Fire Muller...now!

Redbirdfan76

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I believe it has been said previously, but after Dan is let go (probably not until after next season) I am in favor of making a run a Roger Powell Jr. Got to believe he has picked up some of Gonzaga formula for winning. I know some of us on hthis board watched his Dad play for ISU. I remember he would get the inbound pass in the backcourt and many of us would yell "shoot"!!!!
 

jbird

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We were a basketball school up until 1998.


We still have the 48th most wins of D1 schools.

Are we really good at anything? Baseball won a couple of games in the NCAA tournament in 2019 then got eliminated. Volleyball which is far and away our best program hasn’t won a set in the NCAA Tournament since 2014. They get a play in game this year so maybe get a win.

Soccer won one NCAA tournament match 5 years ago. Track and Field wins the MVC, but doesn’t seem to send many kids to nationals or score any points at that meet.

We had one good run in sub division football, but now that program is in shambles.

We were on an upward trajectory when Zenger left and it’s all fallen apart.
Yes, we were definitely a basketball school. We were good at basketball and bad at football. Our 1976-77 and 1977-78 teams...........and maybe a couple of our best teams in the 1980s and 90s...........were better at basketball than the school 40 miles to the east (and I'm not talking about Parkland College) while a 3-8 season for Redbird football was pretty typical.

A couple of other stray thoughts: First, It's not apples-to-apples to compare the escalation of a basketball program like Gonzaga and try to attribute some relevance to ISU basketball, and not just about the cost-benefit analysis about buying out Muller's contract. Gonzaga offers 16 scholarship sports (8 each for men and women). and 6 of those are relatively low expense (men's and women's golf, tennis and cross country) They haven't fielded a football team in 80 years. If ISU dropped football and a couple of other sports, I'll bet we could afford to do a lot of things that are on the wish list of RBF.net posters. But I doubt that you could get a consensus to sacrifice football for the sake of basketball.

A second stray thought is that the demise of ISU basketball precedes A.D. Lyons and Prez Dietz by more than a decade. IMO, it can be traced back to A.D. Ric Greenspan "mailing it in" and promoting ISU Assistant Tom Richardson to follow Kevin Stallings. At the time, ISU basketball was a relatively hot commodity, having won consecutive league regular season and tournament championships. But when Stallings left for Vanderbilt, Greenspan was already on his way out the door to West Point and I don't believe a thorough and thoughtful effort was made to locate a head coach who could maintain or improve ISU's stature at the time. Tom Richardson was a good guy, but the basketball program fell off the cliff on his watch. Coach Tim Jank stopped the bleeding for a couple of years, but I don't think that any of us had the impression that sticking around and trying to build the program up to a Sweet 16 caliber was first and foremost in Jank's plans. None of this excuses the Muller contract from Hell, but I'm just putting my historical context out there as to when i think ISU stopped being a good major college basketball school.
 

MadBird

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Yes, we were definitely a basketball school. We were good at basketball and bad at football. Our 1976-77 and 1977-78 teams...........and maybe a couple of our best teams in the 1980s and 90s...........were better at basketball than the school 40 miles to the east (and I'm not talking about Parkland College) while a 3-8 season for Redbird football was pretty typical.

A couple of other stray thoughts: First, It's not apples-to-apples to compare the escalation of a basketball program like Gonzaga and try to attribute some relevance to ISU basketball, and not just about the cost-benefit analysis about buying out Muller's contract. Gonzaga offers 16 scholarship sports (8 each for men and women). and 6 of those are relatively low expense (men's and women's golf, tennis and cross country) They haven't fielded a football team in 80 years. If ISU dropped football and a couple of other sports, I'll bet we could afford to do a lot of things that are on the wish list of RBF.net posters. But I doubt that you could get a consensus to sacrifice football for the sake of basketball.

A second stray thought is that the demise of ISU basketball precedes A.D. Lyons and Prez Dietz by more than a decade. IMO, it can be traced back to A.D. Ric Greenspan "mailing it in" and promoting ISU Assistant Tom Richardson to follow Kevin Stallings. At the time, ISU basketball was a relatively hot commodity, having won consecutive league regular season and tournament championships. But when Stallings left for Vanderbilt, Greenspan was already on his way out the door to West Point and I don't believe a thorough and thoughtful effort was made to locate a head coach who could maintain or improve ISU's stature at the time. Tom Richardson was a good guy, but the basketball program fell off the cliff on his watch. Coach Tim Jank stopped the bleeding for a couple of years, but I don't think that any of us had the impression that sticking around and trying to build the program up to a Sweet 16 caliber was first and foremost in Jank's plans. None of this excuses the Muller contract from Hell, but I'm just putting my historical context out there as to when i think ISU stopped being a good major college basketball school.
Well, I agree with one part of your post - we were a basketball school. Even before the late 70's. In the late 60's we were players at the "Normal School" level. And the Robinson/Smithson years were pretty cool.

As for the dropping football/Gonzaga stuff, you know, so Gonzaga waited 65-70 after dropping football to make their mark? I kid, but you know, I'm not buying for one minute that football is holding back basketball.

Also, I sure ain't putting the demise of ISU hoops on Tom Richardson, or the decision to hire him. 10-20, 21-9, 17-14, 8-21. Hiring the top assistant to Stallings doesn't sound like "mailing it in", at least as I recall. Maybe I wasn't hooked up enough at the time to know the insiders wanted someone else. Richardson had 21-9 and 17-14 records and made the NIT one year, and his final year was a dog, but also had players like Vince Greene, Trey Guidry, Marcus Arnold, Dana Ford that last year - we've had worse. 56-64, .467 percentage for his career. Followed by Porter Moser - 51-67, .432 percentage. If you're gonna pin it on someone, I'd say you pick Moser. We replaced Richardson with a guy who had a mediocre record at Arkansas State. Moser never had 20 wins, finished above .500 just once and never made the postseason.

I'm not arguing Richardson was a success, nice guy and all sure. But I don't put the demise at his feet.
 

SgtHulka

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Yes, we were definitely a basketball school. We were good at basketball and bad at football. Our 1976-77 and 1977-78 teams...........and maybe a couple of our best teams in the 1980s and 90s...........were better at basketball than the school 40 miles to the east (and I'm not talking about Parkland College) while a 3-8 season for Redbird football was pretty typical.

A couple of other stray thoughts: First, It's not apples-to-apples to compare the escalation of a basketball program like Gonzaga and try to attribute some relevance to ISU basketball, and not just about the cost-benefit analysis about buying out Muller's contract. Gonzaga offers 16 scholarship sports (8 each for men and women). and 6 of those are relatively low expense (men's and women's golf, tennis and cross country) They haven't fielded a football team in 80 years. If ISU dropped football and a couple of other sports, I'll bet we could afford to do a lot of things that are on the wish list of RBF.net posters. But I doubt that you could get a consensus to sacrifice football for the sake of basketball.

A second stray thought is that the demise of ISU basketball precedes A.D. Lyons and Prez Dietz by more than a decade. IMO, it can be traced back to A.D. Ric Greenspan "mailing it in" and promoting ISU Assistant Tom Richardson to follow Kevin Stallings. At the time, ISU basketball was a relatively hot commodity, having won consecutive league regular season and tournament championships. But when Stallings left for Vanderbilt, Greenspan was already on his way out the door to West Point and I don't believe a thorough and thoughtful effort was made to locate a head coach who could maintain or improve ISU's stature at the time. Tom Richardson was a good guy, but the basketball program fell off the cliff on his watch. Coach Tim Jank stopped the bleeding for a couple of years, but I don't think that any of us had the impression that sticking around and trying to build the program up to a Sweet 16 caliber was first and foremost in Jank's plans. None of this excuses the Muller contract from Hell, but I'm just putting my historical context out there as to when i think ISU stopped being a good major college basketball school.
These words he speaks are true
 

FriscoBird90

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Messages
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Yes, we were definitely a basketball school. We were good at basketball and bad at football. Our 1976-77 and 1977-78 teams...........and maybe a couple of our best teams in the 1980s and 90s...........were better at basketball than the school 40 miles to the east (and I'm not talking about Parkland College) while a 3-8 season for Redbird football was pretty typical.

A couple of other stray thoughts: First, It's not apples-to-apples to compare the escalation of a basketball program like Gonzaga and try to attribute some relevance to ISU basketball, and not just about the cost-benefit analysis about buying out Muller's contract. Gonzaga offers 16 scholarship sports (8 each for men and women). and 6 of those are relatively low expense (men's and women's golf, tennis and cross country) They haven't fielded a football team in 80 years. If ISU dropped football and a couple of other sports, I'll bet we could afford to do a lot of things that are on the wish list of RBF.net posters. But I doubt that you could get a consensus to sacrifice football for the sake of basketball.

A second stray thought is that the demise of ISU basketball precedes A.D. Lyons and Prez Dietz by more than a decade. IMO, it can be traced back to A.D. Ric Greenspan "mailing it in" and promoting ISU Assistant Tom Richardson to follow Kevin Stallings. At the time, ISU basketball was a relatively hot commodity, having won consecutive league regular season and tournament championships. But when Stallings left for Vanderbilt, Greenspan was already on his way out the door to West Point and I don't believe a thorough and thoughtful effort was made to locate a head coach who could maintain or improve ISU's stature at the time. Tom Richardson was a good guy, but the basketball program fell off the cliff on his watch. Coach Tim Jank stopped the bleeding for a couple of years, but I don't think that any of us had the impression that sticking around and trying to build the program up to a Sweet 16 caliber was first and foremost in Jank's plans. None of this excuses the Muller contract from Hell, but I'm just putting my historical context out there as to when i think ISU stopped being a good major college basketball school.
I was tempted to say that over the years, ISU men's basketball seems to have gone from "this is my UCLA" to "this is our UNC-Asheville." The thing is, a little research exposed me to the fact UNC-A has been to the NCAA tournament four times since 2003. Four times. In the past 18 years. Yet here we are at 0-for-23 years and talking about rebuilding and being young yet again.
 

jwa123

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Well, I agree with one part of your post - we were a basketball school. Even before the late 70's. In the late 60's we were players at the "Normal School" level. And the Robinson/Smithson years were pretty cool.

As for the dropping football/Gonzaga stuff, you know, so Gonzaga waited 65-70 after dropping football to make their mark? I kid, but you know, I'm not buying for one minute that football is holding back basketball.

Also, I sure ain't putting the demise of ISU hoops on Tom Richardson, or the decision to hire him. 10-20, 21-9, 17-14, 8-21. Hiring the top assistant to Stallings doesn't sound like "mailing it in", at least as I recall. Maybe I wasn't hooked up enough at the time to know the insiders wanted someone else. Richardson had 21-9 and 17-14 records and made the NIT one year, and his final year was a dog, but also had players like Vince Greene, Trey Guidry, Marcus Arnold, Dana Ford that last year - we've had worse. 56-64, .467 percentage for his career. Followed by Porter Moser - 51-67, .432 percentage. If you're gonna pin it on someone, I'd say you pick Moser. We replaced Richardson with a guy who had a mediocre record at Arkansas State. Moser never had 20 wins, finished above .500 just once and never made the postseason.

I'm not arguing Richardson was a success, nice guy and all sure. But I don't put the demise at his feet.
How about the beginning of the demise?
 

bombay

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If only we could hire the first AA D1 basketball coach again. And hire him one year earlier so Spencer Haywood could have been a Redbird.
 

MadBird

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How about the beginning of the demise?
I'll maybe buy "beginning of the demise" I guess - jbird said the basketball program "fell off the cliff" on Richardson's watch. And I would say having a 21-9 record and NIT appearance followed by a 17-14 record isn't really going over the cliff. Starting to slip down the hillside maybe, especially the last year, and then the rocks broke loose under Porter.

Attendance -- Stallings last two years 8694 followed by 7397. Over Richardson's 4, from 6540 to 6021. Moser, 6260 down to 5092.
 

BirdGrad2011

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Guys are committing in a flurry. Guys we’ve reached out to are passing. We are seeing the program fall further and further every day.
 

BirdGrad2011

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Only the ones we know we are teaching out to. There are many other ways to contact a player besides Twitter.
You realize there are guys that follow recruiting for a living and tweet out who’s interested in who and who is talking to who. We aren’t just going by follows like on the recruiting board.

Stop. Blindly. Defending. Dan.
 

Redbird Alum 2004

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You realize there are guys that follow recruiting for a living and tweet out who’s interested in who and who is talking to who. We aren’t just going by follows like on the recruiting board.

Stop. Blindly. Defending. Dan.
Aww you didn't use the clapping hands emoji between each word.

I hate to break this to you but there are a lot of recruits the public doesn't know about. Take a trip down just some of ISU's past signings. There were several we weren't aware of. So no not blindly defending Dan just staying a fact. It sure is nice you let Dan live in your head rent free.
 

CaliRdBrd

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While we’re desperately trying to stay above a SWAC-level caliber of play, Gonzaga just signed up the top player in the country, as well as 5-Star stud Sullis the week before.
I doubt twenty years ago they thought this would happen.
Clearly the landscape is slightly different these days, but ISU’s “think average” mindset is the exact reason we’ll never get within a DeChambeau-driver-down-a-concrete-highway to this level of relevance.
 

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gobirds85

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In summation, we aren't going anywhere as long as we have Dan at the helm. We cannot even compete for the middle of the Valley, let alone regain any national prominence. We can't afford to fire him, we can't afford to keep him. We are damned if we do, damned if we don't.

Thank you larry lyons.
 

FriscoBird90

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In summation, we aren't going anywhere as long as we have Dan at the helm. We cannot even compete for the middle of the Valley, let alone regain any national prominence. We can't afford to fire him, we can't afford to keep him. We are damned if we do, damned if we don't.

Thank you larry lyons.
We have a "B-I-N-G-O!" Thirty-five pages of remarks summed up in five sentences. Well done.
 

redbirdfan04

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While we’re desperately trying to stay above a SWAC-level caliber of play, Gonzaga just signed up the top player in the country, as well as 5-Star stud Sullis the week before.
I doubt twenty years ago they thought this would happen.
Clearly the landscape is slightly different these days, but ISU’s “think average” mindset is the exact reason we’ll never get within a DeChambeau-driver-down-a-concrete-highway to this level of relevance.
your use of metaphors are strong today!
 

Bird Friend

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This isn't a defense of Dan, just wanted to add some facts in support for or against some of the comments made:

Guys are committing in a flurry. Guys we’ve reached out to are passing. We are seeing the program fall further and further every day.

Misleading. There was an initial "flurry" (mostly because the signing period began) but not a wholesale commitment by all . . . 40% of the transfers have committed, 60% have not. Add to that, HS and Juco recruits are not committing in great numbers, probably due to the # of transfers available. I've seen some recruits saying they don't plan to make a decision until May or June.

Yes, some of the guys we've reached out to have committed elsewhere, but that has been true of every class ever recruited at ISU.

You realize there are guys that follow recruiting for a living and tweet out who’s interested in who and who is talking to who. We aren’t just going by follows like on the recruiting board.

Stop. Blindly. Defending. Dan.

Not every recruit is on Twitter. Recruiting 'scouts' can't talk to every recruit every day. And not every recruit shouts out about every team that contacts them. There are always guys we don't know about because nobody talks about it. Case in point, we looked at a 6-10 kid at a Cloud County CC in Kansas. I only know because I know their interim HC and he mentioned a couple weeks ago that ISU had looked at him earlier this season. Kid is uber athletic, but still learning the game. Originally came to the juco as a pitcher for the baseball team. I never listed him on the recruiting board because he'd already committed verbally to TN State which my buddy said was appropriate based on the kid's experience.

Arguing that we don't know who we'll end up with from a recruiting standpoint isn't blinding defending Dan. It's arguing the obvious, that we don't know yet who we'll end up with. Personally, I'm not terribly hopeful that we'll land a difference maker . . . but I'm not yet completely without hope. There are still a lot of quality transfers and juco players available. And who knows why they'll make the decisions they make.

In summation, we aren't going anywhere as long as we have Dan at the helm. We cannot even compete for the middle of the Valley, let alone regain any national prominence. We can't afford to fire him, we can't afford to keep him. We are damned if we do, damned if we don't.

Thank you larry lyons.

Still not sure when we had national "prominence" . . . I really think there's a misconception that six trips to the dance with 3 second songs equals national prominence. We've never been nationally prominent. I can understand a desire to bye a nationally prominent, but not a desire to return to a place we've never been.
 

gobirds85

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This isn't a defense of Dan, just wanted to add some facts in support for or against some of the comments made:



Misleading. There was an initial "flurry" (mostly because the signing period began) but not a wholesale commitment by all . . . 40% of the transfers have committed, 60% have not. Add to that, HS and Juco recruits are not committing in great numbers, probably due to the # of transfers available. I've seen some recruits saying they don't plan to make a decision until May or June.

Yes, some of the guys we've reached out to have committed elsewhere, but that has been true of every class ever recruited at ISU.



Not every recruit is on Twitter. Recruiting 'scouts' can't talk to every recruit every day. And not every recruit shouts out about every team that contacts them. There are always guys we don't know about because nobody talks about it. Case in point, we looked at a 6-10 kid at a Cloud County CC in Kansas. I only know because I know their interim HC and he mentioned a couple weeks ago that ISU had looked at him earlier this season. Kid is uber athletic, but still learning the game. Originally came to the juco as a pitcher for the baseball team. I never listed him on the recruiting board because he'd already committed verbally to TN State which my buddy said was appropriate based on the kid's experience.

Arguing that we don't know who we'll end up with from a recruiting standpoint isn't blinding defending Dan. It's arguing the obvious, that we don't know yet who we'll end up with. Personally, I'm not terribly hopeful that we'll land a difference maker . . . but I'm not yet completely without hope. There are still a lot of quality transfers and juco players available. And who knows why they'll make the decisions they make.



Still not sure when we had national "prominence" . . . I really think there's a misconception that six trips to the dance with 3 second songs equals national prominence. We've never been nationally prominent. I can understand a desire to bye a nationally prominent, but not a desire to return to a place we've never been.

Agreed. "National prominence" was hyperbole. But the days of being ranked, ncaa tourneys and ncaa wins are all but a distant memory and those memories will continue to get fuzzier with every passing year.
 
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