(09-06-2017 02:48 PM)450bench Wrote: (09-06-2017 01:29 PM)Stammers Wrote: (09-06-2017 12:56 PM)Joe1 Wrote: (09-06-2017 12:10 PM)450bench Wrote: Unequivocally on the "Tubby Train"...interesting...not sure who you're talking about since the guy has been here for 1 season...some of us are very simply wanting to give the team/staff a chance, like in year freaking 2, before formulating an opinion either way...
Bingo!
It's baffling to me how many times and ways some of us try to say what you just said, and yet it doesn't register or take. It's either the said person reads your post and doesn't understand what some of us have written, or they read the post and somehow they don't believe our words and we get tossed in the "I love Tubby so much he can do no wrong and I'll defend him to the end" camp. It's very strange.
Good post anyway Bench.
It is equally baffling how it doesn't register with some, how much long term damage Tubby has done to the program in only one season.
How much damage has Tubby done to the program after 1 season? Let me answer that, NONE. ZERO. NADA. ZILCH. ZIPPO. A SUM EQUALLING NONE WHATSOEVER.
In the most dispassionate and logical way:
In April of 2016, Tubby was hired and paid a top 15 salary to be the HC at Memphis.
He had a returning nucleus that included a McDonald's All-American and two other 4* recruits.
The roster still needed bolstering and Tubby was really slow to fill out the pieces necessary to make '16-'17 a really competitive team.
And this was predicated on the reputation that Tubby wasn't a super energetic coach and that recruiting wasn't his forté.
So he trudged through the summer by getting Kessee to commit and to flip Keon from Tech to Memphis. After Marshall officially left, he then got an otherwise unwanted guy who had an injury history and hadn't played D1 ball in 4 years to come in.
That was the extent of "filling out the roster." He had eight scholarship players when he took the "necessity flyer" on Chad.
He knew he would have at least five and potentially more scholarships open for '17-18 but only snagged three guys in the early period.
While this was going on he really wasn't making any headway into local recruiting, whether by design or by failure. Reports started coming in that he hadn't reached out to some of the necessary people in the local basketball circles and that was affecting Memphis' chances on getting kids in '18, '19 and beyond.
Towards the end of the season, the team fell apart and no matter how one wants to assign fault, ultimately it rests on the head coach to manage egos, inspire players, and win games. Instead, five players left the team.
As the season ended and spring recruiting came around, the staff still had difficulty filling out a roster again. The staff seemed to take a wide-net approach to scouting talent--expressing some level of interest on players that are generally not "Memphis good" while still having to add recruits in June.
The roster is now completely unbalanced. The "hope" is that this team will not fall flat on its face and be competitive and use the experiences from this year to turn that into a possible NCAA team for 2018-19.
But, because of the roster imbalance, there is a strong possibility (assuming Memphis doesn't have another transfer catastrophe like this past year) that Memphis will lose four starters and two relied-upon bench guys from the 2018-19 team and have to "reset" again for 2019-20 with hopes of building in for '20-21 and '21-22.
And add to that, even if (likely best case scenario) Memphis gets some commitments for this early period, most targets that seem attainable are the type that will be 4-year players who begin to really blossom as juniors.
And this is all taking place as interest in Tigers basketball dips to a generationally low point, with ticket sales and attendance both nearing 40 year lows.
So, while this assessment may not be as dire as the op, there are a lot concerns about the way Tubby has and is doing things.
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Tri-State Defender interview with Tubby Smith
