Leaderboard

Upon further review it appears that the woman in the middle is our new head coach and the woman on the left is assistant Candyce Wheeler.

To this point I think Oats is looking for glue guys. Especially after this season. So it’s likely he envisions Sears finishing his career and being that vet leader to surround the one and dones.

The current Louisville HC and Tennessee Assistant Coach seem to think we made a really good choice. Could care less about the process at this point. There are probably 10,000 candidates you could talk to, but you have to trim somewhere, it's unreasonable to talk to every possible candidate even if you wanted to. The criteria laid out doesn't seem like a bad target for our program at our current level. We have a lot of holes to fill for sure, but this hire feels liked ADMA didn't want to do a full burndown and thinks Coach Burke can try to plateau a bit this coming year and bring in the talent to get us back to a top tier team the following. She feels like a good hire, seems to have energy, her age should be helpful in relating to the student athletes of today, she's a proven winner as a player and coach. I'm excited about it and am behind her, go get 'em coach!

Useful perspective backed up by data, thanks Doc. What a fickle business these guys are in. A dozen more made threes from Brewton and Jack, and a handful of more inspired performances from post-Covid Mballa would likely have won 3-4 more regular season games and have Whitesell's metrics sitting at the low end of this group (aside from the MAC title, but butterfly effect on seeding etc, who knows.) Not saying he deserves any sympathy, as he's compensated well to play a high risk/reward game. Just crazy how slim the margins are, often decided by the flick of the wrist of a 20 year old kid. If he were a great coach, he would have figured out ways to better shield himself and his team from the variance inherent in the college game. But he isn't and he didn't, and now he rightfully finds himself one season away from a red hot seat.

I would say CJ Massinburg was a big reason the Bulls made the tourney his freshman year in 2015-16. Averaged 11.3 and was the leading scorer in the MAC Championship game. There are diamonds in the rough out there to be had, albeit few and far in between.

I am hoping my latest entry will add some of my perspective. We would likely all agree that our goal would be to have an elite coach in the MAC. There may be some debate as to what constitutes an elite coach. Here is what I propose starting with identifying the historic elite MAC coaches: Let me summarize the characteristics: Win roughly 66% of their games. -> Whitesell 63% possibly trending down next year. Best year rank near 50-70. -> Whitesell 77 Typical year rank ~100 -> Whitesell based on 3 years I would say 130 Worse year 125-150 -> unclear my guess would be 175 Win MAC tournament 1 in 3 years. -> Has yet to win Based on his 3 years (a limited sample), he does not hit the mark for elite MAC coach, but you have some perspective how he stacks up so far. For now, Whitesell is the coach and I hope that he finds players for upcoming season to keep win % north of 60% next year, and the young talent gels leading to better things in 2023 and beyond. Likely for some that is not good enough or is very unlikely to happen, but I choose to remain hopeful.

I’ll take ambitious, successful coaches using UB as a stepping stone if we are winning MAC titles over coaches that will go .500, get you nowhere and stick around. That’s being a mid-major in college basketball.