(11-11-2012 06:58 PM)ODUBB35 Wrote: Yeah. I'm 12.
Like i said, unreadable.
This board is no more unreadable than Blaine Taylor's "offense" is unwatchable.
Without talent, Blaine is a very pedestrian basketball coach. It's why we stunk his first couple years and why we've seen a historically bad drop after a couple terrible recruiting classes in a row.
A program that had as much success as we had earlier in Blaine's career should have capitalized on that success and started to land a better caliber of recruit. Much like what VCU has been doing of late. They capitalized on Anthony Grant and now are capitalizing on Shaka and landing big time recruits.
We have more money, more season ticket holders, a nicer arena, endowed scholarships, better fan support, MORE fans and a better talent pool to recruit from and despite all that, not only have we not recruited BETTER after out recent tourney successes, we've actually recruited WORSE.
Yes, this most recent class looks ok (Palmore is the only sure thing right now, Bacote has looked pretty mediocre thus far, Anichebe and McEwen are huge question marks and Clark has shown a little but not a lot) but the previous couple classes were absolutely horrendous.
And yet again next year, we have no one of any significance coming into this program. No top recruits, no even mediocre recruits who were being recruited by other mid major programs. We are being out nobodies for nobodies and that is the damn truth.
You won't like reading it but it needs to be said. The reason we are in the current shape we are in is because we lost recruiting battle after recruiting battle and that appears to be what is continuing to happen.
I've said all along, Blaine is a decent coach when he has talent because he knows defense and we can usually score just enough to beat most of the teams we play with the talent we have.
Without talent, he's a very mediocre coach and his horrible offensive gameplans (or really lack thereof) get exposed like an open wound. Our offense against three flat out terrible basketball teams has been anemic at best.
45 points against Holy Cross????? And imagine how bad we'd be if we hadn't of lucked into Painter and Hill transferring here!!!??? It would be an absolutely nightmare/catastrophe of biblical proportions, which is what I am expecting next year to look like when all we have in the frontcourt is Anichebe, Ross, maybe Larsen and a 6"7 205 pound freshman.
And we are going into CUSA, running Blaine's half court rockfight style with THAT LINEUP and THAT ROSTER. He's gotta go. I'm sorry. ODU has succeeded well before Blaine got here and we will succeed well after he is gone because we have thousands of people willing to invest millions of dollars in this program to see it do so. Blaine didn't build this program. He helped rebuild it slightly, but I honestly think the Ted had more to do with that than him. I will maintain that to my dying day. Blaine always comes up short in the NCAA tourney. ALWAYS. Yeah, we managed to beat a garbage Notre Dame team by 1 freaking point a few years ago, but that's IT.
Capel beat a very good Villanova team without Hodge back in the day and when the program fell apart under his watch a few years later, he got the axe as well.
I couldn't be happier that Wood hasn't extended Blaine yet. Quite frankly, we need to go in a new direction. We need to bring in an exciting young coach who players WANT to play for, who can WIN recruiting battles, who can sell the program to kids.
We don't need a 50-60 year old man who had a mid life crisis and shaved his iconic mustache, stopped dying his hair, lost weight and probably bought a new sportscar too lol. He isn't the guy for ODU to go into CUSA. The cupboard is flat out BARE right now.
Yeah, we have some decent guards......Batten, Hill, Palmore....they are ok. But they are winning us any NCAA tourney games. Especially considering they will be playing with ZERO help from the frontcourt.
We couldn't beat a bunch of patsy schools in our own sham tournament. We are going to have a losing record this year and get crushed OOC and by the better teams in conference. The returning frontcourt is a joke.
Again, if you don't want to read it, don't........but don't tell me that I don't have a right to voice my opinion about how awful the basketball we played over the last 3 days is and don't tell me that I can't ask whether it is time to go in a new direction or not because too anyone paying attention, it clearly is.
Taylor wanted out and was willing to go to Wyoming to get away from this current debacle. I really, really, really, really wish he would have went. Maybe then we could get someone in who can actually recruit players who have offers from schools other than Kennesaw State and Long Island, etc.
Or we can just act like next year Anton will turn into Loughton, Anichebe will become Frank the Tank and ummm.....someone else will become Dahi? I'm sure we can count on that right?