What if Sanchez is figuring this out?

Also now that I mentioned Khalifa - man that stretch in the second when they went to him I think 3 straight trips down the floor was perfect. Spotted a weakness and went at them until ODU had to take the guy out. Thats the kind of ocaching we need more of.

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Heā€™s a high basketball IQ guy, spend some more time in he weight room and he can be a force.

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Maybe implying his team had no heart is paying dividends

Iā€™ll tell ya this - after reading through the Bobby thread and what not I think what this team misses the most from him and maybe not just the basketball program but all our programs miss is the F the world mentality we used to have. There was a time when we played every sport, every game, every minute with an attitude and a swagger. Thatā€™s been replaced with a happy to be here, blessed to have this opportunity mentality and it just doesnā€™t fā€™n work. This team with that bad attitude wins more. From the Coaches down - we need to stop being so nice. Be the assholes. Be the badguys. We werenā€™t beating the tops of CUSA before by being nice. We did it by playing with that edge. Ron breaking that wipeboard last night and cussing at the team is what we need more of and he has it in him. We need the team to take that persona on - we turned it around last night after that. Not to play out of control, but let those emotions in some and be angry and just take the game. Not because of some learning or pillars or crap but because we want it.

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Sanchez teams need a Cooper Robb or Austin Butler on the floor!!

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Malik Martin too. All three are gritty and have a bit of that swagger about them.

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Wow have our standards dropped.

A win at home basically at the buzzer against a dreadful team is not figuring out sh!t.

This is what Iā€™m afraid of. Enough wins against dreadful teams is fluffing our record to the point Mike canā€™t fire a coach that has no idea what heā€™s doing.

A coach with this much talent against a team this bad (200+) should never have to scramble back from giving up a 16-0 run. A 16-0 runā€¦ At homeā€¦ To a glorified intramural teamā€¦ And the thread is titled has Ron figured it out.

Jesus.

All he has figured out is we really have lowered the bar and heā€™s going to take advantage of it. Barely beating horrid teams is all he has to do to keep us in that sweet 150-200 range so he can keep his job and bury us in his mediocrity for another 3-4 years while he collects a paycheck.

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Yep. If this is the new Niner basketball Iā€™ll just go ahead and delete my account on here and throw away all my gear. I have no interest in supporting mediocrity, much less celebrating it.

Weā€™ve been really bad for a long time, but I at least had hope that we were striving to get back to being a top 50 team. If the new acceptable place is being ranked 150 or 200, Iā€™m outtie on that.

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While I donā€™t disagree - we have been one of those god awful teams. To get this turned around we actually have to beat those other bad teams and because the league is so bad itā€™s unlikely to alter our rankings by much. ODU has owned us for the better part of 13 years so a win is a big deal. I do agree the standards have dropped some. When we hired Major he was taking over a NCAA/NIT level program - so yeah our expectations were different. We are now one of the worst programs in the nation over the last 10 years. Beating ODU twice in less than 5 days would be big. If we win saturday that is a huge step in the right direction.

I donā€™t know if he has it figured out, I am going to say no. Next 3 games are really big. ODU on the road and then WKU and Marshall at home. If Ron is starting to figure it our we win these. That puts us at 14-7, 7-2 in league and 10-1 at home. If Ron wants to make a statement and the team is turning the corner we will see it in these 3 games. Season could have gone off the rails after FAU game, it hasnā€™t. Letā€™s see how it plays out. I think we are as likely to win the next 5 as we are to lose the next 5.

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I get what you are driving at, but this is the problem with CUSA being SOOO bad this year. Winning three in a row in conference should be good. But itā€™s hard to say we are making a statement or showing weā€™ve turned a corner by winning three games against teams who are 10-9, 7-12, and 7-12.

Weā€™re going to end up winning just enough games for Sanchez to stick around and itā€™s going to be due to our schedule which is softer than a koosh ball.

Turning it around and being acceptable where you are at are two separate things. To turn it around you have to start somewhere. Hence the fact this team hasnā€™t given up and folded is a sign that they havenā€™t given up on the coaching staff. That is part of a turnaround.

The problem with the thinking of we are not top 100 and only beat a bad team, is that you refuse to see that a couple years ago we were losing to those bad teams all the time. Has Ron turned it around who knows, but I suspect even if the team reaches 20 wins some of you will find reason to complain. Simple because you have drawn a line in the sand that improvement is a return to 2005 and anything less is not acceptable.

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The title of the thread is not ā€œhas Ron figured it outā€. It is ā€œWhat if Sanchez is figuring this out?ā€

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None of the people posting in this thread are okay with mediocrity. The question posed was if any progress was being shown.

The answers varied but reinforced the point that no one thinks we are in an acceptable place.

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You could lose all three of them, the thing is the schedule is the schedule, that canā€™t be changed. What can be is not losing games to teams you should beat, and winning more than losing against your equals, and then hopefully pulling an upset or two.

The fact that a thread like this was started after beating a really terrible team shows where our expectations have been realigned to. The fact of the matter is that we are a high 100s / low 200s level team. Iā€™ve seen NOTHING to indicate that Sanchez can or will do better than that.

We are buying into a record that is not reflective of how bad we really are, because we keep playing teams that are even worse.

And yeah, I know we canā€™t change the schedule. But what we could do is win games against Toledo, Davidson, Drexel, and the like. But we didnā€™t.

That is your issue though, you canā€™t see any improvement because you want all the improvement at once and sure it would have been .500 against the tier one and tier two teams on the schedule, but after the past five years I will take only having tier three and four loss.

Whether you think we have minimized our expectations is up to you. I would argue its more of seeing that to get back to a certain level you have to start somewhere. Its also a recognition that the program was in a terrible place and you donā€™t just get out of that overnight.

All at once? All at once? Are you serious? Itā€™s Sanchezā€™s fourth year. YEAR FOUR. Our Kenpom rating is over 200 IN HIS FOURTH YEAR.

How you seem to deduce that I want ā€œall the improvement at onceā€ defies logic. I wouldnā€™t be giving him a hard time if weā€™d been steadily climbing. If we were sitting at 98 in the rankings after slow growth, I would feel quite differently. That is not AT ALL what has happened though.

The SOS has been soft since we have been in CUSA. Majorā€™s lone 20 win season and NIT is likely only because he got to play the CUSA schedule. I would say the schedule is soft but not totally out of line with recent CUSA schedules. A 20 win season isnā€™t anything to be crazy about with a 182 SOS, but it is something we havenā€™t seen since 2013. Ron doesnā€™t lose much at home. If trend holds we win at home and go .500 on the road thats a 20 win season.

I think we are all so tired of sucking and losing that we want to just get to the winning. I do too. If we take last year our of the equation (I have heard of some of the stuff the team went thru and it was bad) and we finish the way we could, that is improvement. If we fall apart then given the talent and the schedule that is clearly on Ron. I think the biggest concern for me is if Ron stays can he work the portal again well enough to replace guys we are losing. Brice returning should more than offset Trapp, but we need the Butler/Cooper/Malik guy.

Need to see us finish strong - which isnā€™t something we have done except in 2020. Major padded his record with cupcakes early then sucked in conf.

Also consider that since 2010 when we finished 9-7 in conference we havenā€™t had a winning conf record since until 2020 when we went 10-8. Improving on that mark would be a big step as well.

2022 Ron 182 (projected) Currently stands at 155
2021 Ron 236 9-16 (empty arenas) *Abbey Loss
2020 Ron 184 16-13 (COVID Shutdown)
2019 Ron 250 8-21
2018 Price 153 6-23
2017 Price 164 13-17
2016 Price 235 14-19
2015 Major 119 14-18
2014 Major 162 17-14
2013 Major 100 21-12 (NIT)
2012 Major 67 13-17
2011 Major 93 10-20
2010 Lutz 76 19-12
2009 Lutz 80 11-20
2008 Lutz 75 20-14

Ron didnā€™t lose last night against a bad team. It wasnā€™t pretty but it wasnā€™t a loss.

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Duke beat Clemson this week and it was not pretty, but they get credit in the win column.

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