Printable View
It's very easy for a team that's undertalented and understaffed to lose their drive during a long season. Not saying it will happen next year with the players Ray is bringing in, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Ware, Sword, and FTF be much more effective next year if they have a full team complementing them. A shooter to help open things up for Sword and a big man to help on defense with Ware and this really is a much different team.Quote:
Originally Posted by CadaverDawg
I believe that everyone knows how dire the current situation is and how last year's situation was. The issue is that no one goes to the games anymore. They will stop buying tickets. Hell, I could have gotten a ticket package with a Kentucky, Ole Miss and Texas A&M ticket with a piece of pizza, coke and a hand job for 30 bucks. I feel that Ray is in a no-win situation. Many of our fans are pissed because we fired Stansbury. The other casual fans won't come because we suck. The dire hards are not coming now because they do not have any faith in Ray and many have been cut off from their "influence". I do understand that 18-10 or so will be marked improvement, but I don't see us averaging 7,500 per game because of that tectonic plate movement growth. I don't see how we will make money in hoops if this continues. People WILL stop buying tickets. They will invest their money into football and baseball because they see they are recruiting their tails off, winning and they are upgrading the facilities. I've even heard whispers that the administration is ok with us sucking in hoops because more focus and money can be put into the baseball upgrades. That is concerning if they are thinking that.
Again -- the same argument about attendance was made from Stans last year to Ray's first about attendance and how we were bleeding money. I've posted the numbers before for basketball between FY2012 and FY2013 -- and the reality is, we aren't losing much in terms of overall $$.
I remember the post that you made. I am just saying that people will stop buying tickets and supporting the program if they don't see any light at the end of the tunnel. I am very vocal and critical of Ray, but I do want him to succeed. I like the guy, but I think he's a lazy recruiter. I do not think that we can expect to be an NCAA team and compete for an SEC title (if that's what we want as a program) and not play the AAU game. If we are content signing kids with offers from Rust College and Lipscomb, then we will be fighting on Lunardi's first 4 our for the NIT year after year. We don't have Bill Self coaching us right now.
The SEC being such a hopelessly shitty conference is your only hope in either of these happening.Quote:
Originally Posted by thedawg
I like Ray, and I hope he can get it done, but I really don't get people's optimism about next year. Yes, we're adding more players, but how many of those guys can shoot the J? How many of those big men are good at defense? Adding quantity doesn't mean you're also adding quality. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't see us improving that much next year. Basketball is the type of game where you need talent above coaching an hustle. Consider how many games Stans won with how shitty of a coach he was......one word: Talent.
I think he is the exact opposite of a lazy recruiter. A lazy recruiter can take the easy way out and just buy a couple of local AAU recruits. Ray is having to search far and wide to find guys that don't have their hand out to play college basketball
I think if Ndoye and Daniels arnt corpses they had 3-5 wins by themselves simply because Ware has some help.. If Gavin gets in foul trouble this year game over we lose period... If those two guys are even average it will help... Im optimistic they will be better than corpses because Ray will have over a year to develop both of them and he has proven to me he can develop guys to a certain degree.. Yes obviously we need shooters.. My hope here lies in that the Freshman shooter can come in and provide a spark off the bench.. I also hope we sign that kid out of GA as he looks to be able to shoot if nothing else.. I am also optimistic for an improvement in IJ and Jacoby as both have shown potential shooting the ball at times.. I dont think FTF will ever be a "shooter" but I think he can be better than he is now... I would like to see him develop into being able to consistently knock down a mid range jumper...
So the ball is in Rays court... Develop Develop Develop... the only new players we are counting on to reach our goals are two freshman shooters and hopefully we will be counting on them minimally
Reports out of practice is that Ndoye is the second coming of Olajuwon. That should be an improvement for next year.
No one with good seats is going to stop buying tickets because they don't want to give up their seats when State is good again. If they were, they would have done it in year one when the first 2 years' results were all-but-set-in-stone. Most of the people that afford those seats have perspective and knew the uphill battle we were facing. They may not show up often -- but they are going to keep buying tickets.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jacksondevildog
This seems a little ridiculous. How many student tickets do we allow? I can't criticize because I don't go to basketball games, but if I lived within 30 minutes I think I could make half the home games. It seems like just Starkville, Columbus, and students could get decent crowds on Wednesdays and that adding in people that travel on Saturdays would get us to 7500 on averageQuote:
Originally Posted by Jacksondevildog
We've always struggled with pre-SEC crowds unless we had a big name team coming in. Mid week SEC crowds have always been around average unless we were playing Kentucky or Ole Miss.
Not having all scholarships filled for a BCS conference team after 2 years is beyond excusable. Some of you treat this situation like its a brand new program that just started playing competitive D1 basketball and a coach is having to settle for bottom of the barrel players. That's inexcusable at a SEC program. Period. La Tech and other mid major piece of shit programs are pulling better players than us. That's inexcusable. All the ray defenders act like his training wheels approach to coaching is acceptable at a major program. **** that. This is pathetic. I used to love MSU basketball, but after the digression I've seen this year I cannot stand to watch a second of that shit.
And yes Ray is coaching like he ha training wheels on. Still don't understand how Strick let him past the initial interview. I think we should all focus on our incompetent AD. He made this hire. It's not RR's fault he is in over his head. It's Stricks fault for not making the right hire.
He would have all of his scholarships filled if Steele and Wendell werent assholes, the NCAA werent assholes, and Daniels would have qualified on time... the only one of those that he has any control over was not better seeing Daniels not qualifying
I agree. If he lays an egg next year in year 3 then he should probably be gone. I give Ray the benefit of the doubt and support him. He just wasn't the guy i would have chosen, and hadn't done anything yet to really show me any different. I fully expect him to have a NIT caliber team next year and show some signs of life.Quote:
Originally Posted by engie
Olajuwan? Only one of the greatest centers of all time...
I was being sarcastic. Our fans always hear positive reports of practice and blow things out of proportion.Quote:
Originally Posted by BeardoMSU
Ok, good, lol. You forgot your sarcasterics. I was gonna respond again with "Bold strategy, Cotton", but you beat me.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jacksondevildog
Speaking of 7' Africans that can ball, I wish John Riek was on this team. I'd be really interested to see what Ray could do with him. Stans hated playing zone, but still tried to put a 7'2" dude with bad knees and slow feet out there guarding pick'n'rolls...wtf? I think Riek would have done well as a rim protector in Ray's 1-3-1, but who knows.
Agreed with this 100%.Quote:
Originally Posted by quickstrike2
In a perfect world, we get rid of Stans in 2011. We have Gardner, Smith, Hood incoming -- to go along with Bryant, Steele, Bost, Moultrie coming back. We offer a new coach a job walking into a Sweet 16ish roster situation and a fanbase that's hungry to take the next step, where he could have severed ties with Sidney on day 1 if he couldn't get him to buy in. Our job is triple as attractive if we handle it that way and then maybe we actually get a Greg Marshall type of successful midmajor coach.
My point is, however, that while Ray wasn't anyone's first choice -- and everyone agrees that the search process itself was botched -- it doesn't mean that he's the wrong guy or that the search arrived at the wrong conclusion. Next year will begin to really tell that story conclusively.
Why would Marshall leave for a tougher job? He makes close to 2 million and is in a weak conference. He's solidifying himself and his program as a top 5 mid major program throughout the country. I wouldn't leave if I were him unless a Duke/North Carolina/UCLA type program becomes open.
Bottom line is with the Ray players we have seen so far are Trivante Bloodman, Colin Borchert, Jacoby Davis, IJ Ready, and Andre Applewhite. None of those are game/program changers. I hear Travis Daniels is practicing well, but we need players to be difference makers. We are signing a bunch of Sunbelt players and expecting them to perform in the SEC. I don't see how he can get the job done. I wish Ray could pull it off but when we are "searching the country" and find a guy in Georgia that has offers from UNC-Wilmington and New Hampshire you are digging your own grave. Ray won't succeed and keeping him around is only delaying the inevitable. Hope Stricklin won't screw up the next hire. Maybe he should look at the fact we hired an assistant coach from a 16-15 team. I blame Stricklin for all this mess. He's the one to blame, and he put Ray in a situation where he couldn't win.
Not that common sense will be found anywhere near anything you post on this topic -- because it obviously won't. It was 2011 I'm talking about. And I didn't say Marshall specifically -- but a similar name/reputation coach. Marshall was making $900k at that point in time and had no guarantees of getting that program to the level he currently is at. We would have paid him $2mil+. So, obviously, the timeframe I'm talking about was WELL BEFORE his Final 4 run and big pay day. They were a NCAA team for the first time in his 5th year and bowed out in the first round.Quote:
Originally Posted by RICKRAYMADE
When Stansbury resigned we were paying him $1.4 MM so unless we're hiring a proven winner like Bruce Pearl I don't expect SS to be paying any bball coach a higher salary at first than our winningest coach of all-time. We are so cheap until we are forced to not be. With everything.Quote:
Originally Posted by engie
http://lornasvoice.files.wordpress.c...apping-gif.gifQuote:
Originally Posted by RougeDawg
I also blame Ray for trying to pull a fast one over an SEC school by skipping the necessary steps it takes to be a HC at an SEC bball program. Like being a HC first. That's a new level of arrogance to think you can skip over HC training and become a HC of MSU the 4th winningest basketball program in the SEC over the last 15 years. What is this 2004 all over again? "Poor Ol Miss State gonna need 10 years to try and compete in the SEC". **** that shit!! That's EXACTLY what got Croom fired.
Have you ever talked basketball with RR??Quote:
Originally Posted by RougeDawg
Have you ever been to one of his practices.??
And yes its bad with 10 straight loses. But everyone feels like we are getting beat by 20-25 points a game.. No one in this conference besides UK and Fla can win on the road.. Hell Bama hasn't won a road game all year period. there have been a few games where we never had a shot and played very poorly. One of those was at home to UGA. Who is all alone in 3rd place. We were in the games at home with UK and Fla. I bet our margin of defeats in all our loses are very close to everyone else in the league except the 2 big boys.
But for any of our fans to say this is worse basketball or crap they have ever seen is stupid. No its not great or sometimes even that good. But with the hand that he has and lack of players he has its still a mystery to me sometimes how we are even in games at time.
Judge OUR coach next year. If he lays an egg then pile on. Everyone else probably will too.
But just because you think RR probably wasn't a good interview or doesn't speak the way you think he should or doesn't sound like you want him to sound at a presser is the reason we shouldn't have hired him then you are 100% wrong...