Not according to what the rest of our basketball experts are saying. It has something to do with an expensive redo of a certain basketball arena. We’ve tried changing coaching and talent several times in the past few years without much success at improving performance.
Sorry, are you asking why our school might be more appealing those those in and around downtown Cincinnati, downtown Toledo, downtown Cleveland, and downtown Indianapolis?
Hmm, then maybe we should look at the people in charge of hiring and administrating the basketball program
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Yes. To you and me maybe. But to a kid from the inner city of one of these cities, Oxford just might not be the most ideal college hoops destination.
You should ask Dalonte Brown instead of just relying on hypotheticals in your mind…
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And to someone who isn’t from one of those shit holes, who doesn’t want to relocate to a shit hole, maybe Oxford would be appealing.
All I’m saying is “Not being located Cleveland or Toledo is holding Miami basketball back” isn’t exactly the best form of your argument.
There are always exceptions. And personal considerations. Ron Harper comes to mind. He could have played at a lot of other programs and probably preferred to do so. But someone in our athletic department became aware of a speech defect and stuttering problem Ron had and offered a specialist to help him overcome his problems.
And I still think we’re pie in the sky discounting the pull the NIL is going to have away from campuses like ours. There is money to be had out there. And it’s not in places like Oxford.
Could that derogatory attitude toward the urban areas where a good many hoopsters come from be a possible deterrent to recruitment of them.
And I’m telling you Miami’s own institutional apathy and ignorance is a far greater detriment to Miami basketball success than NIL.
See all of @Nickskin’s posts
I hate to say this, but feel I need to— your casual insinuation that all basketball players come from the inner city is really misguided and naive.
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Then we’re doomed. I will stop caring about how to improve Miami’s basketball program because it is a fool’s errand. Our own ICA department is apparently a bigger deterrent to success than difficult demographics, geographical challenges and the lack of NLI opportunities.
Yeah. In the words of John McClane, “welcome to the party, pal.”
I never insinuated that ALL basketball players come from urban areas but you cant win many basketball games unless you recognize urban areas as fertile recruiting grounds. There is far more talent in Indy and Detroit than in French Lick, Piqua , Centerville or Bellefountaine and any string of small towns and suburbs combined. Basketball is an urban game nationally. Only in the nostalgia of the movie Hoosiers is it anything else.
Nothing about the demographics or geographic location of Oxford has changed a lick in 100 years vis a vis big cities. Yet that never stopped Miami from building a very good basketball program until about 15 years ago. So it must be something else—-if only somebody here would have identified what that change could have been, in painstaking detail no less…
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Abilene Christian, Loyola-Chicago, North Texas and Oral Roberts all won games in the NCAA tournament last year. Oral Roberts was a pubic hair away from the Elite 8. Every year there are multiple teams like this.
Success in basketball is attainable for mid majors. The proof is there almost every March and very rarely are they programs with markedly better facilities, location, or even recruiting success. Almost always, however, they are teams programs with markedly better coaching.
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A nostalgic anomaly. As soon as we lost to UC we were back to apathy for the D3 opponents and unremarkable OOC games.
The most consistently successful mid-major is Gonzaga, located in a neighborhood within the city of Spokane with no competition anywhere nearby. They have no football program and no hockey program but do have two TV stations snd a daily paper that cover them. They recruit internationally and built a new basketball only arena a few years ago. We are not a Gonzaga.
Maybe there is a mid-major somewhere with challenges similar to ours that has has consistent success. It would be an academically well-respected but not necessarily elite state-supported institution on the far edge of an urban area with two high performing basketball programs and an hour from another urban area with another high-performing basketball program. All of those two urban areas’ media attention would have been focused on those other three programs for 20 years.
I’m not sure there is anything comparable to our situation and our challenge. If anyone knows one, bring it forward.
Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait……
Some1 actually suggested dropping men’s and women’s basketball…. For women’s hockey??!?!?!?!?
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahabahahahagahahahaha
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If the point is that Miami basketball will have a hard time reaching the success levels of the 1950,s and 1960’s because of population changes then I probably agree
But I dont think Miami basketball is hopeless. We actually got pretty close to turning the corner right in that first year when Owens was hired.
The MAC as a whole is a tad worse than the solid period of the 90’s to early 2000’s- but it is still a good mid major league as Buffalo and Ohio have proven recently
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WHERE ARE THEY NOW DEPARTMENT