trueblue32

Bowling Green had a worse season last year, has less minutes continuity from last year, also got a new coach and we’re 12.5 point underdogs lol

Frankly at the time of hiring I wanted a head coach with more experience on their resume than Hodgson, but then we whiffed on all of those guys. We just ended up with the inexperienced coach with no connection to UB instead. Now I'd take Hodgson in a heartbeat lol

Halcovage is getting paid the next 4.5 years regardless. He is not required to lead the basketball program for 4.5 years. The relevant questions are: 1.) How much money does the department have in their couch cushions? 2.) Can we hire someone who will do better with that amount of money? 3.) Do we think Alnutt will actually manage to hire someone better? My answers would be: 1.) I have no idea, but if it takes Alnutt running a lemonade stand in the Student Union himself then so be it. 2.) Yes, almost irrespective of the answer to #1. There are roughly 10 teams worse in the entire country. Given our recent success, and conference affiliation (the MAC isn't the Big 10 but it also isn't the SWAC or the MEAC*) almost anybody should be able to avoid putting a bottom 10 caliber product on the court. Nate Oats was a high school math teacher a handful of years before leading our top 25 team. There are qualified (albeit unknown) people out there who would coach this team for $75k. Even if it doesn't work out what's the worst thing that happens? We have another 2 win team? 3.) No, so where does that leave us? Do we wait 4.5 years for the top 25 year to be in the distant past as we try to dig out of a hole greater than what SUNY laughing stock Binghamton** has seen in their basketball program? Do we wait two more years? Do we give Halcovage extensions until Alnutt retires? *UB is currently rated #349 in the country on KenPom. There has literally NEVER been a MAC team rated that low. KenPom goes back to 1999 when there were 315 D1 teams. **Binghamton bottomed out at #344 3 years after a scandal forced out their coach and most of their roster. Their best player this season was Jimmy Gray, a Binghamton High School product who started his career at the school as a walk on. He would have been the best guard on the current UB roster

I disagree. Halcovage was a complete unknown, it’s extremely risky to just hire a young guy off a high major staff when you have no visibility into what role he actually played in their success. Bucknell interviewed Halcovage, for whatever reason he didn’t get the job, and even they have 9 D1 wins now. This is really not excusable for Alnutt. He fired Whitesell too early implying that he had some plan that he clearly didn’t and cost UB extra money. He then very publicly got dunked on by like 10 candidates that turned us down. Then hired the Bucknell rejectee and has since watched our program spiral to uncharted depths. I was willing to be optimistic because high major assistants are unknown and maybe he works out. He very clearly has not. It literally almost cannot get any worse. People seem to be taking the stance that there is no performance that is fireable in year 1. There’s nothing to suggest that this will get any better after the few D1 caliber players from Whitesell disappear off the roster. We’re going to run this program into the ground for another season just for the prayer that he somehow magically puts it together in year 2? We’re painted into a corner here financially but I’d truly pay a top Buffalo high school coach whatever to be the coach. We know Halcovage isn’t the future so let’s start playing the lottery, even if it’s the $1 scratch offs until he and Whitesell off the books

I miss having an AD with a vision

The only pro I can see for not firing Halcovage after year 1 is that it would mean we don’t have to watch Alnutt flub another hire. Alnutt has to go before MBB opens again. Don’t know where all that money comes from though

Powell and Hardnett also would have? I feel like people aren't fully grasping how bad this year's team is. Powell was a player everyone complained about last year and he'd be the best guard on this team by a mile and a half. Like many things, college basketball talent is normally distributed. Last year we were somewhere in the middle of the pack where most teams fall and it felt bad. Now we are nearly at the very tail end of the college basketball talent distribution with no sign of water meeting its level analytically, as we are still underperforming projections and still falling. Per KenPom we are closer to the worst team in the country this year (+15.06 AdjEM) than we are to last year's team (-15.25 AdjEM), a performance that got Whitesell fired and was UB's worst in ~20 years. This team would be a 10.5 or 11 point underdog to last year's team. Edit: EvanMiya's BPR is the best all-in-one CBB stat I've found. A BPR of 0.0 is D1 average with a BPRof 1.0 meaning that the player is 1 point per 100 possessions better than an average player. This year's team has 1 player that is considered above D1 average (barely). Shawn Fulcher is rated as the 5th worst player in the country who has played at least 250 possessions. Change is since the preseason. The transfers' current ratings: Jones: 4.70 BPR Hardnett: 1.69 BPR Jack: 1.46 BPR Powell: 1.02 BPR Ceaser: 0.85 BPR Mading: -1.92 BPR Blocker: -2.82 BPR

Without knowing what he did, we have had two players disappear from the team and neither averaged 17/5/3 while they were here so I'd still have taken him lol

"Please join my team that won two games last year and lost 50% of its production. If you don't excel despite being surrounded by a complete void of talent you will be finding a new school this time next year." is a hell of a recruiting pitch. It's funny that you think he'd be able to fill 13 scholarships with talented players when he went 0 for 7 in year one (save me the Sabol and Boldin talk, they're fine but they are hardly contributing to winning games at this point in their career) and he couldn't beg anyone with eligibility to take the 8th one that he had open

Parents of prospective recruits love it when a coach has a history of running off scholarship players

I won't speak for anyone else but I'm fully aware of what transpired in the Whitesell years. All I'm saying is that it was a lot more fun when in his worst season he had 10 wins on January 24th instead of 2. It was a lot more fun when in Whitesell's worst seasons we were still participating in the MAC tournament, not trending towards elimination by February. You also highlighted all the talent that you felt like he underachieved with, it's a fair point, but getting talent on the roster and keeping it is still part of being a coach, and Whitesell was generally successful at it. Do you think you can say the same thing about Halcovage? Chatman/Smith/Adams/Kanye were all stuck here due to NCAA rules so who is the most talented player that Halcovage recruited or retained? Where would you slot them into the rotation on the Segu/Williams/Hardnett/Mballa/Skogman/Jack/Brewton teams? My defense of Whitesell was always that UB is a lot closer to falling off the map *broadly gesturing at the current situation* than becoming the Gonzaga of the East or a perennial top 25 team or whatever Nate Oats tricked half this board into believing. UB's path forward was maintaining competitive relevance and hoping to get scooped up into a better conference in the next round of realignment (that ship has sailed). We're now two coaches removed from our top 25 football and MBB teams. I'm now over pretending that we're destined for something special and I would just like to see a competitive product at a minimum.

To be clear I'm very much on your side. I was giving an optimistic projection since I was asking what the optimistic people are thinking. Smith and Adams are also likely going to be in position to graduate and get a free transfer regardless of whatever happens with the NCAA's two time transfer stuff. It's very likely that we will have at most 40% of the scoring production returning from what is currently a two win team.

Maybe if we're still paying him we can eat Halcovage's contract instead and bring Whitesell back.. I'm only half joking

My stance on it is that "not being bottom 15 in the country" is a reasonable bar for a first year coach. He didn't add the talent to avoid that and he's not doing anything Xs and Os wise to elevate the talent above that. On top of that the roster is unexplainably shrinking in size as well as fan support. I'd like to know what exactly people think he's bringing to the table. What are the patient people hoping to see next year? .500 in the MAC if we're lucky? The same record that got Whitesell canned?

Important to note that the program rankings don't update until after the season. There's a decent shot we drop below at least Miami after this season. IUPUI was the biggest faller last season (among non-recent transitioners), dropping 23 spots after finishing ranked 360. These are all made up numbers so who cares I guess, but they help quantify what a disaster Halcovage has been. Somehow it feels like this board was more pessimistic when Whitesell was here than when Halcovage is actively running this program into the ground. I guess all but the most optimistic have just stopped caring, and I counted myself in the more optimistic group during the Whitesell years.

KenPom does have that data. Here is the whole program ranking page for these teams, sorted by best season:

With ratings updated, here are the complete list of teams that major rating sites have rated below UB (out of 362 D1 teams): They all agree on only 14 teams being worse than UB (3.8% of all D1 teams). If UB was an underfunded HBCU, a service academy, or a recent D2->D1 transition school then Halcovage would be doing pretty well! Edit: and for fun the consensus teams and their KenPom program rankings:

Rich given that he couldn’t find anyone willing to take the 13th scholarship and two other scholarship players have disappeared. Shoutout to Lenzi though since she’s the only person left on a once full media row

I’m with him, when I was in school I was on the board of True Blue and I used to wake up at 6 AM on game days to put flyers in all the lecture halls. I’ve had seasons ever since I graduated. For the first time I’m undecided on if I’ll waste my time on attending the next game. He’s murdered the fan support, there’s no promise for the future, and he can’t even keep the home games against fellow MAC cellar dwellers interesting. I don’t know if anyone in the athletic department reads this but these are the fans Halcovage is finding a way to drive away

Don’t worry guys this is a rebuilding year. In other unrelated news the only player who hasn’t touched the floor is the only freshman on our team who had a rating on any recruiting site

My biggest takeaway every game is that I feel horrible that he’s wasting his final year of eligibility on this team. The coach he got recruited by got canned when he was out with injury and NCAA rules stranded him here

You’re more optimistic than me and I respect that but what freshman class do you think could have saved this season? Not to mention that plenty of quality transfers were on the board when he was hired and he also failed at re-recruiting the players already on campus. It’s literally never been easier to rebuild a team on a one year schedule

Anyone saying otherwise is truly out of their mind. We’re about to start 1-6 in the worst MAC in at least 25 years. Kenpom has the MAC ranked 24th this season, going back to 1997 the lowest rank was 20th one time. This team could improve leaps and bounds each of the next two seasons and be at best a middling MAC team. And I will reiterate that each loss we add to the pile is only going to make recruiting harder (as if he was killing it to begin with). If you bitched about the middling Whitesell years prepare for how the Halcovage era has set this program back

A group with little continuity and D1 experience has the most room for growth too but alas

A 1-5 MAC team spotted us an 11 point lead on our home floor and before halftime we’re down by 14. Truly a hilarious product that Halcovage is putting on the floor