I am surprised that no one has mentioned that our schedule has also benefitted from us not facing 2 teams with a better NET than us because of an early exit to the Sun Belt. Both USM and Marshall would have given us difficulty and Old Dominion usually plays us tough. If we still had 14 teams, chances are we would be playing for 7th or 8th instead of the 5th that a lot of folks seem happy with
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If I felt like Hill would make a good hire, maybe I would be more open to letting Ron go. He is slowly making progress and would rather have that, than rolling the dice again.
Every hire Mike has made was a first time head coach at the collegiate level. Maybe I am wrong on one or 2 of his hires, but that seems to be the strategy. If he would go after a Pitino type hire, then I could get behind that.
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Scheduled both benefited and is hurt by it. Benefited in that we didnāt have to play them but hurt as the schedule and league would be rated higher.
Kenny Dennard and the Sauras were always feared!
Fucking Dennard was best friends with my next door neighbor. Over one weekend he broke my BB goal and burned down my tent smoking cigars. If I ever see him again ( doubtful) going to make him dip into that hedge fund / investment fund he runs out of Texas and San Francisco to make it right.
Dennard was recruited during the good ol days. His recruiting stories were a young mans fantasies come true.
Wow, I remember him playing HS ball, didnāt know him though.
Played all sports against Kenny in middle school. I guarded him in 8th grade B ball. He grew about a foot in one year. I couldnāt do much with him but I did score a few against him. I was better than him in baseball but man could he play basketball. I graduated a year ahead of him at South Stokes and everyone thought he was going to Wake after High School. He fooled everyone and went to Duke and was a very good player there.
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How about winning the 1 bid league, or scheduling strong OOC and winning those games?
Oh absolutely those are the preferences- just acknowledging how difficult that is too especially on a yearly basis. We havenāt been good enough. Period. But I put the bar on conference record/overall record vs ncaa just because we could have a great season and still not dance. Hopefully aac gives us a little more wiggle room.
The jury is still out for me. Fifth in CUSA is not very good, but itās not terrible, he has improved, and we still have two more games and the conference tournament. If he won out and made the conference tournament then Iād say keep him.
That being said, Iām still fairly skeptical. A good coach should be in the top 4 in conference more often than not, heās done it only once. His calling card is defense and we are very average on defense and just plain bad on offense. If the season would end today Iād want him gone.
I think thereās two sides of the scheduling argument and thereās no clear answer. Would you be any happier with a losing record and a stronger strength of schedule? I think not. At the same time, there isnāt a lot of value added in playing these geographically distant 300+ RPI teams. If we were a better program I would have stronger opinions on scheduling, but weāre not. My one conviction on this subject is that if we are going to play a bunch of terrible teams we should at least keep it geographically close. Play UNCA, Winthrop, Gardner Webb, UNCG, Wofford, etc. along with App and ECU every single year. If nothing else it canāt hurt with attendance and travel expenses.
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I def agree with scheduling local/regional teams.
I think the argument for a tougher is schedule is it forces a decision on the coach. More losses mean you dump him, which I am guessing is the POV of more than a few. I am in the middle - we need some tougher games, I think scheduling a few P5 away games is perfectly fine. I donāt need a H and H with them until we prove our worth. Then schedule some fairly easy winnable games.
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You spot on. Throw in WFU and a Maryland or SC and UT and you got it. Schedule local schools and a couple of big boys
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Do you care if they are H and Hs or just road games? I am assuming the staff is trying to get H and Hs which is why those games are tough to schedule. I think we just need to play them and get our street cred back. I know we had the Arkansas game like that a few years ago. Just need maybe 2 of those a year then H and Hs with regional schools.
A couple of random #s keep getting mentioned. 20 wins is completely arbitrary and not a true measure of how good a team is. There are plenty of sub-20 win teams that are better than 20+ win teams.
5th place in one conference is not the same as 5th place in another conference. 5th place in 2023 CUSA might put you at in 8th place of 2001 CUSA.
The problem with that argument is that 5th place in a tougher conference got Lutz fired.
Thank goodness the new football coach isnāt thinking that way.
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As far as OOC scheduling goes, probably need to look beyond the P6 and go with NET top 10 conferences. After all, MW is #6 this year ahead of Pac-12 and ACC.
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Types of games I would like to see us avoid
Detroit Mercy X2
Monmouth
Maryland Eastern Shore
Those feel to me like when we were scheduling Temple, Ga St, and EMU in football to try to make a bowl. In this instance though itās to try to get to 20 wins. I have less issues with local schools that arenāt very good.
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Bobby got fired because judy hated him.
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Thatās true but you have to go by the metrics you have and keep in mind what you just said is what the P5s say about keeping G5s out of ncaa