(03-01-2018 02:22 PM)UofToledoFans Wrote:  

(03-01-2018 01:33 PM)DetroitRocket Wrote:  

(03-01-2018 09:06 AM)emanoh Wrote:  We complain about coach K, but it seems that coach C can never turn success into more success. She gets a lot out of what she has, but should be rolling in recruiting riches. Especially with that fan base. I never understand how a girl would want to play in front of 200 fans at a B10 or similarly sized school and not in front of 4k fans at Toledo.

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No more 4,000 averages. 3,499 this season, 3,744 last year and 4,050 in 2015-16. A steady decline. Cullop's job is safe, but MOB needs to pressure her to replace assistants who can't recruit. Not sure he has it in him.

Last year's recruiting class of Wright, Davis and Copeland, shows none averaging even 4 minutes per game. The previous year's class of Tshitenge, Beacham, Rokkanen and Santucci has Santucci shooting 27% from the floor and Rokkanen at 29%. Beacham only plays five minutes per game. Tshitenge, a JC transfer, was injured last season and was reported to be ready for this year, but has played in only 3 games.

The 2015-16 class featured Kaayla McIntyre, but St. Fort is averaging 2 points per game and Printz left the team. Transfer Cunningham has show flashes of brilliance, but has been wildly inconsistent averaging six points per game and making only 37% of her shots.

That's three classes with only one player that you can count on to bring it every night and be productive. No wonder this team is so average.

All points taken... A college basketball team is still one consisting of redshirt freshman through seniors. JABH, Kaayla and Boyd are still all conference players. On a good shooting night we can still beat 80% of the country (Ball State and Dayton as evidence). That's 70 or so teams in the country we won't beat on a regular basis. In the past 10 years... That wins the MAC probably 3 to 5 times.

IMO we aren't as much disappointed with the output? We are just not content with 20 win seasons anymore. And that's a good problem to have. Every program in the MAC still wishes they had 3,500 a game and a city who cares like we do.

Wouldn't beat Dayton on a regular basis. It was a great win this year and the highlight of the season but completely an outlier against the other 28 games.

Our claim to fame is beating Dayton? Come on guys. Cullop cant recruit. Hire somebody who can.

Man, fire ‘em if they don’t get to the NCAAs and if they do, call it a fluke and fire ‘em anyway!

(03-01-2018 01:33 PM)DetroitRocket Wrote:  

(03-01-2018 09:06 AM)emanoh Wrote:  We complain about coach K, but it seems that coach C can never turn success into more success. She gets a lot out of what she has, but should be rolling in recruiting riches. Especially with that fan base. I never understand how a girl would want to play in front of 200 fans at a B10 or similarly sized school and not in front of 4k fans at Toledo.

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No more 4,000 averages. 3,499 this season, 3,744 last year and 4,050 in 2015-16. A steady decline. Cullop's job is safe, but MOB needs to pressure her to replace assistants who can't recruit. Not sure he has it in him.

Last year's recruiting class of Wright, Davis and Copeland, shows none averaging even 4 minutes per game. The previous year's class of Tshitenge, Beacham, Rokkanen and Santucci has Santucci shooting 27% from the floor and Rokkanen at 29%. Beacham only plays five minutes per game. Tshitenge, a JC transfer, was injured last season and was reported to be ready for this year, but has played in only 3 games.

The 2015-16 class featured Kaayla McIntyre, but St. Fort is averaging 2 points per game and Printz left the team. Transfer Cunningham has show flashes of brilliance, but has been wildly inconsistent averaging six points per game and making only 37% of her shots.

That's three classes with only one player that you can count on to bring it every night and be productive. No wonder this team is so average.

Wow. Can't deny facts. Thanks for the beta.

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(03-01-2018 01:33 PM)DetroitRocket Wrote:  

(03-01-2018 09:06 AM)emanoh Wrote:  We complain about coach K, but it seems that coach C can never turn success into more success. She gets a lot out of what she has, but should be rolling in recruiting riches. Especially with that fan base. I never understand how a girl would want to play in front of 200 fans at a B10 or similarly sized school and not in front of 4k fans at Toledo.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

No more 4,000 averages. 3,499 this season, 3,744 last year and 4,050 in 2015-16. A steady decline. Cullop's job is safe, but MOB needs to pressure her to replace assistants who can't recruit. Not sure he has it in him.

Last year's recruiting class of Wright, Davis and Copeland, shows none averaging even 4 minutes per game. The previous year's class of Tshitenge, Beacham, Rokkanen and Santucci has Santucci shooting 27% from the floor and Rokkanen at 29%. Beacham only plays five minutes per game. Tshitenge, a JC transfer, was injured last season and was reported to be ready for this year, but has played in only 3 games.

The 2015-16 class featured Kaayla McIntyre, but St. Fort is averaging 2 points per game and Printz left the team. Transfer Cunningham has show flashes of brilliance, but has been wildly inconsistent averaging six points per game and making only 37% of her shots.

That's three classes with only one player that you can count on to bring it every night and be productive. No wonder this team is so average.

I would put a somewhat more positive spin on things.

1) McIntyre is much more than just a player you can count on to bring it every night. She is a phenomenal player, in my opinion.

2) Santucci is maddeningly inconsistent as a scorer, but she helps the team in a lot of ways. I'm very glad that she is part of the program.

3) It's too soon to give up on this year's true freshmen, even though they have contributed nothing yet.

4) Beacham clearly has the skills to be a top-notch MAC player. Presumably she will be able to fix those things that prevent her from seeing the court.

5) This year's recruiting class includes the transfer from UIC who had to sit out this year. She started as a true freshman, admittedly for an inferior program.

Cullop will have a job here with O’Brien as long as she wins around 20 games a year, keeps attendance between 2500-3500 and goes to a postseason tournament every couple of years. Her ability to connect with a community is amazing and one of the best I’ve seen from a coach. I think Cullop is going to have to get lucky and land a top tier local recruit who can basically take the program on her shoulders and get 2-3 NCAA tourney appearances with maybe a Sweet 16 spot in her career. Essentially this would probably be Cullop’s strongest chance to achieve monumental success here. If she doesn’t find a top tier recruit, I think we should get used to what we have now as basically a norm with the program under Cullop

(03-01-2018 05:07 PM)emanoh Wrote:  

(03-01-2018 01:33 PM)DetroitRocket Wrote:  

(03-01-2018 09:06 AM)emanoh Wrote:  We complain about coach K, but it seems that coach C can never turn success into more success. She gets a lot out of what she has, but should be rolling in recruiting riches. Especially with that fan base. I never understand how a girl would want to play in front of 200 fans at a B10 or similarly sized school and not in front of 4k fans at Toledo.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

No more 4,000 averages. 3,499 this season, 3,744 last year and 4,050 in 2015-16. A steady decline. Cullop's job is safe, but MOB needs to pressure her to replace assistants who can't recruit. Not sure he has it in him.

Last year's recruiting class of Wright, Davis and Copeland, shows none averaging even 4 minutes per game. The previous year's class of Tshitenge, Beacham, Rokkanen and Santucci has Santucci shooting 27% from the floor and Rokkanen at 29%. Beacham only plays five minutes per game. Tshitenge, a JC transfer, was injured last season and was reported to be ready for this year, but has played in only 3 games.

The 2015-16 class featured Kaayla McIntyre, but St. Fort is averaging 2 points per game and Printz left the team. Transfer Cunningham has show flashes of brilliance, but has been wildly inconsistent averaging six points per game and making only 37% of her shots.

That's three classes with only one player that you can count on to bring it every night and be productive. No wonder this team is so average.

Wow. Can't deny facts. Thanks for the beta.

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A quick caveat here. We played Louisiana-Lafayette in a hastily organized tournament game on short notice and drew 593 fans. Take away that outlier and attendance is 3,742, roughly equal to last year.

Tough to balance out TC's personal attributes (they are great in number for sure) with the many comments that have been made. I am in the camp that we have not been able to elevate the program to take advantage of all of the momentum we have recently had. This staff is not good at recruiting, period. This should be a top 30 program EVERY year. We should expect more. Issue is MOB and like was mentioned, will he push TC to get a staff that can recruit to this outstanding situation.

My thoughts ... Last year's team was 25-9. Biggest loses were to Creighton (NCAA) -26, Notre Dame -17, Central Michigan -11 and Kent State -10. And we were 5-2 against Buffalo, Central Michigan and Ball State. Buffalo loses Smith (17.2 pts/game), Ball State loses Bennett (17.5 pts/game) and Central Michigan loses Cotton (10.7 pts/game). We lose Monakana (12.1 pts/game).

This year we are 17-12. Biggest loses to Central Michigan -38, Louisville -35, Duquesne -19, Buffalo -18, and Ohio U -18. Only two of twelve loses by less than 9 points. And we are 1-4 against big three teams. So we clearly have regressed competitively against the top teams where we were holding our own last year. I don't see how anyone can claim that this is anything other than a disappointing performance.

Why did we not get better and maintain our competitive balance this year? We lost Monakana's 12 pts/game and 6 rebounds/game. But she also accumulated the 3rd largest number of turnovers on the team. So Mcintyre has gone from 10 to 16 pts/game which adds back half of Monakana's points. Boyd has played great but she was great last year. Her numbers are remarkably similar in 2016/17 and 2017/18. ditto Bravo-Harriott. No one else has stepped up to add consistent scoring, rebounding or playmaking. And given all of the big scoring nights from opponent's leading scorers I would suggest we didn't have typical rocket defensive excellence this year.

Last year was a great year for the lady rockets. Players and coaches received kudos all around for their achievements. They were well deserved. And coach Cullop has earned three coach of the year awards during her ten years at Toledo (I think). Again much deserving. But coaches should not be immune to taking responsibility when a team underperforms which I conclude occurred this year. I would conclude that there has apparently been recruiting deficiencies and I see a lack of player development. One clear case of the latter is Mariella Santucci. She burst on the scene last fall and had us all taking about her potential. Then she went into a shooting funk and had a recurring problem with careless turnovers. There was a short revival of scoring at the end of season and we were led to believe that a season long foot injury contributed to her poor shooting. Fast forward to 2017-18 and her shooting percentages are even lower than last year. FG% 311 (16/17) and FG% 260 (17/18). 3pt % 227 (16/17) and 188(17/18). And her assist to turnover ratio has declined from 1.42 to 1.30. Mariella is a player with enormous potential but her career is now half over and she plays much the way she did at the beginning of last year. It would appear that coaches agree with this assessment because she lost her starting spot for a while and will end the season with 200 fewer minutes played than last year. But my question is why is the staff not able to improve her shooting accuracy and have her play a more controlled game with fewer careless turnovers and stop driving into the teeth of the defense with no idea what she will do with the ball when she gets there?

My second criticism of the coaching relates to the new players on the team this year. There are 6000 minutes of playing time available for a 30 game season. This year Tsitenge played 4 minutes, Wright played 23 minutes, Copeland played 29 minutes and Davis was the workhorse with 45 minutes or 1/10th of 1 % of minutes. And Beacham, who I was promoting all year, got a whopping 145 minutes. So why were coaches not able to get one of these players to improve over the course of the season so that they could be an option by year end? Nearly every other team in the league has true freshmen making contributions. So either recruiting decisions are at fault or the coaching staff is having difficulty in nurturing evolving basketball skills. The point is we have thrown away five player years of eligibility in 2017/18. And a related question ... why did we recruit three 5-8 +/- guards in the same recruiting class?

Coach Cullop is a hard working coach with a positive attitude. At the beginning of the season she indicated that she was excited about the depth of experience and talent on this team. I watched all 29 games and I certainly have not seen it.

(03-01-2018 01:03 PM)bcunn3128 Wrote:  

(03-01-2018 12:28 PM)UofToledoFans Wrote:  

(03-01-2018 10:28 AM)emanoh Wrote:  

(03-01-2018 09:21 AM)H2Oville Rocket Wrote:  

(03-01-2018 09:06 AM)emanoh Wrote:  We complain about coach K, but it seems that coach C can never turn success into more success. She gets a lot out of what she has, but should be rolling in recruiting riches. Especially with that fan base. I never understand how a girl would want to play in front of 200 fans at a B10 or similarly sized school and not in front of 4k fans at Toledo.

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Still.... WNIT win, NCAA. And Coach K? Hope this is the year, but I’m skeptical.

The WNIT win is now getting long in the tooth. That should have been the catalyst to multiple MAC championships and reloading each year. In following the conversation this year, the team hasn't changed much from last year, but the new recruits this year aren't seeing the floor and it feels like coach c rebuilds every few years, vs reloading. I enjoy watching her teams, but something is off. The Women's program shouldn't be sub 500 in the conf.

Shouldn't be knocking off undefeated A-10 champs by 20 either then...

This is the best year in the HISTORY of the MAC. A possible 3 team conference... Our RPI is sub 80 and we are going to go 8-10 in conference. Let's take it for what it is. The conference is POWER level. Our "program" is fine.

I’m still TRYING to bite my tongue! But I will say this—the problem is WE should be one of those “3”...and we’re not.

Bingo.