lets give long another year

[JAY]

i saw almost no fight in some of the seniors long had out there. supposedly, 2 of them quit on him out at las cruces.

lets let him get his players in here next year and see what he can do with them. most of the players on the court will be his players. he recruited dowdell, pringle, williams, sneed, and nixon. he has 4 freshmen coming in, plus whitney jones. lawson and levingston arent "his players" but they never have played a lot anyway. he might not have recruited mangum, i dont know, but she has never played for anyone else.


i have criticized the teams fight and the coach has a lot to do with that. BUT when your senior "leaders" are leading you the wrong way, its hard to get control of that. so....


give him next year. we will be a smaller team, but a very talented team. hopefully we will be a hungry team and a winning team. we know chris and his staff are going to work hard and fix this. we can debate the wnit all we want, but i say we drop it.



(we also have much, much bigger fish to fry)

[champion110]

i saw almost no fight in some of the seniors long had out there. supposedly, 2 of them quit on him out at las cruces.

lets let him get his players in here next year and see what he can do with them. most of the players on the court will be his players. he recruited dowdell, pringle, williams, sneed, and nixon. he has 4 freshmen coming in, plus whitney jones. lawson and levingston arent "his players" but they never have played a lot anyway. he might not have recruited mangum, i dont know, but she has never played for anyone else.


i have criticized the teams fight and the coach has a lot to do with that. BUT when your senior "leaders" are leading you the wrong way, its hard to get control of that. so....


give him next year. we will be a smaller team, but a very talented team. hopefully we will be a hungry team and a winning team. we know chris and his staff are going to work hard and fix this. we can debate the wnit all we want, but i say we drop it.



(we also have much, much bigger fish to fry)

I agree with you.

As for Mangum, she was recruiting by Budke. She is the only player that I give him credit for bringing in. Long went out and made sure that she was still on board as one of his first duties.

Long truly believes in the Techsters tradition. He will get this program back to where it was. He is building from the bottom up with some very talented Freshmen. It is tough to rebuild under these expectations. He will do us a great job, though. His heart is in it.

[Brian96]

I agree with your conclusion, although I don't think the analysis matters too much. Two years is not long enough to judge a coach's performance, especially a coach who inherited a program on a downslide.

Regardless of the sport, I think 3 years is a minimum for evaluating a coach. If there is not a clear and consistent decline over those first three years, then you give them at least one more year to get more data. If there is a clear decline, cut them quickly and move on.

That is, of course, unless you are Alabama and already know that you have a Saban in the wings if you can your mediocre coach.

[10cDawg]

Long definitley deserves another year. I think that if you went to a Lady Techster game this year, it was obvious that the was a major lack in leadership on the floor. I support Chris and his staff. Hopefully, the returners will learn from this year and not make the same mistake. This could have been an amazing learning experience for the girls, Chris, and his staff. We need to handle failure as the same way we handle success. This year the team failed to make the NCAAs. It's time we move.

[Dirtydawg]

I'm all for giving Long a chance, however, I don't think he gets a bye because his senior leaders weren't leading the team. I'd be more willing to not be so upset if he had sat these girls when he saw he wasn't getting any leadership from them-used them as substitutes. At least, the record would be more acceptable. It just seems to me that he gave them too many chances which, I think, will come back to haunt him when other players decide they don't want to be part of the team. But, I do think he needs at least one more year.

[bubba3303]

jay it's about time somebody spoke up with some sort of intelligence. coach long definitely deserves to stick around. he's a good coach. we play good defense and if our girls this year were capable of knocking down shots, we would play good offense. no matter how much coaching the man does, his players still have to go out and execute. this year it just didn't happen. i love this group, but there's not any pure shooters. next year's recruits are. also nixon can score and will be an extremely solid player after she gets some more experience and calms down a little. april williams is a star in the making, while sneed and dowdell will be fine in the post. we'll continue to play defense and have girls that can knock down shots and be back dominating the wac and as coach long said "begin the new streak."

[RhythmDawg]

I agree. We all have opinions about where Budke's heart was. It certainly wasn't here. I think we all believe, at least I do, that Long's heart is at Tech. Let him do the work. Let him learn how to be a head coach. Let him bring in his freshmen. Get rid of the JUCOs. Let's see if he can rebuild a program.

[beaux66]

I think the difference will be whitney jones. Not to mention all the pop and drop shooters he recruited. They will be much better. and this team will not necessarily be smaller. I for one think that we will be more physical than Ty Moore was with Sneed and Dowdell.

[Dirtydawg]

jay it's about time somebody spoke up with some sort of intelligence. coach long definitely deserves to stick around. he's a good coach. we play good defense and if our girls this year were capable of knocking down shots, we would play good offense. no matter how much coaching the man does, his players still have to go out and execute. this year it just didn't happen. i love this group, but there's not any pure shooters. next year's recruits are. also nixon can score and will be an extremely solid player after she gets some more experience and calms down a little. april williams is a star in the making, while sneed and dowdell will be fine in the post. we'll continue to play defense and have girls that can knock down shots and be back dominating the wac and as coach long said "begin the new streak."

When you say next year's recruits, are talking about girls who are in high school now that will be freshmen next year, or are you talking about girls that were freshmen this year who were waiting on experience to play? Because, if he had shooters on the bench and didn't play them, then I'm beginning to rethink my feelings about giving him at least one more year. If you're talking about high school seniors that will be freshmen next year, do you really see them making a difference? And if you do, does that mean that when they don't produce we won't have to hear you making the excuse that they're just freshmen?

[BS1994TECH]

1 more year. I wonder who's the head coach at Vicksburg now?

[FishingBack]

jay it's about time somebody spoke up with some sort of intelligence. coach long definitely deserves to stick around. he's a good coach. we play good defense and if our girls this year were capable of knocking down shots, we would play good offense. no matter how much coaching the man does, his players still have to go out and execute. this year it just didn't happen. i love this group, but there's not any pure shooters. next year's recruits are. also nixon can score and will be an extremely solid player after she gets some more experience and calms down a little. april williams is a star in the making, while sneed and dowdell will be fine in the post. we'll continue to play defense and have girls that can knock down shots and be back dominating the wac and as coach long said "begin the new streak."

Hi Chris I charge royalties for using my picture in your avatar :P 1 bottle of Jack ought to buy you a year or so.

[TechDawgMc]

I'm all for giving Long a chance, however, I don't think he gets a bye because his senior leaders weren't leading the team. I'd be more willing to not be so upset if he had sat these girls when he saw he wasn't getting any leadership from them-used them as substitutes. At least, the record would be more acceptable. It just seems to me that he gave them too many chances which, I think, will come back to haunt him when other players decide they don't want to be part of the team. But, I do think he needs at least one more year.

I agree with you completely, Dirty. While I think the main problem this year was Budke, I don't think Long gets a complete pass. He probably should have benched the seniors and let his freshmen play. Especially, once it was clear they weren't getting things done. I know a lot of coaches don't like to do that, but sometimes you've got to go with the future. Heck, OU may make the Final Four this year because Coale finally stopped being loyal to her seniors and her freshman point guard has turned into a star. I think Long was too patient with his seniors. But there's no way you get rid of a coach after two years -- especially not when he inherited the situation Long did.

[kdk008]

was this guy not the WAC coach of the year last year?

[LT]

i have criticized the teams fight and the coach has a lot to do with that. BUT when your senior "leaders" are leading you the wrong way, its hard to get control of that. so....

just bench em
________
BURN NOTICE DICUSSION

[dawg80]

As for Mangum, she was recruiting by Budke. She is the only player that I give him credit for bringing in. Long went out and made sure that she was still on board as one of his first duties.

.

Mangum is a frickin' turnover machine. This year she was a major liability.

Like that idiot Long, Eboni, and the entire program, gets the chance to turn it around next year. I'm not gonna say "I Hope" they do, that does no good, nor will I say "they will." I'll just wait to see.