Basketball Coach Direction

[Guest nybullsfan]

?? While some people have indicated that we need to take the scholarships from the players, that is not an option. So my question is, how do you motivate a group of players after coming off of a horrendous season? The reality is, this is YOUR squad that WILL be returning next year. How do you encourage fans to start to support this team? The upgrade on the sun dome is awesome, however, new facilities will bring in the curious fans who want to see the renovations, but it will not motivate people to come back...a winning team will or a new coach is the answer. People/the team need something or someone to renew their hope in this system. Right now, I do not see Heath or his coaching style being able to accomplish this. While the fans are disappointed in this lack luster system, can you imagine how the players feel? I can only imagine how frustrating it is PLAYING these games. The system is the problem. While I do agree that the there have been numerous errors on the court that have yet to be fixed in practice, however, maybe this system is not the best style for these players...so what does a GOOD coach do, they change things up. This has not happened this season. Know one is saying that Heath is a bad person, but maybe he is not the RIGHT person to build this squad. Some of his decisions this year has to have lost the respect of his team, ie. the Gilcrest situation, bad coaching in crunch time, the constant starting line-up changes, the constant rotating players on and off the court (how can you get hot if you are being pulled out of the game every 3-5 minutes!). If I were the AD, I would cut my losses and start over. Look for an immediate fix, because his job could be on the line after building the new practice facility and upgrading the sun dome, and not getting results from these improvements. The sun dome needs to sell tickets and we need to bring in better talent when recruiting. I do not see a success rate with either of those in the near future with Heath as the head  coach. ?? Would you want to play for him as a top recruit? Would you want to come to a school to play BB when there is no fan support? NO! Something needs to be done, a change needs to be made or I can see everyone having these same conversations next year. You can place good players in a bad system and get the results we are seeing now. You can also place mediocre players in a good system and get wins. If you are saying that we have "mediocre" players who are not going anywhere in the immediate future, let's better our system and style of play. The key to that is you have to be willing to do this, Heath is not...

Welcome to the board!

[Vega]

I was really hoping this would have been, at the very least, a halfway decent year.  I was excited for the season to begin for the first time in a long time.  Regardless of facilities, I don't see any improvement on the horizon next year.  It is essentially the same team returning.  No big recruits that I am aware of will be coming in to turn this thing around next year.  How long are we planning on tolerating this kind of season? 

I was very excited when we hired Heath, but the overall body of work stinks since he has been here.  Year 1 was a disaster, year 2 was worse.  We had a good year last year with the emergence of DoJo as big time.  This year is back to a disaster.   

Seems like a lot people want to keep him around based on what sure looks like a fluke year of success.

When people say the money situation is difficult I would have to say that just as we did with Holtz, we need to find a way to get the money to put a proper coaching staff together with a coach that can recruit and bring in BE and Florida players.  I don't think we can afford not to anymore.  Not after making an investment of $30 million in facilities.

When we agreed to enter the BE it wasn't a charity invitation.  The administration understood that they couldn't continue to act like they were in the Sun Belt.  They have found a way to make the improvements in the facilities.  Now they need to follow through with money for the coaching staff. 

Something needs to be done to bring this program some degree of respect.  We aren't even asking to compete for a conference title.  Just have a BB program with some degree of mediocrity. 

I can't imagine the donors that are putting up all this money for the upgrade in the facilities are pleased at all with a team that has had embarrassing losses all year.  Including, or better yet, especially the last 3 games.

I just don't think we can afford another 3 to 4 years of this kind of season and that's what I see on the horizon if a change isn't made at the end of this year.  Even with a change you are still looking at the next 2 being similar to this year because of poor recruiting the last 2 years. 

Honest question to the guys voting to keep him around at this point, what help do you see on the horizon that makes it appear that this thing will be brought to any degree of mediocrity within the next couple of years?  Other than the fact that we will have new facilities, I don't even see a glimmer of hope that the product on the court will be improving in the next 2 years and with the commits we have for next year so far it isn't looking much better down the foreseeable road.

Well said, +1 my friend