RedlessWardrobe said:
HKBear97! said:
sandiegobears said:
HoopDreams said:
Missouri just beat no. 1 Kansas
Proof that Mizzou is not a pushover.
And further proof that right now, while teams figure out how to integrate new players, you can't be assured of really who is better...maybe Kansas should fire Self? I don't think so, but the temperature here is that Madsen doesn't know what he's doing and I'm skeptical of that. I don't think Madsen is any different than many other coaches right now, he was down 3 starters and is still trying to get them back into the fold and also figure out all of the pieces. SDSU cleaned out Creighton, only to lose to Oregon and Gonzaga. Gonzaga lost to West Virginia and Kentucky. Oregon is losing to UCLA right now. Creighton beat Kansas, but lost to Nebraska. Duke has two losses now. It's a time of uncertainty due to all of the transfers, I've heard more than one NCAA wag mention this
So, while I'd certainly like to see more assists and better integrated offense, and certainly a better defensive posture, I don't see how you can add nearly a full team of new players together and figure anything out without real playing time. If they don't start to gel and figure out things by mid-January, that's gonna be a bigger issue. It feels like this team, especially with a lack of height, is just gonna struggle against teams like Furd, and they are probably a .500 type of team, but maybe they'll surprise us. But it's possible that only Blaksher and Sissoko will be gone next year and then we'll really see what type of coach Madsen is, when he has guys for longer periods and can challenge them to improve. I'm sure a few may transfer, but I'd hope we can get some consistency and tenure, that's where things change. If it's a new team of bodies every year, it's gonna be a slog.
If this was Madsen's first year, I might agree with you. Unfortunately last year the team took awhile to gel and then seemed to fall apart at the end with some reports of a bad locker room. That makes me question if Madsen is equipped to deal with this new old order.
And a key difference between us and the teams you mention is they all have some really good wins among those losses listed. Cal hasn't beaten anyone of the caliber those teams have. Not to mention getting destroyed by Vanderbilt who had more new players than Cal has!
I know its just not us, but again we have a completely new set of players. You could almost categorize this season as Madsen's "second first year." Also, things might have gone better in our last two games if we had a healthy DJ and BJ. Not trying to avoid realism, but I still think its too early to start ragging on MM.
I'm going to make 4 comments:
1. It is way too early to make many judgments about what type of coach Madsen will be.
2. There have been people making positive assessments with pretty much zero evidence since day less than zero as they have been making them since before Madsen's first game. From what I can tell based on him being young and giving a few of you the tingles when he talks.
3. There have been people making negative assessments with pretty much zero evidence. From what I can tell based on not understanding how critically bad our program was, and probably some responding to the people from #2 amping up expectations in an unrealistic fashion.
4. You cannot adopt the recruiting strategy that Madsen has and then say "we have a new team" every single year. Yeah. It's like his second first year. And next year will be his third first year. And the year after that his fourth. It's his second year. Period. End of story. If you want to build through the portal every year, you have to take the bad with the good.
