Let’s lose early. Seal Haith’s fate and get on with our coach search.
American Tournament Thread
- Thread starter loca2874
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I'm watching TU's women play Wichita State right now. This team might be worse than the men at hitting layups. Dear God it's atrocious
Fire Haith and Matilda at the same time in the same room and just hit reset on the basketball programs at TU
Fire Haith and Matilda at the same time in the same room and just hit reset on the basketball programs at TU
I do not believe frank will lose his job. Why, because of the pandemic. If this was a normal year and we did this bad down the stretch then I would see that happening. This year? No I don’t.
I think the chances are 60-40 that he does a Houdini escape again. But if bottom feeder Tulane beats us again that would go to 50/50. I'm still barely putting my money on Haith, but extending a contract again expecting a different result is fraught with danger and potential loss of almost every TU loyal fan.
Well to be honest ain’t nobody in the Reynolds center. I really believe that fans not in the Reynolds center is a big reason we lost those close games at home. Atmosphere does change how a team plays
I’m hoping for a typical Haith Houdini escape like when he escaped Mizzou to come to Tulsa.
The pandemic had nothing to do with this performance though. Football was effected much more, and they came out swimmingly.
Every team has to deal with that though. Haith returned 3/5 starters from a co-conference championship team and added two former 4 star transfers and he did nothing with them.
I disagree with you immensely. The pandemic had a lot to do with how this season played out. Not having fans in the area does play a big role in the atmosphere of the arena and the game. No, not everyone had the same problem. Wichita State had fans, Houston had fans etc. Look at Duke and Kentucky. Both of them are about the miss the tournament. Its not that duke has a crappy team. This pandemic has changed college sports for the 2020-2021 season. You say that everything was just fine for football and I would disagree with that as well. Playing to an empty stadium takes its toll. You guys are beating a horse that needs to be left alone IMO.
Haith Is a good man /coach who presently can’t recruit a bonafide outside shooter
nor an inside post player with a good skill set . The “Retreads” that came aboard
left their respective schools for a reason and it sure wasn’t from too much playing
time.
Good summary. The recruiting is not at a level to keep us competing for conference championships. We have the facilities to do so so basketball is not dealing with some of the same challenges as football.
I can agree with this. The recruitment has to be better. That said players play better in a home atmosphere. Maybe they wouldn’t have played better at a packed Reynolds center against Wichita state. I am a firm believer that the fans in the arena can turn a 5 point loss into a 5-10 point win.
Houston wasn’t winning because they had fans. Their best player left the team midway through the season and they still won. This season wasn’t due to the fans. If you want to excuse not making the NCAA’s this season, how do you excuse the last 5 seasons when we had fans?
Every team had to play games home and away without fans at some point. Some dealt better than others. Haith is a notoriously bad coach in tournament settings where he typically won’t have fans and nothing made it more evident than this season. It’s why he always does poorly at conference tournaments and early season tournaments as well.
We won't return to the packed house at the Reynolds Center until we get a team that excites the city and is a big winner. Nolan couldn't have kept Jim King's team intact and brought any crowds at all. It took exciting basketball and winning.....Not just Nolan......
Caleb mills was not their best player this year in the games that he played. Last year he was but this year he was not and left. Now let’s talk about Houston’s losses shall we. They lost 3 games. All three were on the road against Tulsa, ECU and Wichita state. Only Wichita had fans in attendance. All of their home games had fans there. Yes fans change the atmosphere of a game and how a team plays. All of the teams with better records than us allowed fans in the arena. So yeah it does matter.
The Wichita state game here would have been packed. The way we were playing at that time I am positive that they would have helped put us over the top. Then beating Houston and Memphis after that would have started bringing. Fans in.
Oh and one more for you while I am on my lunch break. We did win the conference last year. We had a great shot at an at large bid last year and a decent shot at winning the conference tournament. So if you look at progression up until the pandemic we were good till this year.
There were as many Wichita fans as Tulsa fans last year at the game. (and they were loud) lol... I do agree that fans at home would have definitely helped.
But it shouldn't. The true quality of team, how it consistently plays, and it's talent level should be evident with no fans present. The fans MAY give you an extra boost of adrenaline occasionally. This team simply wasn't good enough on the court. Sad thing is this team beat Memphis twice, beat Houston, beat Cincy on the road. Tells me there was enough talent to win games...so then you have to ask where the shortcomings were. IMO, it's the head coaching and adjustments. He, along with his assistants, couldn't teach the defensive rotations well enough for them to be effective throughout the season, he continued to play players who were not performing to expectations and standards, he allowed players to continue to play selfish hero ball with no accountability, and as I think we will soon find out, he is going to run off probably 3-4 talented newcomers who should have played more when an at-large bid was no longer possible. When you combine it the fact that recruiting simply isn't up to the standards of the AAC, especially when you talk about the 4 and 5 spots, you are going to struggle. We're running out 6'8" centers against 6'11 and 7' guys. We run out a 6'5" at the 4 and wonder why our team struggles on the glass. After 7 years you've got a pretty good idea of what you're going to consistently get. What has saved Haith to this point is exceeding media set preseason expectations. But the expectations should be set through the program and athletic dept. NCAA bids should be the expectation. We finish in 6th or 7th place when do nothing media hacks predict us to finish 10th and it makes it look like a mediocre season is a great year. Wojcik won 20 games a lot and he got canned for not doing well enough to get to the NCAA.
Take a hard look too....we lost to TCU- a bad team. We lost to South Carolina...an absolutely terribly team that would struggle to get out of last place in the AAC (yes, Tulane and ECU would be favored against South Carolina). Haith gets a pass on those games because they were early. Instead, we should have sounded the alarm right away as a harbinger of the terrible basketball that was to come. We should thank God we didn't have to play ORU who probably would have set an NCAA record for made 3's; and that we didn't have to play Arkansas which would have been another 20+ point loss.
This is Tulsa Basketball. Mediocre isn't good enough.
No. No we did not have a ‘great shot’ at making the tournament at large. There was no way we were making it in without winning the conference tournament. We’ve never had a great shot at winning the conference tournament because we’re historically bad in tournament setting under Haith and Haith’s been bad at them since Mizzou if not Miami.
He had all the players he needed to win games this season. He just couldn’t do it. Note, that while teams got easier games without fans at our place, we got easier games without fans at other places (like Temple, and Memphis). Some of our home losses against comparatively bad teams weren’t even close enough tobe swung by fans (vs. UCF, vs. Tulane)
It wasn’t like we were playing every single home game in front of a hostile crowd...we only played in front of what 2 or 3 crowds all season? This season was basically a neutral site every night... and on a neutral floor, Haith’s teams just don’t get it done nearly often enough. If we take out the buy games against local d-2 schools.., Haith went 8-11. Taking away the two non-neutral floors he went 8-9. That’s freaking terrible when you’re only playing on neutral courts. (Or courts with few fans)
Honestly, I would take Manning back before I would give Haith another season.
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I know this is basketball but i remember when DAVE RADER (EXCUSE ME) did the same thing in the wac going 4 and 7 each year he would beat ranked Iowa Oklahoma Texas Am Osu and still lose out in wac games that we should have won for a 10 year radar record of 49 and 80 with memorable wins to start the year before a slide to end the year.
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Jesus, it’s Rader, not Radar. And he had a good enough record that he turned down offers to go to larger schools. At least know the history of the program you claim to support.
I thought he was talking about the guy from MASH. His record by the time he left wasn’t good enough to go to big schools. That’s why he was let go lol.
Rader also had challenges Haith doesn't in terms of academic programs or being able to get JUCOs and transfers in school. Rader really had actual obstacles put in place by Donaldson as he tried to elevate the school's academic standing. Unfortunately the admin at the time didn't understand you raised the academic standing by making the academic programs better not by artificially increasing your admits by eliminating athletes. Haith hasn't faced the same limitations in getting JUCOs and transfers into school
Let's not even talk about Rader's stadium dilemma with the old, awful ACL and Achilles' tearing turf, an infrastructure older than I-244, and a weight room they had to share with the general school population. The housing situation, academic support, etc. all worked against Rader and bringing the types of players needed to compete. Don't forget he went to 2 bowl games as an independent which was extremely difficult.
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Everyone knows I hate Haith, but to be fair and accurate with the facts, Haith actually did have an issue getting a JUCO this last season because of Academic policy by the administration.
That being said, I think Shumate was an ultra talented replacement for that recruiting loss and his PT was DRASTICALLY mishandled this season, especially as it became more and more evident that we wouldn't be a tournament contender.
True , but you also have to remember we aren’t the only ones with that problem, have to learn to adapt, btw great job this year with keeping up with the NET!
South Florida is holding off Temple right now. Temple has gone cold and USF is taking advantage of it.
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