Response and opinions appreciated @YellowNumber5 . I won’t provide details, but I am not a silent complainer who has not had “skin in the game” so to speak from a support standpoint. I’ll leave it at that.
As for the business comparison, sure, I get it. My l lack of tolerance/rope to extend here certainly goes back further than our current coach’s efforts. It is the sum total over the past 25 years. Far too little success.
You’re not wrong to feel that way. We were in a desert totally lost for 8 years. But this regime is different. The improvement across the board is obvious. But… the leap we are making (or trying to make) from going from a low 300’s team to one in the top 150 is huge. Football was in the same abyss when Chuck took over and the amount of vitriol he took about being content with mediocrity on this board was equal parts comical and stupidly sad. Now, he’s got two MAC champs, a better facility, better players and for the first time since Coach Hoeppner was here, we have a solid and stable program. Basketball will absolutely get there.
Ps, no one has asked for my opinion on a Millett rebuild, but up to me, I’d build the new court as a giant riverboat. It would have seating with slot machines surrounding the court and a portion of funds from gambling support our NIL. We would move up and down the river and build our fan base everywhere we went.
Would love to see all the energy you brought to the student section since you’re the expert on fun now
Energy? Like cheering for the team? Maybe not dangling a noodle out in front of the world in some strange phallic gesture on multiple occasions? I had my two kids looking at me like “wow - impressive college students at your school, dad.” Maybe my version of fun is combining having fun with showing some class.
Watching the same group giving the middle finger to OU’s bench while they enjoyed kicking our ass was equally sad.
There was one person who did that with the pool noodle, it wasn’t the entire section. You’re just searching for things to be upset about at this point. Let’s just ignore the fact we started a cheer damn near every possession. What did you do?
My riverboat idea is a game changer. Yet crickets…?
Just make sure the slot machines have holders for oxygen tanks so the season ticket holders on the west side don’t have to hold them while the one arm bandit takes their Pennie’s for NIL money
It’s a fair and prudent watch out.
I think Jeff says what a lot of us are thinking…
Are you speaking about the basketball staff or the Athletic Department with this comment?
Our basketball program is not is the same universe as Duke’s so we shouldn’t be trying to be Cameron Crazies wannabes. I also hope our student fans aren’t infatuated with Stanford’s band and student fan contingent, either. The Stanford band is classless. Their mascot is a joke. Everybody hates them. No need for Miami to try to win a student fan base “edginess” contest or to crudely disparage every opponent.
I appreciate the work the guys on this page are doing to breath some life into student body support for athletics.
I like the Stanford band. And I also think OU should be crudely disparaged.
@Jeff if you’d like, I can tell you many, many, many things that you probably wouldn’t like that I’ve heard through the years growing up from the Indian Hill student section at various events.
I’m sure you can. I have seen things I don’t like there as well. Same when we’re in the stands at other high schools. If this was IHBravesTalk I’d be game. That said, what I saw last night was not inspiring.
@Phil04 this is probably a good question. Certainly the athletic dept provides the foundation for success (or lack thereof). Perhaps I want a miracle worker, which is actually not a fair ask for Coach Steele. That said, I can take the Toledo game or the Ohio game in isolation. With two games at home at the culmination of a regular season where we have purportedly “grown” or shown some development, I saw very little if no evidence this week.
Prove me wrong. Go up to Cleveland, beat Akron and compete to the end in the second game (if not win) and I’m down for another season….
I think by making 2 games representative of 2 years you’re missing the forest from the trees. There’s been a lot of foundation building for MBB that I think will bear fruit. I guess I’ll leave it there.
The problems run deep in and around Millett. The basketball coach we have is the least of our worries in my opinion.
I suggested to my Miami alum daughter (graduated 2002) that she might want to take her family (4 kids) to the OU game because of the Firecrackers. I told her I had heard there might be some special promotion.
She could not find any evidence of it on the Miami athletics page. How do you run a promotion like that and it is not front and center on the Basketball page?
She called the Athletic ticket office and whoever she talked to knew nothing about it.
Thanks to a post on HawkTalk I found the link and told her the deal included coupons for Rapid Fired Pizzas.
She called the Ticket Office about that and the person knew nothing about it. Finally, another person in the office overheard the conversation and said the coupons could be picked up in the West Concourse of Millett.
There is nothing evident when we walk in and I finally see a folding table with a white board with “Rapid Fire Pizzas” scribbled on the board with orange marker that clearly was almost out of ink. It was almost invisible.
My daughter goes to claim her coupons and is told they did not have her name despite buying six tickets and using the proper promotion code when she purchased the tickets. They also said they ran out of coupons and would mail them to her. It did not look like they had more than a page of names on the list.
The marketing of our games and the ticket department leaves much to be desired.
I also don’t get the scan the image to get a prize on the scoreboard during the middle of the game where hordes of people are leaving their seats to get what proved to be a deck of cards. Isn’t the objective of marketing to get them into the seats with the idea that they will sit and watch the game?
My daughter (who was there in the Wally years) also commented about the student section behind the basket. She said “is that it?”. I said it was not. Most of students are now in the stands on the media side. We sat right by the student section and my daughter did not even know they were there.
Credit to those students like @preaves_15 who are trying to get something going at the games but, as stated, it is going to take a lot to right this ship.
Here’s my take on the last 20 years:
At the end for Coach Cole’s, it was too much .500 which in retrospect was unfair given his scheduling. Coach Cooper came in and I wondered if it was a stretch. He had success at Tenn State (even bested a ranked Clemson) but the overall record wasn’t great. Aside from a few good players who came and went, I don’t remember anything from his time here. Coach Owens came in as a highly respected assistant from Purdue. Looked like a great hire on paper and for a hot minute when our five freshman almost won that early season tourney, we might have had our man. But sadly, he couldn’t get it going. So why do I believe now we are in the right path? For the first time since Charlie, I can tell you what I think our team is trying to do and although social media wasn’t around much when Charlie was, I think he’d have been a master of using it to build our brand. But again, this house is a gut job and it’s early still so don’t lose hope. I actually like watching us again and it was almost impossible to watch at times the last few years. We lost a game then to a D3 team! That was almost my last straw.
In defense of Mabry, he was obviously injured late in the season. He was shooting 42% from 3 for the year before going 1 for his last 11 (when coming back from injury.) I thought he improved defensively from last year as well.
Perhaps his body language wasn’t good because he was mad that his team was getting blown out at home for the second time in 4 days, and he knew he couldn’t do anything to help.
I know my body language sucked watching the game last night - and I’m just a middle aged man who wants us to be good again.
I’m not running for president of the Mabry fan-club, but possibly unfair to wish him into the portal for being mad while injured and we’re being blown out by our “rival.” Im cool w a guy getting minutes who shoots 42% from 3. And he’s seemed like a solid teammate from what I’ve seen.
Ehhh, I’ll throw in my two cents on the student section as well. I’m glad you guys are trying and I appreciate the passion. I’d recommend making that area less “extreme.” There’s not a huge amount of students who are willing to wear helmets, hold pool noodles, and do over the top things. Be loud and have fun. Maybe find a food sponsor? But make it an inviting experience for the “regular student fan.” Your passion will eventually influence them to get a little louder.