Take it for what its worth Bobby Marlin is the Ricky Bustle of Basketball..Average coach that runs a clean program & graduates players but his teams tend to lack a killer mentality
Take it for what its worth Bobby Marlin is the Ricky Bustle of Basketball..Average coach that runs a clean program & graduates players but his teams tend to lack a killer mentality
I would like for every Senior that spent 4 years in the program to have made at least 1 trip to the big dance. Washington and Stove not getting that chance made the way this past season ended pretty hard to swallow, despite how good of a season it was over all. I agree with finishing in the top 4 in conference even in a rebuilding year to show an overall consistency.
Speaking of expectations former conference member WKU just inked another 5 star player
We've got a new member in the WKU family. Hilltopper Nation, please help us welcome five-star center Charles Bassey, who will reclassify and join the Tops in the 2018 class! #GoTopshttps://t.co/ww90KMHDU9 pic.twitter.com/WgfqWpACEB
— WKU Basketball (@WKUBasketball) June 13, 2018
We can accomplish all of our goals in the sunbelt.. even 5 star players ...
Again, when we were discussing this at length during the season, why does this scenario have to be either/or? Why does it have to be winning regular season with a lot of wins and no NCAA birth or the other way around? I've been vocal about this for some time now. I want to create consistency in our program that will start attracting good young players, particularly from our own state. You build that by winning and you start by winning and dominating your conference.
We had a great year this year. We won a ton of games and ran into some health issues late in the year that helped derail us. We ultimately fell short of our goal but we still automatically qualified for the NIT and put on an exciting game to say the least.
If we go with the model of win a few but somehow qualify for the NCAA, its just going to be a quick shot in the arm but it does nothing to create a winning focus in the program. To me, there is nothing harder in college basketball than winning your conference outright. That is a great accomplishment. Its done over a large sample and you can't hide behind soft schedules or playing tough teams at home. Its home and home and you have to get things done on the road if you want to prove you are a champion.
Build the program by building a winning culture and the tournament appearances will follow but success does not have to be either/or. If you focus on winning conference titles I promise that some NCAA appearances will follow and therefore, better seeds in the tournament when you do get there.
Mike, 12 games with only a handful of home games with a terrible recruiting budget etc. is not the same as playing 30+ games where you should be equally as talented as about 80% or more of the teams you face especially when quite a few of those games each season are against lower tier D-1 teams and D-2 teams. I liken Marlin to Bustle quite a bit. Neither wanted to really be in the public pushing their programs, I don't think either truly liked to get in the recruiting wars, neither has been able to win the "big" game and until this year, neither had one a conference title outright. There are a lot of similarities I believe.
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