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You would be surprised.

Just because you have issues with AK doesn’t mean everybody does. Power 5 schools will be able to offer a lot more than UAB can. AK probably has receipts of guys he could have gotten if only he had some money to give them. There are a lot of coaches out there that are better than AK, and there are a whole lot that are much worse.

A real AD is going to look at all his options when trying to hire a new coach, and AK has attractive qualities. He’s won at Ole Miss and UAB. If he did what he did at Ole Miss in today’s climate, he’d be in the tournament almost every year. This year, more than any before it, has been an absolute failure.

You tell me what coach that we can hire if AK leaves us going to get us guys like Gaines, Jelly, Yax, etc. Nobody is thrilled with the season, or happy with the job AK has done this year.(you keep writing that people are excusing it, who exactly are you talking about?) Overall, he has done a good job at UAB. He found good players to put on this team, he just found players without a killer instinct all at once for some reason. If we look like this again next year I’ll start having some questions, but this season is an absolute outlier.

(01-03-2025 07:53 AM)blazers9911 Wrote:  Just because you have issues with AK doesn’t mean everybody does. Power 5 schools will be able to offer a lot more than UAB can. AK probably has receipts of guys he could have gotten if only he had some money to give them. There are a lot of coaches out there that are better than AK, and there are a whole lot that are much worse.

A real AD is going to look at all his options when trying to hire a new coach, and AK has attractive qualities. He’s won at Ole Miss and UAB. If he did what he did at Ole Miss in today’s climate, he’d be in the tournament almost every year. This year, more than any before it, has been an absolute failure.

You tell me what coach that we can hire if AK leaves us going to get us guys like Gaines, Jelly, Yax, etc. Nobody is thrilled with the season, or happy with the job AK has done this year.(you keep writing that people are excusing it, who exactly are you talking about?) Overall, he has done a good job at UAB. He found good players to put on this team, he just found players without a killer instinct all at once for some reason. If we look like this again next year I’ll start having some questions, but this season is an absolute outlier.

J.J Redick

Bounce back tomorrow. Beat a bad opponent. No WTF losses in between the truly tough opponents.

@NT and @FAU were definitely penciled in as Ls. Win tomorrow and in Boca and we're back to even.

(01-03-2025 07:53 AM)blazers9911 Wrote:  Just because you have issues with AK doesn’t mean everybody does. Power 5 schools will be able to offer a lot more than UAB can. AK probably has receipts of guys he could have gotten if only he had some money to give them. There are a lot of coaches out there that are better than AK, and there are a whole lot that are much worse.

A real AD is going to look at all his options when trying to hire a new coach, and AK has attractive qualities. He’s won at Ole Miss and UAB. If he did what he did at Ole Miss in today’s climate, he’d be in the tournament almost every year. This year, more than any before it, has been an absolute failure.

You tell me what coach that we can hire if AK leaves us going to get us guys like Gaines, Jelly, Yax, etc. Nobody is thrilled with the season, or happy with the job AK has done this year.(you keep writing that people are excusing it, who exactly are you talking about?) Overall, he has done a good job at UAB. He found good players to put on this team, he just found players without a killer instinct all at once for some reason. If we look like this again next year I’ll start having some questions, but this season is an absolute outlier.

Adding to this, blowing games/losing bad games out of conference isn’t necessarily a trait with AK since he’s been at UAB, but with this core. Jelly and the boys never really had a bad OOC loss, they could just never win the meaningful/NET boost games. This core just has an off and on switch that it refuses to just keep on. While AK did recruit these guys, it’s probably tough to tell guys who have “it” and those that don’t, until they’re on your team. And if they don’t have that “it” or toughness, you hope you can instill it in them. And this group just won’t do it. Jelly did. Ertel did. Jemison did. Quan did. None of the guys on this roster currently seem to have it, or want to have it. It happens. Hopefully next year, some guys move on and AK can find a group more like from his first couple years here.

(01-03-2025 04:37 PM)FNblazer Wrote:  @NT and @FAU were definitely penciled in as Ls. Win tomorrow and in Boca and we're back to even.

I didn't think FAU looked good yesterday against Memphis. I wouldn't necessarily pencil that in as a L.

(01-03-2025 05:43 PM)Frank Grimes Wrote:  

(01-03-2025 07:53 AM)blazers9911 Wrote:  Just because you have issues with AK doesn’t mean everybody does. Power 5 schools will be able to offer a lot more than UAB can. AK probably has receipts of guys he could have gotten if only he had some money to give them. There are a lot of coaches out there that are better than AK, and there are a whole lot that are much worse.

A real AD is going to look at all his options when trying to hire a new coach, and AK has attractive qualities. He’s won at Ole Miss and UAB. If he did what he did at Ole Miss in today’s climate, he’d be in the tournament almost every year. This year, more than any before it, has been an absolute failure.

You tell me what coach that we can hire if AK leaves us going to get us guys like Gaines, Jelly, Yax, etc. Nobody is thrilled with the season, or happy with the job AK has done this year.(you keep writing that people are excusing it, who exactly are you talking about?) Overall, he has done a good job at UAB. He found good players to put on this team, he just found players without a killer instinct all at once for some reason. If we look like this again next year I’ll start having some questions, but this season is an absolute outlier.

Adding to this, blowing games/losing bad games out of conference isn’t necessarily a trait with AK since he’s been at UAB, but with this core. Jelly and the boys never really had a bad OOC loss, they could just never win the meaningful/NET boost games. This core just has an off and on switch that it refuses to just keep on. While AK did recruit these guys, it’s probably tough to tell guys who have “it” and those that don’t, until they’re on your team. And if they don’t have that “it” or toughness, you hope you can instill it in them. And this group just won’t do it. Jelly did. Ertel did. Jemison did. Quan did. None of the guys on this roster currently seem to have it, or want to have it. It happens. Hopefully next year, some guys move on and AK can find a group more like from his first couple years here.

You forget about getting run off the court in the 2nd half against a mediocre Toledo team in 22-23. That team should’ve been in the big dance winning games, and our at large bid was in danger in game 2 bc of a bad loss. Again, the point isnt so much that we have historically lost a lot of bad games OOC (except now you can say for 40% of AKs career at UAB we actually have), it’s that AK does not have the team playing well until late January or February. THAT is a consistent trend. And the schedule (which was bad that year too) is at least partially on AK too.

That same team lost to a BAD FIU team and a mediocre WKU team at home in back to back games in early January.

AK has never really had a team playing good until it’s too late to do a grin g of note in the regular season - at large, top 25, regular season conference championships.

Relative to talent, returning experience, and overall expectations - this is the worst UAB team so far in 2 decades. Ehsan doesn’t have that distinction, Haase doesn’t, Davis doesn’t. That honor goes to AK. He deserves big time criticism for this season, and his other recurring coaching trends.

But I do agree with ur other point. AKs first three teams definitely had more of an edge and more heart/dog/force/edge whatever euphemism to want to use. There is something wrong with the psyche of this group of players.

They are soft. They don’t play hard - only when a certain student group is in attendance, it’s a “big name opponent,” or they are already down double digits to a bad team. They unravel quickly when anything gets tough.

Above all, even recruiting PGs, shooters, etc, I hope AK goes back to recruiting some dogs again. We have puppies right now. Give me quans, Ertels, buffens, guys with jelly’s mindset all day over this group. Talented, soft players= losers.

Toledo was net 80ish that year. We are losing to quad 4 teams this year.

(01-04-2025 02:01 PM)blazers9911 Wrote:  Toledo was net 80ish that year. We are losing to quad 4 teams this year.

Yeah, pretty sure they went 16-2 or something in the MAC and had maybe 7 losses total. They were like McNeese last year. We thought that was a pathetic loss (the margin was, the quality of the opponent wasn’t), but at the end of the season, it was obvious that was a capable team.