Clock's Ticking, Mick

[Woodmania]

After an especially painful beginning to 2010, sports fans around here are pretty pissed. Mick may want to start putting together some wins and get into the NCAA tournament. It's going to take eight wins to beat last year's record. Where are the wins in this schedule?

Jan 13 at St. John's
Jan 16 Notre Dame
Jan 20 South Florida
Jan 24 at Louisville
Jan 30 Providence
Feb 4 at Notre Dame
Feb 7 Syracuse
Feb 13 Connecticut
Feb 16 at South Florida
Feb 21 Marquette
Feb 24 DePaul
Feb 27 at West Virginia
Mar 2 Villanova
Mar 6 at Georgetown

Probably not here at the end of the year so go ahead and start getting some Ws now!

[osu99jp]

Originally Posted by Woodmania

After an especially painful beginning to 2010, sports fans around here are pretty pissed. Mick may want to start putting together some wins and get into the NCAA tournament. It's going to take eight wins to beat last year's record. Where are the wins in this schedule?
Probably not here at the end of the year so go ahead and start getting some Ws now!

I was talking to my boy after the Seton Hall game, and we both agreed UC HAS to start winning those games against "middling" Big East teams like Seton Hall and Providence on a regular basis if they're ever gonna dance. We never beat the top ten teams and I'm somewhat OK with that....it's the yearly losses to teams like Seton Hall/Depaul/St. John's that kill us.

Looking ahead, UC could win 5 in a row starting with St. John's...4-1 would be acceptable, but nothing would shock me. They need to win NOW though, because the schedule only gets tougher - at ND, Syracuse, UConn....easily could be 3 L's. Probably is more like it.

Happy to say, I will be in attendance at the G'town-UC game in Washington DC this year. Safe to assume we'll be in "must win" mode by that time.

[Franny]

Clock's Ticking, Mick

Give him time. He is building a program from scratch! It has only been 6 years since Bob Huggins was dismissed!

[osu99jp]

Originally Posted by Franny

Give him time. He is building a program from scratch! It has only been 6 years since Bob Huggins was dismissed!

[osu99jp]

Originally Posted by Franny

AZ makes the NCAA tournament next year. They will hire the right guy. They have the name. Players will come. Just takes the right hire to coach the team.

Bookmark and Quote March 2010.

Arizona hires Sean Miller...

Originally Posted by Franny

Good for Miller - he deserves it. AZ back in the 2010 NCAA! Take that JP & Katzz!

Arizona Wildcats 2009-10 Schedule/Results

8 wins
8 losses

...and Sean didn't have it half as hard as Mick.

[osu99jp]

Indiana rebuilding project year 1:

6 wins
25 losses

Indiana rebuilding project year 2:

7 wins
8 losses

with a far more accomplished coach than UC and a much higher profile school.

[david aka the TYZ]

I"m very frustrated with ths team. Mick is falling out of favor with me. His first two years there was no way to truly evaluate him with the team he had. Last year he had his worthless players gone and had some young talent. I didn't expect much out of such a young team in such a tough conference, but I did expect to see the sophomores improve over the previous year and I expected the freshmen to improve as the season went along. Neither of those things happened and I said at that point I was starting to question Cronin's ability and knew this year would be make or break for me. He is breaking. This team has too much talent to continue to struggle. I have seen zero improvent out of our juniors over two and a half years and have seen zero improvement out of our sophomores over one and a half years. This year's freshmen haven't improved either. I believe Cronin to be a good coach, but he does not have control of this team. These players do not listen to him and do not want to learn from him. I don't think this is 100% his fault, but he hasn't been able to correct the laziness of this team and that is going to be his downfall. I'm tired of watching guys stand around on offense. I'm tired of watching Deonte Vaughn run the point. Get Cash in there and ride his butt until he figures out what you want him to do. He has to learn as he plays. He won't learn from the bench. Usually I can agree to benching a guy when he isn't performing, but we don't have that luxury at the point position -- the whole team is suffering. Mick has to find a way -- immediatey -- to fire this team up and get them to play every possession hard for 40 minutes or we need to hire someone else who can.

[osu99jp]

I don't disagree, David. As I mentioned, the things that really are getting to me are the losses to the mediocre Big East teams. I looked at the schedule long and hard before the season, and concluded early on that we needed to win EARLY because the second half of the schedule is pretty brutal. UC was destined to be a bubble team from the get-go because I expected a lot of losses occurring in the 2nd half, leading up to March Madness.

The home losses have got to be few and far between, and losing to Pitt was not in my plans if we were to make the Big Dance. Neither was losing at Seton Hall.

[david aka the TYZ]

Originally Posted by osu99jp

I don't disagree, David. As I mentioned, the things that really are getting to me are the losses to the mediocre Big East teams. I looked at the schedule long and hard before the season, and concluded early on that we needed to win EARLY because the second half of the schedule is pretty brutal. UC was destined to be a bubble team from the get-go because I expected a lot of losses occurring in the 2nd half, leading up to March Madness.

The home losses have got to be few and far between, and losing to Pitt was not in my plans if we were to make the Big Dance. Neither was losing at Seton Hall.

The Pitt loss wasn't that bad to me because we actually played pretty well, we just got beat by a good team. I thought they put together a rather good, thorough 40 minutes of basketball. Maybe our defense lacked a little, but all-in-all you're going to lose to good teams in this conference -- home or away. Seton Hall has talent and played superb. Tough challenge on the road, but you're right, if you want to be a tournament team and get to the next level that is a game you have to find a way to win. Not let them go on a 25-2 run on you and go 11 minutes acting like you've never played basketball in your life. That's what I find frustrating. This team just disappears and doesn't seem to care. I don't know if this is Mick's fault, but it definately is his job to control and it definately is his problem if he can't control it. I'm looking at this St. John's game as crucial to this season. They need to rebound nice and put together a solid effort and get a convincing win. Convincing in the sense that they came to play and you're not going to beat us, not necessarily a huge point spread.

[Woodmania]

Another chokejob!

Once again, this team makes STUPID passes in the clutch. They brought St. Johns back and put them on the line to win it. These players are complete morons with the ball in pressure situations!

The season's winding down, Mick. Where are these wins going to come from?!

[millslite]

Originally Posted by Woodmania

Another chokejob!

Once again, this team makes STUPID passes in the clutch.

Probably the worst 2 minutes of BB I have seen in many years. Even at the end, the worst that should have happened was an OT.

[Franny]

Mick's road record is now 8-31. I thought UC was an elite program. Either they are not elite or Mick is not a good coach. You decide.

I know White Magic has forbidden me to peruse Bearcat Lair forums but people's heads are exploding on there. 99% of the members now HATE the Angry Elf (nickname emerging on that site BTW) but are realizing there is no chance in hell UC pays to get rid of the guy. It is killing people.

I look at this way: They are competitive. If you are happy with simply being competitive (like OSUJP) then fine, he's the perfect guy. He ain't going nowhere because no one would want him. But if you truly expect excellence, you make the noise, you.... become a Mick Hata! Quit kidding yourself. How many loses will it take to truly deflate the "ah hah! I told you so!" moment you are dreaming of?

[osu99jp]

If you are happy with simply being competitive (like OSUJP) then fine, he's the perfect guy.

(Note to site contributors: Want to get an instant reaction from OSUJP? All you've gotta do is blatantly misrepresent his position on a topic!)


Ha! Only in FranLand does one conflate being "patient" with being "happy with simply being competitive".

My position has never changed. My position has always been to give him 4-5 years to get the program back on its feet. My position has always been to be patient, because it's gonna take time.

(Unless you're Franny, of course - in FranLand a university could have an A-Bomb dropped on it right before March Madness and they should still be able to find some players and at least make the Sweet 16 the following weekend. Hey..this is fun, Franny!)

Well, in all honesty my patience is wearing thin with this coach right now. I am not silly enough to blame HIM for retarded length-of-court inbounds passes his players throw...but I'm bright enough to know that everything they do on the court reflects on him. And I'm in-tune enough to know that UC has way too much talent to lose these games.

I've said it before, and I'm gonna say it again. This program will *never* be where it should be as long as they are losing to the St. Johns and Seton Halls and Providence's of the world. I, for one, have never really looked at UC as an "elite" program as Franny called it. But they aren't *THIS* either.

[david aka the TYZ]

Originally Posted by osu99jp

Well, in all honesty my patience is wearing thin with this coach right now. I am not silly enough to blame HIM for retarded length-of-court inbounds passes his players throw...but I'm bright enough to know that everything they do on the court reflects on him. And I'm in-tune enough to know that UC has way too much talent to lose these games.

I blame him. Coming out of a timeout, I fully believe he called that play. Why else would Vaughn sprint down court? You send the shortest guy on the team down to catch a jump ball in a double team. I guess he figured he'd catch them off guard. Unbelievable -- worst play call I've ever seen!

[david aka the TYZ]

Originally Posted by millslite

Probably the worst 2 minutes of BB I have seen in many years. Even at the end, the worst that should have happened was an OT.

I actually thought they played well the last few minutes (based on how piss-poor their overall game was). They executed down the stretch and built up a 2 possession lead after trailing late. The last 29 seconds, however, was the worst basketball I had ever seen.