep but even more expensive to get rid of. He'll be around until at least the end of next season. Braun's an excellent recruiter and a solid coach, but for a team that has to be rebuilt from scratch, his "price-per-win" is very high. An upset win over UT or Harvard would quickly allow us to forget this HBU disappointment.

The real challenge for Karlgaard will come at the end of the 2014-2015 season. Even if Braun leads Rice to a winning season and back into a minor post-season tournament next year, do you extend his expensive contract??? I would only extend Braun's contract if he got Rice into the NCAA Tournament. Paying Braun millions ultimately only makes sense if Rice starts to pack the house or brings in Tournament cash.

One question each fan can answer is what is his/her utility function; ie, how do you value horrible losses compared to pleasant surprise wins.

To be extreme about it, would you prefer 1-26 where the 1 was a win at Kentucky, or 26-1 where the loss was a loss to St Thomas?

As I posted at the time of the extension, I couldn't name three good wins by Braun in his first three years. There was home v Memphis, but what else.

Yes, in 2011-2012 we went .500 in conference and had road wins at TAMU, SMU, Tulane, UH, and UTEP and ULaLa (CIT).

We also lost four conference games at home and went quietly from CUSA tourney.

Since then, we have lost to St Thomas and HBU and won exactly 8 games, less than half of them against D1 competition.

It is already a mathematical certainty that Braun's 6 year record at Rice will be substantially worse that WTW's last 6 years at Rice, despite Braun's tenure being entirely during the new facility.

WTW won 91 games in last 16 years, if only 3 in the final season. Braun has 56 as of today. I'm confident we will beat Northwood. I'm much less certain about where win 58 will come from.

(12-05-2013 05:43 PM)MemOwl Wrote:  

(12-05-2013 03:00 PM)That Guy 2012 Wrote:  this is a team pointed in the right direction.

Can you bottle that optimism and sell it on E-bay?

(12-05-2013 02:53 PM)temchugh Wrote:  I have always wondered how much of the first round of transfers (before K&O) was driven by a desire to play some place where people actually showed up to watch them.
Chicken/Egg.

I'm not inclined to buy this argument, for three reasons.

1. Lots of the 300+ D-1 programs in the country don't draw any fans. Do they routinely lose 80% of their signees before senior year? Is there any statistical correlation between attendance and player retention?

2. That signing class certainly knew that we didn't draw. Logic says if they were motivated by attendance, they would have checked attendance and then signed somewhere that drew. They signed with us, ergo I premise that they didn't care that much about attendance or were brash enough (with reason) to believe that they would turn the program around and get it fixed.

3. empirically, we drew 1742 last year for one of the worst teams in the country. Florida Gulf Coast (DeBose) drew 2200 for a Sweet Sixteen team. Rhode Island (Reichelle) drew 4300 in a building that holds 7700.

I have not looked into D1 attendance figures, so I'm speaking comfortably from ignorance. However, regarding point 2, that does not sound much like how high school kids make decisions. I believe that the recruits that led us to the 17-15 season were drawn to Rice by the upgraded facilities, new coach, and chance to lead a turn around. I seriously doubt that they had much understanding of how dead the atmosphere would be.

My pure speculation regarding point 3. Because we are in a large city that has some alumni base from essentially all large and even medium sized universities, I'll bet opposing fans make up a larger percentage of our attendance than most low attendance D-1 schools. Based on my experience, our biggest crowds tend to be the ones most dominated by opposing fans. Rice fans dominate when we draw less than 1000. As a result, the players never get strong home crowd support. Even more speculative (because Tudor seems so empty at many games), I wonder if we have a larger percentage of out of town season ticket holders who increase our attendance numbers but don't actually attend the games. I don't think that we have a lot of these folks, but as a percentage of ticket sales it could be another factor.

temchugh

I'll confess to being too optimistic to accept your thesis easily. But let's presume it is right--that having eroded to the point of sustained low attendance, all promising recruits will transfer after one year in search of the Maslow self actualization enabled by roaring home partisan crowds.

How do we move forward?

Do we need to hire 3000 temporary workers, much like extras in a sports movie (think Hoosiers, but with a larger gym)

How much would that cost? Is it doable?

$50 per game x 3000 people = $150,000 per game. 20 home games is $3 million per year.

After a year or two, the problem might fix itself. Not a crazy idea perhaps.

(12-05-2013 11:35 PM)Gravy Owl Wrote:  

(12-05-2013 12:58 PM)At Ease Wrote:  Agree, the conflation of cases like Dylan Ennis and AJ Holland bothers me.

Well, they are different in on-court productivity while at Rice (and in their reasons for leaving).

But ultimately they are the same in that neither represents the way to build the program. From 2008-2011 Braun recruited 16 players. 13 of them transferred out (or just left the team), mostly after only one season. I don't care how you categorize them, that is a sure recipe for failure.

this was exactly my point earlier........

(12-06-2013 09:46 AM)texowl2 Wrote:  

(12-05-2013 11:35 PM)Gravy Owl Wrote:  

(12-05-2013 12:58 PM)At Ease Wrote:  Agree, the conflation of cases like Dylan Ennis and AJ Holland bothers me.

Well, they are different in on-court productivity while at Rice (and in their reasons for leaving).
But ultimately they are the same in that neither represents the way to build the program. From 2008-2011 Braun recruited 16 players. 13 of them transferred out (or just left the team), mostly after only one season. I don't care how you categorize them, that is a sure recipe for failure.

this was exactly my point earlier........

This is the kind of situation where intelligent organizations say, this can't be allowed to continue. If we don't know why it is happening we need to find out ASAP. And once we know, or if we know now, we have to fix it immediately. But it was allowed to continue for several years.

Using Ken Pomeroy's computer rankings, here are Rice‘s basketball rankings during Ben Braun's tenure:

2013-14 #270
2012-13 #323
2011-12 #147
2010-11 #161
2009-10 #263
2008-09 #232

The average ranking is #233. My question is this: In what area, other than men's basketball, does Rice University accept being ranked below 232 other universities?