None of them have the ability to play full court press like Speedy or the others .
I'm agree with Skilldawg on this. Konkol's guys have been more highly recruited and more talented than White's core group.
Speedy, Heem, and Kyser basically had no DI offers. Speedy, none. Heem, UALR until someone committed and took his spot. Kyser, Lamar until their coach got fired. Threeyon was a Rupp recruit. White discovered Anderson right before school started. Don't think JJ was really recruited either. Hamilton and McCree were really White's only guys who were recruited by some of our peers. Then he brought in Gaskins and Massey from Ole Miss to be role players. I think White's last class of Boykins/Slim/Griffin/X/Shep were more highly recruited but those guys had very limited roles in White's last year.
Konkol's early recruits have mostly had offers from our peers and even better programs like Georgetown in DayDay's case. Pemberton, AAA, Duruji, Powell, Christon, etc. All relatively highly recruited guys. But this offseason it appears Konkol's recruiting has really started to struggle. Now it looks like we are offering everybody, but nobody is committing.
The games I was at last year I saw no ability to execute a full court press it was easily broken every time . This year we will see if the problem is fixed.
I know we've beaten this like a dead horse, but we MUST schedule better. Like has been said before, we need to schedule regional opponents that we've at least heard of? I'd love for our exhibition to be Centenary/LSUS/LSUA every year. There is NOOOOO reason for both Tougaloo & Harding to be on schedule. I'm fine with the $$$ games at Wichita State & LSU. I don't love the Delaware games, but we do get to play UNCG (RPI 66
I'D RATHER HAVE FEWER HOME GAMES THAN HAVE TO DRIVE TO WATCH SOME OF THESE GAMES.
Non-Conference (Last Year RPI) - I know they are moving from RPI, but this it what I have to use.
11/01 vs. Union (Exh.)
11/06 @ Wichita State $$$ (21)
11/11 vs. Sam Houston State (186)
11/13 vs. Harding
11/16 @ LSU $$$ (88)
11/20 vs. Tougaloo
11/24 vs. UNC-Greensboro (at Newark, DE) (66)
11/26 @ Delaware (233)
12/01 vs. Houston Baptist (346)
12/04 vs. Prairie View (245)
12/07 @ SFA (107)
12/15 @ ULL (65)
12/22 vs. Texas A&M Corpus Christi (326)
.
Here are teams we should try to get H/H with:
AAC: Houston (20), Tulsa (89), Memphis (108), SMU (117), Tulane (174) - we should be scheduling these teams in ALL sports
SLC: I'd look at Rankings from Previous 5 years. I like having SFA on Schedule (wish it weren't away the same year as USL). I'd schedule the Demons over Houston Baptist or Non-DI teams.
SBC: I like having the Cajuns on the schedule. They usually have a decent team. I like the idea someone tossed of having an annual H/H. Also UALR. Might as well have ULM on there instead of one of the SWAC/Non-D1 teams - If we can get them home only (not likely to happen).
SWAC - nope - if we do have to have 1 a year - make it Grambling
C-USA needs to work on an C-USA/AAC challenge (I know Judy will get right on it);
Have it sort of like a bracket buster - Known home and away teams - match Regions/Rankings as close as possible (2 C-USA teams would have to sit out - of course we'd likely be the odd one out).
How it could have worked last year - of course it would not be fair to the AAC teams
Left out - rice/utep
Cincinnati 7 30 MTSU Houston 20 184 UTSA Wichita State 21 32 WKU Tulsa 89 188 UNT Memphis 108 150 UAB UCF 87 290 FIU Temple 59 74 ODU Connecticut 126 78 Marshall SMU 117 192 Tech Tulane 174 204 USM East Carolina 275 321 Charlotte South Florida 276 269 FAU
I'd love to be able to put together an annual (4 or 8) tournament (since we never get invited to the good ones!)
Bulldog Barks & Bytes Thanksgiving Classic at CenturyLink Center
West C-USA: Tech, UNT, Rice, UTSA, USM
West AAC: Houston, Tulsa, Memphis, SMU, Tulane
Regional SBC/SLC: NLU, USL, SE LA, McNeese, SFA, UCA, Arkansas St, UALR, UTA
Regional P5: LSU, A&M, Arkansas, OK St, OK, Baylor, TCU,
For 8-team tourney: Grambling, Southern, Jackson State, UAPB,
For this to work we'd need a coach and AD with an incentive to do their job correctly.
When you can do the minimum necessary and have no fear of repercussions, there's no reason to improve.
We are backing down by 4 I think.
Somebody get this guy a medal.
Our admin has got to understand that basketball isn't football in the south. It isn't a social event. Basketball has to be fun to be fun. Don't bother us with excessively crap schedules. More money games mean more $$ and RPI. Home and home with Sunbelt schools are at least something to talk about.
I agree with you and sportdawg, and I live in Ruston and spend time with my family instead of wasting my time at some of these games. Why not go to Kansas, Duke, or UNC to get paid, dumptrucked, and have and rpi boost? We will benefit more from getting stomped there than beating a 325 at home.
Get off the "improve RPI" horse. Tech won't be getting an at-large bid to the Dance, period, so it does no good to improve the schedule for that purpose. We have to win the auto-bid to dance.
More importantly, we need a coach who can actually coach. Let's start there.
Does no good for us if we win autobid and get 15seed because we played nobody.
Get an attractive schedule to get fans interested. I have no interest in this schedule