...also watched Creighton yesterday, who (at home) defeated Marquette in rather convincing fashion.
Only six players scored for the Blue Jays...and five of those players were in double figures (including a SEMO transfer!).
Three seniors are on their roster--none of them scored vs Marquette.
But to my eye, Wichita is superior to Creighton...hard to explain exactly why except that Wichita looks capable of playing 'big boy basketball', while Creighton is not quite at that level.
I chuckle at a couple of responses to my post about Wichita--I am quite confident that if I ran into an SIU MBB coach at Schnucks (where I saw the 2018 football DC yesterday) and made the same comparison (about WSU vs SIU)...that they would agree with the comp (for right now).
But Creighton's 2020 talent level is a bit closer to SIU's...still far superior but not to the degree that WSU displays.
I guess I'm really kinda waxing nostalgic about the Matt Painter team (who benefited from the careful fertilization of the crop supplied by Bruce Weber)...which bled into a couple of years of good Chris Lowery. In those days SIU and Creighton and WSU were thisclose. Forget about campus pride blah blah blah...the basketball and the competition were both wonderful then--you didn't need to be a Saluki fan to recognize the excellence on display at the Arena.
Now? SIU thisclose to WSU and Creighton?!
Not so much (particularly Wichita).
And my God...then after Wichita and Creighton leave...Loyola (a school that replaced one of them!) makes it to the Final Four 😥 🙁 . Don't get me wrong--good for the Ramblers!...but why not SIU? (Rhetorical question here...I suspect I'm more aware of some of the actual reasons for SIU's athletic missteps as most who post on this board.)
It will be fun to watch the current MBB staff try their best to make things better at home in the conference...starting Saturday at 3 (Banterra Center).
(1) US COVID-19 statistics (February 29, 2020-June 16, 2020): 2,124,000 reported cases and 115,052 deaths
(2) Donald Trump (June 15, 2020) told a group of senior citizens that there would be very few cases of COVID-19 if the US stopped its testing and contact tracing: "If we stop testing right now, we'd have very few cases, actually."
(3) Donald Trump [(Jan 20, 2020), when asked if he's worried about a pandemic]: “No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s — going to be just fine.”
SIU was better than both last decade (or two decades now I guess). Lowery destroyed the program by bringing in questionable characters and being an overall bad coach. Hinson helped the APR issues but went with quick fixes like JUCO kids instead of building a program and relied on soft schedules to pad his win totals. Mullins is building the program the right way. Will it work? It remains to be seen. But right now I see nothing that is getting me off the Mullins bandwagon. We probably won’t know next year either.
I have long suspected that Painter was the most important piece of that run from 2002-2007. He was the only coach that had a piece of every one of those teams. From Kid Kent to many of the players that were recruited and signed for the 2007 team. This is Mullins first year as coach and the team was bare when he took over. To compare this teams to Creighton and Wichita at this point is pointless. Marshall is in his 14th season and McDermott is in his tenth season. Brian is half way through his first season.
I concur...sort of.
Will a first-tier coach ever stay for 14 and 10 years in Carbondale?
Jerry Kill said 'no', the best coaches would leave after five years.
So what is possible, exactly, at SIUC?
But that's a digression.
The comparisons I make are just that...snapshots of a point in time: now.
Not pointless at all.
Not at all.
See you at Banterra Saturday!
(1) US COVID-19 statistics (February 29, 2020-June 16, 2020): 2,124,000 reported cases and 115,052 deaths
(2) Donald Trump (June 15, 2020) told a group of senior citizens that there would be very few cases of COVID-19 if the US stopped its testing and contact tracing: "If we stop testing right now, we'd have very few cases, actually."
(3) Donald Trump [(Jan 20, 2020), when asked if he's worried about a pandemic]: “No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s — going to be just fine.”
I concur...sort of.
Will a first-tier coach ever stay for 14 and 10 years in Carbondale?
Jerry Kill said 'no', the best coaches would leave after five years.
So what is possible, exactly, at SIUC?
But that's a digression.
The comparisons I make are just that...snapshots of a point in time: now.
Not pointless at all.
Not at all.
See you at Banterra Saturday!
Mullins is more likely to stay at SIU than most but if we ever get to the point where Mullins would consider leaving, that means we'd be at a better point than we are now so there's no sense in worrying about it.
I think BM was a big help to Loyola in their Final Four and the last two conference championships. If he can continue to recruit talent, I think we'll be back in the NCAA in a few years.
UNI pays Jacobsen 900K and he's content to stay there so far. Smart. Marshall at WSU makes more than some Big 10 coaches! He's had chances to go to bigger name schools, but why do it?
To keep a successful coach for more than a few years will probably take a lot more salary.
Exactly. Pay the right coach enough and they'll stay unless a top high-tier job comes calling. For this to happen though, not only would men's basketball have to return to glory of sorts, but SIU athletics and the campus as a whole would have to raise their ambitions to new heights and open their wallets more than ever before.
--Insert something witty here--
Watching Creighton - Xavier, good game !
Hopefully we’re good enough at some point to worry about Mullins leaving for a bigger program, but I get the feeling he could stay at SIU if major donors continue to step up. He obviously is as passionate for the university as any of us. If this hypothetical situation ever unfolds, I think we could come up with enough money to keep him. We wouldn’t have to worry about him bringing in questionable characters.
Maybe Ben Jacobsen is a coaching role model.
“The best thing about freshmen is that they become sophomores.”
-- Al McGuire
