The lack of someone who can score in iso is massive. The other piece: their PGs shot over 71% from the floor. The rest of their team shot 37%.
@mz343 mentioned we didn’t help hard enough, but at a certain point Lairy needs to clamp the guy across from him. When teams are putting backups in iso against you, it’s an issue.
If Ipsaro is any kind of upgrade defensively and one of the commits can score (I think Cooper is who is expected to fill that), we’ll take a massive step forward.
In 9 seasons at Xavier, in Chris Mack’s worst season he was 17-14 (9-7), and his team never won fewer than 21 games in the other 8 years. He inherited Sean Miller’s powerhouse and kept it rolling. Travis Steele was an assistant during Mack’s entire tenor before taking over head coaching duties following Mack’s departure to Louisville. In Steele’s 4 seasons at the helm, his teams never won more than 19 games, and made no NCAA tournament appearances. In his defense, there was the covid year, and his recruiting classes were generally very impressive, featuring many 4 star players. But he was never able to match the success of his predecessors in the W/L column.
What does this mean? Nothing really. Just facts. Steele is certainly a capable coach, from a coaching pedigree, and should be able to turn Miami around, hopefully sooner than later. But it has been in the back of my mind since he was hired.
It’s very telling that of the nine major sports coaching hires we’ve made since 2010 (Treadwell, Martin, Coop, Owens, Steele, Wright, Duffy, Hendrix, Bergeron) only one has had a winning record. All except Treadwell and Hendrix stepped into crappy situations, but the past decade of MAC sports has shown plenty of new coaches like Duffy who came to meh programs yet found ways to win pretty quickly. Even Owens had a decent first season.
It’s telling that Steele took over Xavier, a consistent 20+ win and tourney team this century, and never finished with 20 wins or a tourney appearance at XU. Then Sean Miller comes back and immediately has them in the Top 25 again. Steele deserves a chance, but I wasn’t crazy about the hire and he hasn’t done much to inspire confidence so far. Also if his wife’s family is planning to help upgrade their son-in-law’s program facilities they haven’t shown much thus far to my knowledge…
One thing that has been on my mind is that it seems like no school in the country handled covid worse than us. We basically punted an entire football season coming off a MAC title while our nearby rival played a full season. And i have heard hockey really struggled with recruiting that year. It seems like all the sports really did.
The frustrating thing for me is another good student turnout for a Miami game squandered, regardless of the sport. I get tired of trying to promote attendance when the teams don’t hold up their end. The game couldn’t have started better and the crowd noise made it seem like days gone by.
While I look forward to the arrival of the fab five, I’m beginning to have concerns about whether we’ll be more physical. With Lairy gone, I think we’ll have a noticeably different offense, and not in a bad way,
The idea that coach Steele isn’t going to be good because of whatever his record was at X is not great logic. Jim Larranga was a .500 MAC head coach. Then he went to the final 4 after he left. Coaches improve. Steele will. He’s good but lacks ponies this year. He will be a good hire once he’s got a team with all the pieces.
Jim Larranaga won 59% of his MAC games, including sharing a MAC regular season championship in his final year before going to George Mason. He was at BG for 11 years, so he did get time. But he had 7 winning seasons and finished above .500 in the MAC 8 seasons.
There were 2 glaring concerns with Steele coming in. First, his teams underperformed expectations. By Kenpom preseason rankings, his teams finished with a lower ranking than their preseason ranking, every year. They rarely beat teams in the Big East that were consistently in the upper tier. The other was lack of player development, at least statistically. When looking at guys that played multiple years for him, there wasn’t that upward trend you’d like to see.
Now, the patience comes in where he may be a better fit as a MAC Coach than a power conference coach. I think John Groce is an example of that. He did well at OU, was ok at Illinois, but is a better fit back in the MAC at Akron. Also, maybe he learned some things from being a head coach for the first time.
And, since we’ve had obvious roster gaps for at least 10 years going back to the very end of Charlie’s tenure, he has a total rebuild, so you have to let even next year’s recruiting class become upperclassmen before making any definitive judgements.
Zero percent of anyone on planet Earth (and I am including Jim in this) ever saw him getting to a final 4 when he was at BG. Thus, no one really knows what the future holds for any Coach based solely on past performance. Steele and crew recruit hard, care greatly about playing the right way and building a great program long term. This thing will get correct.
So it falls on the posters of MHT instead of our AD that our hockey program has 16 total wins in our head coach’s 4th season and hasn’t advanced at all?
If we have that much influence, why the hell is Pedon in Normal instead of Oxford?
I’m saying that when we get a guy who checks every single box you could ask for and is unanimously agreed to be a slam dunk hire and then he faceplants this hard, maybe the problems run deeper than the coach or the AD.
Williams needs to be on court more need his athleticism
Steele’s post game presser is worth watching. He gets it.
Here’s how I know he is going in the right direction: anyone on this board who has worked at companies trying to restructure or rebuild has been through this. There are some dudes on this board who have gone very far in business and are nodding in agreement I’m sure, or have just worked long enough to see the difference between puffery and true organizational change. Having been on the successful and not successful sides of these things, you start to see a pattern to avoid and a pattern to embrace. One is bluster and jargon filled. The other has concrete, actionable insights tied to tangible results. Steele and staff are going to be ok. They get it.
I wasted an hour this morning, first trying the internet, then going through old yearbooks and programs. I 100 % thought that you were the one who misremembered, but I wanted to find the proof. I found it in a 2002 MAC tournament program. Here are the actual facts. The MAC tournament was held in Toledo’s Savage Hall in 1985, in Rockford Illinois in 1986. I have attended every MAC tournament and I was in attendance at both of those. On March 8, 1985, Ron Harper scored a MAC tournament record 45 points in the MAC semifinals against Ball State. I did not research whether or not it is still the record, but I think it is still the record at both Savage arena and in the MAC tourney. The next night we lost to Ohio in the championship game. Harper was named the tournament MVP, Polumbizio was on the all tournament team. I also remember reading in the Toledo paper the next morning about Polumbizio’s remarks to Harper.
The next year, 1986, the tourney was in Rockford. Ball State beat us in the championship game and Polumbizio was the tourney MVP. Both Harper and Newsome made the all tournament team. That was not the night that Poumboizio mouthed off and Harper dominated him.
I am not questioning your report of Harper scoring 41 at Toledo on a different date. I will say that Coach Hedric retired after the NCAA loss to SMU after Harper’s sophomore season. He is even older that we are, maybe he misremembered, if he game you the right story but the wrong game. Mighty MU, I have made a couple of mistakes in the past, this was not one of them. As we all get older, we all misremember something once in awhile.
Appreciate your passion for Miami.
Oh, Skin 66, I actually do remember your 5 for 5 free throw performance. We were cheering for you, lol. Of course, I had no idea who you were at that time.
Exactly right. He has what this team has too little of. He needs more minutes. He’s pressing now knowing he’s not going to be out there long.
I disagree a bit on Williams. While he has ability to catch and shoot, and is athletic, he doesn’t do much at all to impact the game if his shot isn’t falling. His athleticism doesn’t translate into much at the moment.
In 270 minutes on the court he has 41 rebounds, 7 assists, 5 steals and 1 block. I wish Miami would publish deflections, would love to see how he ranks there. But all this tells me he doesn’t have a very big impact on the game. If he’s not hitting a couple threes there’s no need to play him heavy minutes.
For context, Bryson Tatum in 215 minutes on the court has 37 rebounds, 12 assists, 9 steals and 3 blocks. Eli Yofan, in 155 minutes, has 25 rebounds, 15 assists, 5 steals, and 1 block. I want guys who get their hands on the basketball and create winning type of plays.
Eli Yofan has fallen so deeply in the depth chart, I fear he won’t return next season, and I wouldn’t blame him.
Williams stats are all compiled mostly against MAC competition, Yofan and Tatum’s mostly against those 5 weaker teams we beat in NOV-DEC. I think if you just put him out there and let him play 30+ minutes every night, he would be productive. He just looks uncomfortable out there now. He could be a really good rebounder too. I think Tatum is being used exactly as he should be. He is the best option to give a few minutes off for Lairy, and is actually a better defender than Mekhi.
Yofan got to play early in the year because of injuries to Safford, Williams, and Lewis. He is a recruited walkon, not on scholarship. I am sure he would be welcomed back in that role, but if he wants badly to get to play more I am sure the staff would help him find a school where he could do that. We have more scholarship guards coming in next season who are almost surely going to move ahead of him in the rotation.