Stans stays in the SEC

[Johnson85]

Now On Rick Ray-I have seen nothing to make me feel like He can be a HC. He was left a shitty deal and He has proceeded to **** it up worse. He can't even figure out how to attack a 1-3-1. He can't recruit.

So what is it bout Him (other than He is not Stansbury) that people Like? I'm over the Stans deal, water under the bridge, It is now Ray time. He needs to step Up and be worth a **** or don't let the doorknob hit Him in the ASS.

I want MSU basketball to be a factor not a joke.

Why would you not support the coach you have when you know he's going to get several years to turn around the dumpster fire? All we know so far is that he hasn't been perfect and has not done anything special in recruiting. That's concerning, but Mullen 17ed up his third year by not recruiting any decent OL and leaving us exposed. That wasn't an indication that he can't coach, it was an indication he 17ed up. The difference is that he wasn't left quite the dumpster fire that Ray was. He did have some raw materials, even if the team was completely bare in a few positions and overall poorly coached up to that point, so it was just a setback rather than a season killer. Ray needed to come in and shock people with recruiting to make a difference this early and he didn't do it, and with the shape the program was in, it was a season killer. We'll see after this year whether he has put together a team that is at least competitive. If he can't compete for an NIT bid with his recruits so far, then we'll know a lot more about him.

[Johnson85]

Underrated post... the C34 and 7 dwarfs narrative for years is that we needed to get rid of him because we couldn't get to the Sweet 16, because we wanted to take a chance on increasing our ceiling.

Now that everyone's realized that it's a real possibility that we've lowered our ceiling, while also making our floor much lower in the process, they're changing the Stans narrative to "he needed to go because of his lack of discipline."

It's funny to hear c34 say now that "Stans didn't get fired b/c of his lack of success," when that was all he harped on for years. I think one of the reasons all of the Stans haters are being even more vocal now against him is because they realize it's a possibility that we might not ever be a consistent NCAA tourney type program and they're scrambling to defend that they were still right.

They were still right. Everybody with a brain knew chances were slim that we would get somebody to match Stansbury's peak and at best even to match his post peak teams prior to the dumpster fire, but we didn't have the option of getting Stansbury at his peak and it was highly questionable whether he could even put out the dumpster fire. We had a bunch of average and better than average players made below average by character problems, and the ability to discipline them was compromised. We were in a shitty position and complicated it by hiring a new coach without any apparent recruiting ties in the SEC, although maybe the situation was viewed as toxic by the better candidates at that point.

I'm a Stansbury fan and am glad he's getting another good job and think that he could be a pretty good coach again in the right situation, but I don't think there's anyway he could have turned it around at State. He couldn't have gotten his current players to change and he probably couldn't have jettisoned them either without repercussions.

[Johnson85]

Never got the strength program bitch. under Stans we were usually a great rebounding team who played good defense. Now we have this great strength program under Ray and get maybe ten rebounds a games and get pushed around like a bunch of pussies.

Used to be great rebounding teams with good defense. Unfortunately we got away from that identity.

[tcdog70]

Used to be great rebounding teams with good defense. Unfortunately we got away from that identity.

we still out rebounded teams, but Sidney played no defense. So yes our defense was Bad with RS. But , all the more reason to have given RS another Year to get back to basic. Even sorry ass stand in one spot RS out rebounded most on our current team.

[tcdog70]

Why would you not support the coach you have when you know he's going to get several years to turn around the dumpster fire? All we know so far is that he hasn't been perfect and has not done anything special in recruiting. That's concerning, but Mullen 17ed up his third year by not recruiting any decent OL and leaving us exposed. That wasn't an indication that he can't coach, it was an indication he 17ed up. The difference is that he wasn't left quite the dumpster fire that Ray was. He did have some raw materials, even if the team was completely bare in a few positions and overall poorly coached up to that point, so it was just a setback rather than a season killer. Ray needed to come in and shock people with recruiting to make a difference this early and he didn't do it, and with the shape the program was in, it was a season killer. We'll see after this year whether he has put together a team that is at least competitive. If he can't compete for an NIT bid with his recruits so far, then we'll know a lot more about him.

I see where you are coming from but you still didn't answer my question? what is it you like about Rick Ray. What does His teams do that make you go WOW. I know they hustle, at least sometimes.

[fishwater99]

I see where you are coming from but you still didn't answer my question? what is it you like about Rick Ray. What does His teams do that make you go WOW. I know they hustle, at least sometimes.

They play hard and have discipline. That's all I have seen from Ray, and it's just not enough to win games.

[drunkernhelldawg]

I won't argue with what you've said there, but I'd say that there are varying degrees and extents of motivation. Also, there's a difference between willingness to be motivated and self-motivation. Ravern Johnson was obviously motivated enough in high school to work and translate his talent into 40% 3-point shooting in college. Similarly, Renardo Sidney was motivated enough in his earlier years to develop a wide enough range of skills and ability to warrant being ranked as the #1 recruit in the country at one point. That motivation apparently ended when they got to college, as Ravern didn't get any bigger or stronger despite having the frame to do so and access to college training facilities, or work on an inside game that would have made him a lottery pick; and Sidney... no need to go there. Jarvis and Dee, on the other hand, continued to improve, expanded their games, and put themselves in a position to play at the next level. Why did the former two stagnate and the latter two flourish in the same program? Like I said in my last post, there's no way of knowing for sure, but it would appear to me that Jarvis and Dee had the self-motivation characteristic, while Ravern and Sidney required an external motivator and didn't have one. Sidney even said so much in an interview with the CL; something to the effect of he wished he'd had someone to push him and keep him in line after leaving high school. Maybe Stansbury was/is a great developer of players who are willing to put in the work without being pushed, but he doesn't know how to provide that motivation for the ones who don't have it on their own.

It's a cliche, but attitude really is the most important factor. It's hard to succeed at a high level. Few are strong enough to give 100 percent all the time, but the great ones do it more often than not. Sidney did start to play with motivation toward the end of that last season, but he never got past the stage in which one bad play or bad call, or even hearing or reading the wrong thing, put his motivation in reverse. I have some sympathy for him as he did have to deal with more negativity that just about any Bulldog I can think of in our history.
That's one reason I refrain from criticizing Coach Ray and our current team; overcoming the negativity being thrown at them is so difficult that success is almost impossible. That's one place where Coach34 is right; we need to be cheering our team and appreciating the sacrifices that our student-athletes make. We've got enough micro managers already.

[tcdog70]

It's a cliche, but attitude really is the most important factor. It's hard to succeed at a high level. Few are strong enough to give 100 percent all the time, but the great ones do it more often than not. Sidney did start to play with motivation toward the end of that last season, but he never got past the stage in which one bad play or bad call, or even hearing or reading the wrong thing, put his motivation in reverse. I have some sympathy for him as he did have to deal with more negativity that just about any Bulldog I can think of in our history.
That's one reason I refrain from criticizing Coach Ray and our current team; overcoming the negativity being thrown at them is so difficult that success is almost impossible. That's one place where Coach34 is right; we need to be cheering our team and appreciating the sacrifices that our student-athletes make. We've got enough micro managers already.

I'll agree--we all need to cheerleaders like 34****

[tcdog70]

I won't argue with what you've said there, but I'd say that there are varying degrees and extents of motivation. Also, there's a difference between willingness to be motivated and self-motivation. Ravern Johnson was obviously motivated enough in high school to work and translate his talent into 40% 3-point shooting in college. Similarly, Renardo Sidney was motivated enough in his earlier years to develop a wide enough range of skills and ability to warrant being ranked as the #1 recruit in the country at one point. That motivation apparently ended when they got to college, as Ravern didn't get any bigger or stronger despite having the frame to do so and access to college training facilities, or work on an inside game that would have made him a lottery pick; and Sidney... no need to go there. Jarvis and Dee, on the other hand, continued to improve, expanded their games, and put themselves in a position to play at the next level. Why did the former two stagnate and the latter two flourish in the same program? Like I said in my last post, there's no way of knowing for sure, but it would appear to me that Jarvis and Dee had the self-motivation characteristic, while Ravern and Sidney required an external motivator and didn't have one. Sidney even said so much in an interview with the CL; something to the effect of he wished he'd had someone to push him and keep him in line after leaving high school. Maybe Stansbury was/is a great developer of players who are willing to put in the work without being pushed, but he doesn't know how to provide that motivation for the ones who don't have it on their own.

I thought RS had John Lucas as His motivator.

[Johnson85]

I see where you are coming from but you still didn't answer my question? what is it you like about Rick Ray. What does His teams do that make you go WOW. I know they hustle, at least sometimes.

He's our coach, our teams hustle, we've done some good things on defense that make me think he will be good with switching up defenses once he gets better personnel. The truth is I'm not particularly optimistic. I think he was basically put into an impossible situation with the roster he had and trying to recruit in a region he hasn't spent much time in, and without the full support of our juicy jumbo men. If he doesn't get Newman, I think he'll run out of time before he can build the talent up to where it needs to be. That said, it's hard to judge his coaching ability because he has been so far behind the 8 ball talentwise (I really hope the way we attacked UM's 1-3-1 in the SEC tourney was a result of exhaustion and a lack of outside shooters b/c otherwise we actually downgraded w/r/t Stansbury's biggest weakness, zone offense). Hopefully there won't be any surprises this year as far as upper classmen transferring/refusing to play and key players suffering injuries, and we'll be able to judge how his players execute.

But I get that there hasn't been a lot to wow anybody. I just don't get why people are dogging him now. We have him for another year regardless and whatever signs their have been positive or negative, we really won't have enough information to fairly judge him until we see him with this year's team. So might as well be supportive until then.