(01-12-2022 01:36 PM)delflash Wrote: With the rampant transfers of today, I think rosters are kind of a crap shoot. I miss the stable rosters of the old days. It seems it might have been easier for coaches to know their teams and what is needed for the next recruiting class. There certainly was more cohesion.
Not our (my) place to knock the coaches here, the landscape of college
sports has dramatically changed. Kent always groomed players over several years. We recruited potential and molded it into MAC quality teams. Those days are over. Too many kids enter the portal at the first
sign of stress.
But…. Much coaching brain power has left Kent and despite our best efforts, budgets and greener pastures have hurt the cause.
Just to name a few, I’ve missed a bunch. Armon Gates , DeAndre Haynes,
Eric Haut, Anthony Wilkins,Jordan Mincy All successful elsewhere , and many more. Sendy plays the hand he’s dealt but he’s missing some Aces .
That seems like a fair statement - once not too long ago I recall that men's hoops were to be our signature sport. We've come to accept 0.500-0.550 in conference as an acceptable record - it's a lot the Hawkins situation at WMU - their attempt to address that situation now looks like a bust. I, having suffered through some very lean years in the period from 1966 t0 1990 might accept middling success but the quality of play this year doesn't generate much excitement and I hate losing to TSDTR.
(01-12-2022 01:36 PM)delflash Wrote: With the rampant transfers of today, I think rosters are kind of a crap shoot. I miss the stable rosters of the old days. It seems it might have been easier for coaches to know their teams and what is needed for the next recruiting class. There certainly was more cohesion.
Not our (my) place to knock the coaches here, the landscape of college
sports has dramatically changed. Kent always groomed players over several years. We recruited potential and molded it into MAC quality teams. Those days are over. Too many kids enter the portal at the first
sign of stress.
But…. Much coaching brain power has left Kent and despite our best efforts, budgets and greener pastures have hurt the cause.
Just to name a few, I’ve missed a bunch. Armon Gates , DeAndre Haynes,
Eric Haut, Anthony Wilkins,Jordan Mincy All successful elsewhere , and many more. Sendy plays the hand he’s dealt but he’s missing some Aces .
That seems like a fair statement - once not too long ago I recall that men's hoops were to be our signature sport. We've come to accept 0.500-0.550 in conference as an acceptable record - it's a lot the Hawkins situation at WMU - their attempt to address that situation now looks like a bust. I, having suffered through some very lean years in the period from 1966 t0 1990 might accept middling success but the quality of play this year doesn't generate much excitement and I hate losing to TSDTR.
I wouldn't put the coaching staff solely on Sendy. Does he decide who is hired, yes. But he doesn't decide what we pay them. I think it's entirely possible that we have good assistants with bright futures, but much like the transfer portal, we'll get their growing pains so someone else, who will pay them, can get their best. I think we all saw the warning signs when we lost our top assistant who was a former player to Toledo... Twice.
(01-12-2022 08:36 PM)anti-zip Wrote: I wouldn't put the coaching staff solely on Sendy. Does he decide who is hired, yes. But he doesn't decide what we pay them. I think it's entirely possible that we have good assistants with bright futures, but much like the transfer portal, we'll get their growing pains so someone else, who will pay them, can get their best. I think we all saw the warning signs when we lost our top assistant who was a former player to Toledo... Twice.
Wow, the body language & tone of Coach Sendy's post-game interview projects his (and all of ours) frustration. I believe the spool of thread that he usually uses to turn the sow's ear of KSU teams into a KSU silk purse is stuck on a container ship in the Pacific.
Further observations:
a. Too bad KSU doesn't have a volleyball team. JH would be a great spiker & wouldn't have to deal with the contact in the paint.
b. AG reinforces the belief that the SEC is a better football conference than basketball conference. Remember, he's a Stony Brook transfer.
c. VCD is a reincarnation fo BJ Duling. Looks lost on the court. And is constantly looking over his shoulder at the bench to see if he is going to get yanked for doing something wrong.
d. Would have expected JH to be more of a presence. Instead he is still trying to find how he fits in the rotation. Not convinced that he is D1 caliber.
e. TB doesn't have the intensity & fire you would expect from a redshirt senior.
f. Playing SC for 40 minutes every game is not helping the team. Manage his minutes so that he is fresher at the end of the games.
(01-12-2022 11:10 PM)Albert Flasher Wrote: Wow, the body language & tone of Coach Sendy's post-game interview projects his (and all of ours) frustration. I believe the spool of thread that he usually uses to turn the sow's ear of KSU teams into a KSU silk purse is stuck on a container ship in the Pacific.
Further observations:
a. Too bad KSU doesn't have a volleyball team. JH would be a great spiker & wouldn't have to deal with the contact in the paint.
b. AG reinforces the belief that the SEC is a better football conference than basketball conference. Remember, he's a Stony Brook transfer.
c. VCD is a reincarnation fo BJ Duling. Looks lost on the court. And is constantly looking over his shoulder at the bench to see if he is going to get yanked for doing something wrong.
d. Would have expected JH to be more of a presence. Instead he is still trying to find how he fits in the rotation. Not convinced that he is D1 caliber.
e. TB doesn't have the intensity & fire you would expect from a redshirt senior.
f. Playing SC for 40 minutes every game is not helping the team. Manage his minutes so that he is fresher at the end of the games.
All great observations, agree totally
Sendy’s comments and body language at press conference exactly reflect the pain we all feel . He’s as frustrated as I’ve every seen him. Not playing together, not having fun. That’s where we are at.
Watching Fridays game with TSDTR won’t be fun I’m afraid.
(01-13-2022 08:24 AM)Muskrat Wrote: I've said for decades that there is nothing so infuriating as mediocrity.
I always get my hopes up when we recruit a player like BCD or VCD, but those feelings should be tempered by the knowledge that larger programs or even other MAC schools have seen something in their game ( maybe they feel they can't fix)that leads them to not pursue these young men as strongly as they might. I was glad we recruited the kid from Arkansas but never really expected that he would be a force in the MAC. I've said before I get worried when I hear about a team's athleticism (David Carducci sometimes gave us earnest preseason reports on various teams potential). There are many great high school athletes that don't pan out in college for various reasons - academics or lack of fit. i'm hoping we can get a healthy GS back and make a run to get to Cleveland - but just saw that CMU is ranked 342nd in D1 NET rankings.
(01-13-2022 08:24 AM)Muskrat Wrote: I've said for decades that there is nothing so infuriating as mediocrity.
I always get my hopes up when we recruit a player like BCD or VCD, but those feelings should be tempered by the knowledge that larger programs or even other MAC schools have seen something in their game ( maybe they feel they can't fix)that leads them to not pursue these young men as strongly as they might. I was glad we recruited the kid from Arkansas but never really expected that he would be a force in the MAC. I've said before I get worried when I hear about a team's athleticism (David Carducci sometimes gave us earnest preseason reports on various teams potential). There are many great high school athletes that don't pan out in college for various reasons - academics or lack of fit. i'm hoping we can get a healthy GS back and make a run to get to Cleveland - but just saw that CMU is ranked 342nd in D1 NET rankings.
Percentagewise, very few HS players who are great athletes and even great basketball players can cut it in D I. There are lots of things one looks at when scouting, red flags, things that probably aren't fixable. Over the years I've become very leery of Kent State recruits, basketball and football, that seem too good to be true. Still, scouting and recruiting remains a very inexact science.
