Buzz

[CTWarrior]

Agree with the last post.  Buzz has done a good job, much better than I thought he'd do when we hired him.  

All the people who think we ought to be in the top 5 every year in the Big East surprise me.  There are 16 teams in this conference, most of whom have good to excellent basketball traditions and budgets, all of whom desperately want to be in the top 5 every year.  We are not competing in a vacuum.  We have the disadvantage of being a private school with no natural following other than alumni in a state that doesn't produce a lot of basketball talent, but which also has is a repsected state university that has been a solid top 20 program for the past decade.

While Buzz took over a talented team, the top-tier talent was basically 3 seniors and 1 junior.  He 's done what he's needed to do to keep us competitive while he re-tools the program/roster.

He's got some learning/growing to do as a coach, but I don't worry about that other than in the short term.  I think he's going to get better and better at that stuff.  

What I do worry about with Buzz is that the intense way he goes about things can't last forever.  He's going to burn out young unless he relaxes a little bit.

[Silkk the Shaka]

The simple fact is, after only two years, there was not a single Tom Crean recruit left on the team. That's pathetic (on Crean's part). Anyone who didn't recognize that there was a talent crater coming wasn't paying attention. Buzz chose to fill in short-term with JuCos, I assume because he had ties to the market, they were available, and he saw an opportunity to win some games. He could have just as easily gone the HS route, but we would have absolutely sucked last year and this year. It seems like that crater is being felt now, and potentially next year.

It seems to me that he may have successfully avoided a seriously down/rebuilding year or two, and he can potentially get the same long-term results he otherwise would have. Obviously, we'll never know for sure, but certainly at the moment its too soon to tell. In light of the fact I started this post with, it is a minor miracle we aren't terrible right now. If we do in fact make the NCAA this season (and we'll see what happens next year), I don't know how anyone can argue that Buzz has not been successful.

For the record, I do think we have a somewhat dumb team. If that makes me a racist so be it, but I though Joe Nethen, John Leurck, and Jon Polonowski among others were dumb too.

I don't think we'll fall off at all next year, in fact I think we'll improve record-wise even if the overall team isn't better.  Look at what a lot of teams are losing.  St. John's and ND are graduating every starter.  They will both sink like a stone next year.  Georgetown graduates Wright & Freeman.  Cincinnati graduates 5 players, several of which are key to their ability to press in waves.  Walker and some other players will leave for the draft (I'd love to see Yancy Gates jump early but it's wishful thinking).  Granted we lose our best player in Butler, but he's the only starter.  The conference will be much more wide open next year, and I think Buzz has us set up nicely to take full advantage with Wilson coming off his redshirt and Cadougan/Blue having a full year of Big East experience under their belts.

[NersEllenson]

Nice to see some posts with perspective re-appearing, after the debacle of posts offered up Saturday night and most of Sunday.