No 0509, mission not accomplished. I find it funny we are reaching by arguing about 8 or 9 wins, all being teams in the bottom 8 - none against the top 6 teams in the league, a league which isn't very good this year. Then add the horrible out of conference losses.

Rising, I have always said JC will have 5 years to show his worth - couldn't get it done in 3 and now he's got 2 left because GW can't afford to do anything else and because nobody but the 10 of us who post here give a shit!

I'll be the 1st to give him a big hug if he can do anything the next 2 years. I'm not betting on it since he's a coach with a career record under .500%.

What would GW have been this year with Battle and Lee? Battle just scored 39 against a Big 10 team. He’s Minnesota’s leading scorer. And many of our struggles this year are due to a lack of a good center (Dean would be a much better 4), which wouldn’t have been as big an issue with Lee. Is it JC’s fault that Battle wanted to go home, or that Lee got hurt?

JC is clearly still learning to coach at the A10 level, but I for one see significant improvement, both in terms of recruiting and results. What those of you who want him fired don’t get is that if he was, GW will just hire another young coach, because they are too cheap to hire an established coach. So we would be starting from scratch again with another young coach. I for one think we should give him a couple more years to build on this year’s clear improvement.

Long Suffering Fan wrote:

I need to see us start competing with teams in the top 125 before I am sold on the coach.   A triple overtime win vs. an admittedly game Duquesne, who is a 1 win team, has not sold me. Fact is, despite our "overachieving" this season, or at least during conference play, there are still 225 D-1 teams that are better than us, at least according to Mr. Pommeroy.   A win or two in the conference tournament may move the needle a bit, but I am personally not there yet.   

 There are not 225 teams better than us right now. Maybe based on the the entire season but not the way we are playing now. And that is what matters most.

Free Quebec wrote:

GWRising wrote:

Joel Joseph wrote:

Well said FQ and others.
Rising, we are quickly approaching the end of another poor season and the 6th year of the Knapp/Maltzman/Nero disaster. The long time GW fans lost patience (and hope for some of us) long ago.
No more excuses like transfers, COVID, injuries, etc. The A-10 is down right now and there is no reason we continue to be in the bottom half of the league.
JC has been here for 3 years now, with 2 more to go. We don't have the money or the administrative support to fire him so we are stuck with him.
This was the year we were supposed to rise to the top half - and improvement is not losing every game to the top half of the league.
I'm afraid we will be hearing the same old excuses for the next 2 years.
Raise High (just a little bit!)
 

So Joel (or anyone else) just a quick question. If the Program was destroyed by Nero, Maltzman etc. as badly as you (and others) suggest (and which for the most part I agree with), why do you think it would take just 75 games (really 2 1/2 seasons)  to restore it to NCAA-contention worthy caliber even assuming no COVID, injuries etc. Seems like some of you want to have it both ways because either it wasn't destroyed to the depths that you like to repeatedly mention (in which case JC should be winning more) or it was. You really can't have it both ways.

 

Are you suggesting it’s impossible for us to turn around a failing program in 3 years?

If so, I strongly disagree.

Jarvis did it in 3 years - taking over when we were outside the top 200 and a year removed from 1-27. And Lonergan did it in 3 years, taking over a team that had fallen to 175, the third time in 4 years we were in the bottom half of D1 teams. (I’m not counting Hobbs because although the program was rocked by scandal, Penders had us ranked 75th his last year and left Hobbs our all time leading scorer.)

Jamion took over a team that was low or lower than Keuster left for Jarvis, so obviously it takes time - but he hasn’t even had a top 200 team three years in. In fact, in 10 years as a head coach in the NCAA, he has NEVER coached one of the 200 most efficient teams in the country, which makes me skeptical he can get us to the top 100 any time soon.

But beyond that, it’s not 3 years since they tanked the program. It’s 6 years since then.

I answered your question, so answer mine: are you saying that because the program was so down, there is NO coach who would have us turned around already 3 years after Mojo? If so, I think you lack pride and perspective.. If not, it means we probably have the wrong guy as coach.

And the worst part is, we won’t make the change this year (as tonight showed, our improvement is fool’s gold like the 2010 year when Hobbs went 16-14, 6-11 and the administration waited an extra year to hire Lonergan). We will wait one more year even though we all know he’s not taking us from 225 to top 100 next year or the year after and we will just be delaying the inevitable.

First of all ,of course it is not impossible to turn a program in 3 years (I'll address the three years in a minute). Would you agree to "improbable" if the claim is that the program was "destroyed"? That was the point. Either it was "destroyed" making a turnaround much much harder or it wasn't. I don't see how you can have it both ways.

Second, this "three year" timeline presupposes that there was no COVID and there really were three years. COVID is a unique thing that no previous GW coach ever had to deal with. Not only that but never had to deal with it in the District of Columbia under perhaps the most stringent rules in the U.S. for practices and fans. I think most of you are unaware of the internal challenges faced by GW some self-inflicted by an administration that at times over-reacted to the threat of COVID. COVID was not the same for every team and anyone who says that is either ignorant of the facts or has an agenda. So when you say "three years" that's misleading. Again, kind of hard to say COVID is this existential crisis but it had no effect on GW basketball or should not be taken into account. So let me ask you have we improved from year 1 to year 3 if you ignore year 2?

Third, do you think with a healthy Ira Lee things would have not been different this season? I would argue at a minimum the record would be flipped. Injuries happen and teams must overcome them. But as you have witnessed that one was particularly bad for GW. It's not like JC had multiple posts ready to play waiting in the wings.

Fourth, how can you say this is "fool's gold" at this point? Nobody thinks we've arrived yet - so no one believes its gold yet. The only point that has been made is that we are improving since the first of the year which is far better than the alternative. The team that we see today would not have gone 2-8 to start the season. That's what you want to see, a team that improves over the course of the season. The fact that we have a shot at a top 7 finish is a minor miracle given the way we started. Now I will agree it will be important to continue this improvement forward next season. But that's a discussion for this time next year and to call this "fool's gold" at this point makes little sense unless you are predicting we will go backwards next year.
 

Also, something else I've been meaning to add. This notion that JC is a .below 500 coach is misleading. 

First, he inherited three terrible programs in 10 seasons of coaching. The Mount team he inherited won 8 games. The terrible Siena team he inherited won 8 games and of course the GW team he inherited won 9 games. So 30% of his coaching career was subjected to at least one (if not more) complete rebuild season.

Second, his conference records at his previous stops was over .600

Third, the majority of his non-conference woes at the Mount (6 seasons) occurred because he was forced as a NEC team to play a large number of money games (at least 4-5 each season) against Power 5's on the road to pay for the budget.  Against non-power 5 teams his record at a NEC school is better than .500

So while you can technically say he's a below.500 coach, those that look behind the numbers understand otherwise in the bigger picture.

Last edited by GWRising (3/03/2022 1:31 pm)

Gwmayhem wrote:

FQ, GW was 14-18 overall and 6-10 in the conference during TP's final season.  If GW was ranked 75 that year, I'd like to know according to what source?  (Upon further review, Sagarin had them at #98 which is far higher than I would have thought. So maybe 75 by another source is not out of the question)

KenPom.

His core data only goes back to 2002, but if you click on “History” for each team, you can see it now going back to 1997 (we were 51st in each of Jarvis’ last two years).  Xavier was 33.  Dayton and Bona were 63 and 64.  Us and Bona were 75 and 76.   There were only 2 teams ranked below 125.

That was also the season of the infamous Larry Lembo game. If you recall, Bernard Barrow got hurt late in the year and SirValient Brown moved to PG and took to it really well after a mostly disappointing yesr from him.  We got hot and had Temple on the ropes in the A10 semis, before the refs let someone tackle Mike King from behind for a steal, followed by Lynn Green jumping into Ngongba and being gifted 3 free throws on one of the screw jobs of all time. We would have played UMASS in the finals, who we owned, and so those calls almost certainly cost us a tourney berth.

Penders’ last year we were the 58th most efficient offense and the 91st most efficient defense. 

The reason we were 6-10 despite being ranked 75th is that the A10 was stacked. Temple finished #13 and made a run to the elite 8.  St Joe’s was top 30.

Class of 13 wrote:

I find this thread to be very interesting because it just feels like we’re fighting to fight at this point and not seriously establishing a set of clear expectations and measuring how we are stacking up against them at this point. Just a few thoughts:
 
-While I do believe that Lonergan laid a blueprint for what GW could hope to be in the more modern era, one that we are clearly far away from reaching at the current moment as FQ points out, I also believe Rising is right that our current situation makes getting back there much more difficult. The run of postseason berths from Jarvis through 07 is not a reasonable goal to me at this point. A litany of factors from conference re-alignment, administrative support, no longer having a “basketball guy” as an AD, etc.. make it less likely in my opinion.

-The idea that our program was “destroyed” by the end of the Lonergan/Nero debacle and 3 years of Mojo is a farce to me. Sure, JC was left with a cupboard bereft of talent, but he was not up against NCAA sanctions, limited scholarships, limits on recruiting or any of that. As we learned from Lonergan, it only takes a couple good recruiting cycles to flip a program from bad to good if you develop the talent you bring in.

-Rising, you’re killing me with this notion that “what matters most” is that we’re playing more like a KenPom 150’s team right now than what our season long metric indicates. It’s one thing to strive to peak and play your best basketball in March, but if you waste the first two months of the year playing like a sub 250 team, all you’re ever going to set yourself up for is needing to pull off a miracle in the A 10 tourney to reach a postseason tournament. Two things are allowed to be true; we can both pleased that JC’s group has improved over the course of the year three straight years and be pissed that they look woefully unprepared to compete with Big West, Patriot League and MEAC foes when the season starts.

-I was a believer in JC when we made the hire, and I still think he is capable of improving the program, but I think it’s clear that April through December will be the most important eight months of his tenure. Will he be able to keep the core of this group together, or will there be a rash of transfers leaving the program? I don’t believe we this program can sustain as a revolving door, so JC’s ability to retain the guys he’s brought in and sell them on coming back will be a major part of how I evaluate him, even in the current transfer-crazy climate. Can we get a big? I have hope we can develop Brown and Dean more, but we need to bring in another impact transfer like Lee was supposed to be. Can we look prepared next November? There aren’t excuses anymore for another disastrous start. It shouldn’t be too much to ask to not lose to the Hampton’s, American’s, Morgan St’s, UMass Lowell’s in the Smith Center. That has to stop or else none of the progress we’ve seen in A10 play (again) means diddly. 

A few things in response Class of 13 ...

First, it was not me who said it was "destroyed." I was merely pointing out the hypocrisy of saying that on the one hand and then simultaneously complaining about the fact it's not being rebuilt as quickly as if it wasn't destroyed. That said the ML fallout certainly took a toll on this program in two ways. One - Mojo was never really considered the long term solution so that was used against GW on the recruiting trail and led to the dearth of talent that JC inherited. Second, there were a number of folks aggrieved by the decision that then worked against this program (that was their right) that caused problems in the basketball community.

Second, while ML started paying dividends in Year 3 for the reasons mentioned above I don't believe we are truly in year 3 yet of JC. 

Third, would you prefer that we kept pace with our earlier performance this season? Yes, the OOC performance was not good. But you can't go back and replay those games. All you can do is try to get better. And, I beg to differ on one important thing. While not excusing the OOC record, even if you have a great OOC record you still need to perform well in the A-10. How many teams have we seen at GW start off well only to stumble in the A-10? Also while this may be of little consolation, can anyone think of a GW team that started out poorly but improved as much as this one in the A-10? At least that is something to be said.

Again, without further improvement next season no one will be satisfied. But you have to walk before you can run. I believe that we are starting to walk much faster and that when you look back at this time, you will realize that's when the program began to turn. 

Last edited by GWRising (3/03/2022 5:07 pm)