@ Kent st (2/8)

[guest44]

BG has some talent. Probably around 5th best talent in the league. Below average coaching gets it to 8th or 9th place in the league. With Justin Turner it had top level talent and was picked to win the league. Crappy coaching got it to 6th place. A similar situation is Buffalo. They have probably the top talent in the league, but that coach brings them back to the pack.

The roster since Wiggins graduated makes no sense. BG plays high tempo offense, yet has run out centers like Mattos, Swingle, and O’Neal. Each provides little offensively and tons of defensive liability. Yikes how this team could use Devin Zeigler defensively on the ball. But, he got run out for Metheney who couldn’t guard a pick up game at the Rec.

All in all it is what we said it was going to be. Louis Orr 2.0. Mediocre coach finds once in a decade talent, and doesn’t understand what to put around that talent to win. Simultaneously, BGSU athletic department shows no standards, makes same mistake again, and awards huge raise and extension for beating Ball St and Northern Illinois in Cleveland. The standard should be wake me up when BG beats Akron, Kent, Ohio or Buffalo in Cleveland. Those teams regularly win in Cleveland. BGSU can’t make the NCAA Tournament because they can’t identify what a good coach looks like. The saddest part of all is how easily Huger worked Bob Moosbrugger for the raise and extension. He just talked about it publicly. That’s our BGSU. Everyone gets a decade to do nothing.

[jpfalcon09]

Man, most of the men's sports programs are in a sad state of affairs. The alumni who support the revenue sports deserve better than what's being presented. I sure hope university leadership feels the same way.

[hammb]

BG has some talent. Probably around 5th best talent in the league. Below average coaching gets it to 8th or 9th place in the league. With Justin Turner it had top level talent and was picked to win the league. Crappy coaching got it to 6th place. A similar situation is Buffalo. They have probably the top talent in the league, but that coach brings them back to the pack.

This is my point.

I'm not saying we have no talent. I'm not even saying that we're playing guys who don't deserve scholarships (as we have in the past with guys like Swingle, etc). But I am NOT seeing a roster that "you win the MAC" with. Yes, it's a tough argument to really discern because if we actually ran a legit offensive system we'd see everybody improve. IF we had coaches that actually got players to learn/work they'd probably improve their skills and might also show up with some defensive effort on a nightly basis.

Still, I feel like if we had the talent to win the MAC, even with the lousy coaching, we wouldn't be to the point of potentially missing Cleveland entirely. With Turner we clearly had the talent to win the MAC, and still didn't, but this team doesn't have a Justin Turner, and I just don't think you can expect to win the MAC without one. Plowden is a really good player, maybe one of my favorite BG players to watch in the last 10+ years. But if he's a first team all MAC guy he's the 5th guy on that list, and you just simply can NOT run an offense through him. He doesn't see the floor well enough and he doesn't have a go to move to get himself buckets either. And as his offensive usage rate has gone up I feel like his defense & rebounding are below where they used to be. Further, when we've played the better teams in the MAC, he's almost always NOT the best player on the floor.

We play 7-8 guys on a nightly basis who are all "capable" MAC players. Diggs is the only one I'd say really has a defined role and even he's had games recently where he didn't even get 5 shots. The guards are all "fine" I guess? On any given night you might get 6 assists and 15 points from either Curtis or Gordon, but on nights they don't give us that we get turnovers and nothing. It's not JUST on the coaches that these guys (some of whom have played 4 years of college basketball) show up as completely different players from game to game. Mills and Fulcher provide next to nothing at this point offensively, but have probably shown the most defensive ability of the bunch when engaged. Turner is a nice bench piece, but he's been inconsistent enough that it's tough to beg for more mins for him, and bench pieces don't win the conference.

What I see is a collection of pretty good players and none of them are capable of being the man. Even with good coaching I think this is a group that would compete on a nightly basis and fall short all too often against the better teams in the MAC because they lack the primary ballhandler/scorer that all good teams have.

[guest44]

Last night in particular when Kent St stretched lead from 2 to 12. Bad decision on offense leads to lazy defense on other end. Reece misses shot, pouts back on defense, doesn’t fight through screen, three pointer. Curtis or Gordon take bad shot, no hussle back, dunk. Fulcher takes stupid risk going for a steal, two passes, wide open three. The defense on the inbounds play for a dunk and foul was just pathetic. No emotion from Huger, no accountability, no leadership. And while most of this happened Plowden was on the bench. Plowden is a fine player but he is not a #1 leader. Fields is more of that than Plowden and he is a role player. The program has no direction. If you couldn’t figure it out with Turner and Frye back and Wiggins leaving, how could you expect Huger to sort this mess out?

[Matty B]

We do need to remember that is a team that is missing its two starting guards. While certainly not perfect outside of that, nor are Metheny and Fields perfect players, but how many teams in the MAC would finish in the top half of the league without EITHER of their 2 starting guards for the full season?

I thought we played much better defense in the first half than what I've grown to expect with this squad. The second half though the defense started to get really lax right after we took the lead. Offensively we countered that but just chucking up some really bad shots which quickly turned our live second half lead into a term point deficit that we'd never really threaten.

This team just isn't good. And while I do have major issues with huger I don't think this group is nearly as talented individually as we keep saying either. Yeah we have a lot of players who can put up a big night here and there but we have very few that we can count on every night.

These are my thoughts exactly. This is not a great team. The coaching isn’t great but three good players on the floor will give you much better results. We really only have one good player.

[guest44]

That's hard to say. Toledo, Ohio, Buffalo, and Kent St. guards are all much better than the guys BG is missing. So clearly they would be hurt by losses to those players. Would Huger play Fields and Metheny the majority of the minutes if they were healthy? Probably not. Why did he take in three transfer guards if Metheny and Fields were so good? Three transfer guards to which none are even close to being as good as any of the guards on the better MAC teams.

[TommyG]

Handing out an extension that wasn’t earned is the biggest issue. Coaches aren’t staying at BG anyway if they get the chance. Make them win something before you extend their contract and raise their salary. Would we be worse off if Huger went to Fordham and we had to hire someone else? Most likely not (but Moosbrugger would likely screw up the hire). Basketball just gets killed with these coaches who they can’t buyout and aren’t good enough to win with.

[Hammer]

In college athletics today, especially since the transfer mania, your teams success is 90% recruiting. It’s all about how you build your roster. Jimmy’s and Joe’s are more important than X’s and O’s.

We have a lot of B level MAC guys. You need 2-3 A level guys to compete. We have one of those guys.

Today’s basketball is about length, athleticism and shooting ability. We don’t have that kind of roster. We see flashes here and there but the good ones can bring it night after night.

[hammb]

In college athletics today, especially since the transfer mania, your teams success is 90% recruiting. It’s all about how you build your roster. Jimmy’s and Joe’s are more important than X’s and O’s.

We have a lot of B level MAC guys. You need 2-3 A level guys to compete. We have one of those guys.

Today’s basketball is about length, athleticism and shooting ability. We don’t have that kind of roster. We see flashes here and there but the good ones can bring it night after night.

This is my feeling as well. Saying whether or not this roster is "talented" is largely how you view talent. Many will see the flashes of ability and say that's a talented player that needs better coaching. That's all well and good but to me a good part of talent is whether you can do it on a nightly basis. The guard position is mostly where my concern lies, but you could say some of the same for Reece, Matiss, and Turner as well. All have the talent to show us flashes, but none have shown the talent of consistency, which I'd argue is the most important talent to have. Until we get more players that we can actually count on night to night this team is NOT talented enough to win, IMO.

That goes beyond the coaching issues, which are obviously glaring as well. The lack of consistent play from these transfers is the real frustrating thing...these guys have played years of college basketball, they're not freshmen.