As we speculate on the future of Coach Finney we should consider whether or not his lack of success is entirely his fault. Last evening, when I mentioned has far apart our program is from the likes of Louisille I was informed that there is not a single player of Louisville's squad that Tulane was able to recruit because of academic restrictions. Men's basketball, as under Perry Clark, no longer gets the advantage of recruiting borderline students. They are no longer granted the academic exceptions that Clark enjoyed. In fact, had today's guidlines been in place Clark would not have been able to sign his "fab four" class. It appears that Finney is getting about as much as he can our of what he is able to get.

There's probably a lot to that. Maybe Cowen has discovered yet another back door to DIII.

Observer Wrote:...there is not a single player of Louisville's squad that Tulane was able to recruit because of academic restrictions. Men's basketball, as under Perry Clark, no longer gets the advantage of recruiting borderline students. They are no longer granted the academic exceptions that Clark enjoyed.

A few points:

1. How do so many other high academic institutions have better basketball programs than we do? I don't believe they're doing it all with academic exemptions. Duke, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Rice, Wake Forest, Princeton, Virginia, Georgetown, Boston College, Georgia Tech, Syracuse, on and on.

2. Why is there a restriction on basketball, but football gets exemptions? It doesn't make sense.

3. Furthermore, regardless of the players he has, Finney is not a good on-court coach.

4. Even if you believe Finney is a good coach, what does that mean to the future of Tulane basketball? Does it mean we'll always have a pitiful program because of academics?

5. I would be willing to bet that Clark had a better graduation rate than Finney. And that incuded academic exemptions, JUCOs, and NBA propects.

6. Something needs to change. Either we need a new coach or we need a new policy regarding academics. Actually we need both.

Home of the Wave Wrote:

Observer Wrote:...there is not a single player of Louisville's squad that Tulane was able to recruit because of academic restrictions. Men's basketball, as under Perry Clark, no longer gets the advantage of recruiting borderline students. They are no longer granted the academic exceptions that Clark enjoyed.

A few points:



2. Why is there a restriction on basketball, but football gets exemptions? It doesn't make sense.

3. Furthermore, regardless of the players he has, Finney is not a good on-court coach.

4. Even if you believe Finney is a good coach, what does that mean to the future of Tulane basketball? Does it mean we'll always have a pitiful program because of academics?

5. I would be willing to bet that Clark had a better graduation rate than Finney. And that incuded academic exemptions, JUCOs, and NBA propects.

6. Something needs to change. Either we need a new coach or we need a new policy regarding academics. Actually we need both.

1. How do so many other high academic institutions have better basketball programs than we do? I don't believe they're doing it all with academic exemptions. Duke, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Rice, Wake Forest, Princeton, Virginia, Georgetown, Boston College, Georgia Tech, Syracuse, on and on.

I asked that very same question and was told that they established themselves at a higher level before they became more restrictive, whereas Tulane did not.


2. Why is there a restriction on basketball, but football gets exemptions? It doesn't make sense.

The same restrictions apply to both football and basketball, and to all men's sports (I'm not sure about ladies.) Baseball, for whatever reason, has a higher percentage of excellent prospects that happen to be better students. Football, although having a potential pool of Tulane qualified (percentage wise) smaller than baseball, has a larger opportunity than basketball. The pool of academically eligible, top notch basketball players is almost non-existant.

4. Even if you believe Finney is a good coach, what does that mean to the future of Tulane basketball? Does it mean we'll always have a pitiful program because of academics?

I don't know, but the prospects aren't very good.

5. I would be willing to bet that Clark had a better graduation rate than Finney. And that incuded academic exemptions, JUCOs, and NBA propects.

I wouldn't make that bet if I were you.

6. Something needs to change. Either we need a new coach or we need a new policy regarding academics. Actually we need both.

I would prefer that society force a change on the part of the Louisville's of the world.

Observer Wrote:1. How do so many other high academic institutions have better basketball programs than we do? I don't believe they're doing it all with academic exemptions. Duke, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Rice, Wake Forest, Princeton, Virginia, Georgetown, Boston College, Georgia Tech, Syracuse, on and on.

I asked that very same question and was told that they established themselves at a higher level before they became more restrictive, whereas Tulane did not.


2. Why is there a restriction on basketball, but football gets exemptions? It doesn't make sense.

The same restrictions apply to both football and basketball, and to all men's sports (I'm not sure about ladies.)  Baseball, for whatever reason, has a higher percentage of excellent prospects that happen to be better students.  Football, although having a potential pool of Tulane qualified (percentage wise) smaller than baseball, has a larger opportunity than basketball.  The pool of academically eligible, top notch basketball players is almost non-existant.

4. Even if you believe Finney is a good coach, what does that mean to the future of Tulane basketball? Does it mean we'll always have a pitiful program because of academics?

I don't know, but the prospects aren't very good.

5. I would be willing to bet that Clark had a better graduation rate than Finney. And that incuded academic exemptions, JUCOs, and NBA propects.

I wouldn't make that bet if I were you.

6. Something needs to change. Either we need a new coach or we need a new policy regarding academics. Actually we need both.

I would prefer that society force a change on the part of the Louisville's of the world.

Observer,
I edited your post because I think something got in there that wasn't supposed to be there.

Comments on your answers:

1. Well, Tulane WAS established until the powers that be allowed Clark to leave.

2. I don't have sufficient knowledge to respond to this. I can only say that I was under the impression that football was allowed a certain number of academic exemptions per year.

4. Depressing. Almost makes you throw up your hands and say, let's drop to Div. III.

5. Again, I don't have the data, but I had always heard that Clark had a good grad rate. I can think of more players that have left under Finney in 5 years than left under Clark in 13 years. Maybe it's just convenient memory on my part, but, off the top of my head, I can think of at least 4 of Finney's own recruits that have transferred.

On your last point, I agree in theory, but we'll all be dead before that happens. Society isn't even moving in that direction.

I would only add that if Finney had been recruiting the type of freshman class he has this year three and four years ago, perhaps we wouldn't be having this discussion. In other words, regardless of what the situation is, I think a class of Wheaton, Stith, Gomez, Rochestie and Louisme is solid enough to win a lot of games with. There are some Louisville type athletes in that group. It's just that it took Finney five years to put one solid class in place.

I edited your post because I think something got in there that wasn't supposed to be there.

No Home. It was stated as meant. The Duke's of the world have been established as winners for decades. Tulane merely had a breif flash of success during the terms of Fowler (who I consider the best coach Tulane ever had, and Clark.) There is no comparing Tulane to those other programs.


How do so many other high academic institutions have better basketball programs than we do? I don't believe they're doing it all with academic exemptions. Duke, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Rice, Wake Forest, Princeton, Virginia, Georgetown, Boston College, Georgia Tech, Syracuse, on and on.

I asked that very same question and was told that they established themselves at a higher level before they became more restrictive, whereas Tulane did not.

Observer Wrote:I asked that very same question and was told that they established themselves at a higher level before they became more restrictive, whereas Tulane did not.

1. Not all of the ones I mentioned have been established for decades. But even if we concede that point, just what are they saying? They don't deny that there are recruits who meet our academic requirements, but we can't get them because we're not an "established" program? That's an excuse as far as I'm concerned. Sure it may be more difficult for us, but let's just not try.

2. Recruits don't know decades ago. They're 17-18 years old. At best, they might remember 10 years ago.

3. Don't believe that Tulane wasn't highly thought of back when Clark was coach. I can recall a couple of incidents that illustrate that: 1) I can remember a quote from a Mississippi State player when we played them in the late 90's. He said something to the effect that he was glad that they were playing Tulane in a non-conference game because Tulane is a "name" program. 2) Just in the last couple of months, I was reading an SEC school's message board. They had a big long discussion about "remember about 10 years ago Tulane used to have the posse where they would substitute all 5 players, etc. We should do that."

The restrictions placed on the athletic programs today does not allow any comparison with teams from the past when discussing recruiting. Perry Clark would not have been able to sign but three of all the players that he did sign during his time here had he had the same parameters as does Finney.

Most of the schools you mention do not have in place the same level of academic restrictions that Tulane places on itself. Not to mention that places like Duke translates to Duke Basketball.

Observer Wrote:The restrictions placed on the athletic programs today does not allow any comparison with teams from the past when discussing recruiting.  Perry Clark would not have been able to sign but three of all the players that he did sign during his time here had he had the same parameters as does Finney.

While what you're saying is apparently true, I just don't think that that's the way I think it should be.

Quote:Most of the schools you mention do not have in place the same level of academic restrictions that Tulane places on itself. Not to mention that places like Duke translates to Duke Basketball.

All but one of the schools I mentioned are more highly rated academically than Tulane. Probably nobody knows exactly what each one of those schools does to get better basketball players than we do, but the fact is that they do. Therefore, we should do what they do. It seems ridiculous to me to think that we should have higher academic standards for basketball players than Duke, Princeton, Stanford, Wake Forest, etc. Whatever they do doesn't seem to hurt their academic reputation.

Quote:Not to mention that places like Duke translates to Duke Basketball.

I'm sure exactly what you mean by that, but I can only say that Duke is rated by USN&WR as the #5 academic institution in the US (tied with MIT and Stanford), higher than some Ivy League schools, and much higher than Tulane. Tulane would be doing very well indeed to copy what Duke is doing.

Furthermore, one would assume that Eamon Kelly allowed Perry Clark more leeway in recruiting because he trusted him to stay on top of the players' academic situations while they were in school. What was so wrong with that approach?

I'm not saying there is anything wrong with the approach Tulane took with Perry Clark. But the fact remains, Tulane will not allow that today.

As I said in the post when I congratulated you guys on beating us. Tulane's problem is NOT their players. I think you are playing the wrong type of game for your personnel. I know that your team has solid shooting, but you guys are athletic enough to speed the game up by running more. When you guys were running, you killed us getting up and down the floor and hustling for loose balls. We only got back into the gaem when you started running your set offense.

Please do not attempt to make your acedemic standards an excuse for your poor performance in athletics. You guys are getting kids who can play, now you just need to get them coaches who CAN coach.

Maybe Scelfo is the man for your football team, based on your improvement at the end of last season, but I think you guys need a basketball coach who is going to take advantage of your teams strengths.

uhmump95 Wrote:Please do not attempt to make your acedemic standards an excuse for your poor performance in athletics.

Translation: Rice kicks our a$$es up and down the block on a regular basis in just about everything and they have high academic standards, too.

OwlJacket Wrote:

uhmump95 Wrote:Please do not attempt to make your acedemic standards an excuse for your poor performance in athletics.

Translation: Rice kicks our a$$es up and down the block on a regular basis in just about everything and they have high academic standards, too.

:laugh: :mad: :laugh: :mad: :laugh: :mad: :laugh: :mad:

Too bad this year that statement is soooo true.

Our AD's should have said we should never lose to Rice in anything a long time ago. By now this rivalry would be smokin.

OwlJacket Wrote:Translation: Rice kicks our a$$es up and down the block on a regular basis in just about everything and they have high academic standards, too.

This is my point exactly. If other high academic schools can do it, why can't we?