Dane Pound

Just a heads-up that the board might be down for a while today. Running some updates but they shouldn't last long.

Had a laugh at an email the other day. Got a work message about an upcoming skills enhancement seminar and the presenter was Todd Cetnar who played during the D1 transition days ( I think.) A blast from the past, glad to see he's doing well in his career after basketball.

You have Filien as departed but I thought he has another year of eligibility.

Didn't get to watch as much of the women or men as I would have liked this year but to me, this was one of Coach Mullens' best coaching jobs with all the attrition.

By the way, saw that Jillian Huerter has entered the transfer portal. She played 25 minutes a game at Rutgers. I *think" Meaghan Huerter has another year of eligibility. Would be a fun sister act next year.

Just a heads-up. This looks like a low traffic week so I'll be running some updates and the board might be temporarily down or look a little odd for a while. Everything should be done by Thursday for the LIU game.

No need to send out a search party for me. I'm still around.

Yank, I did respond to your messages. Not sure why you didn't see them but I will check again. Hopefully you don't give us a lousy Yelp review.

You're right about not seeing me at UA events. I haven't been going as much lately and probably won't in the near future. It's not a statement about the administration or anything. Recent life events have made me reshuffle priorities. Sports are great, but they are the dessert in life, not the main course. I've had to skip dessert recently and likely will for a while. 

Eli, you are more than welcome to build another forum with a similar mission. I'll keep this one up until you do and then pull the plug when you're done.

12 minutes ago, cwdickens said:

Wildcats win by one.... 

And will finish 3rd. Solid year for Herrion. With Daniels on the roster, they could do something in the playoffs.

18 minutes ago, McFan said:

I kinda agree.  I think we’re playing ok.  They are just better.  Maybe at every position.

Except Beagle.

On 2/23/2023 at 9:36 AM, Clickclack said:

 History shows he probably would have at some point found another 2 or 3 kids to ride back to the top or near the top, maybe but in the immediate future there was no prospects for that as the team continued to get worse over the last 3 years and with no star on the horizon or in the program. 

 

I actually liked the roster of Brown's last season. Had it not been for the coaching change, we could have returned CJ Kelly, Horton, Rizzuto, Healy and Champion in the backcourt the following year. It's one of the reason I was annoyed. I felt like we went through the down cycle (which are inevitable with mid majors) and would have returned a good group.

I agree with D96, this Will Brown rant is milder than most. I'd always assumed you had something saved in a Google doc and then just pasted it whenever Will Brown's name came up but there's some fresh material in here.

Bryant comes back to win. We live another day!

NJIT up double digits at the half over Bryant. An NJIT win would seal the casket on this season's postseason hopes.

Every time I think we're at the bottom this year, the program seems to find another level to sink to.

To follow up, both teams in the video were suspended from the NJ state tournament this year.

19 hours ago, UAalum72 said:

For perspective, Will was only 25% his first 2+ years (19-57,) building a new D-I program after the previous coach left in mid-season, and 41.2% his last three seasons. He was 55% in the fourteen seasons in between. The Sports Reference site has his career as 51.6% (315-295) which may include D-III games https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/coaches/will-brown-2.html

Brown had a winning record at Albany, went to the NCAA tournament 5 times, had a winning record in 7 of his past 10 years. And the three losing years he had were better than the first two years so far under Coach Killings. <begin sarcasm>There's a recipe for a happy fan base. <end sarcasm>

For short-term comparison, you could probably compare Coach Killings to the other two American East coaches who were hired the same year - Coach Ferry at UMBC and Coach Sanders at Bing.

Conference records:

Ferry - 18-12 in the AE

Sanders - 15-14 in the AE

Killings - 11-19 in the AE

That's just a snapshot and maybe Coach Killings can turn things around in the next three seasons if Neely and Drumgoole return next year. 

The long-term thing I don't like is Brett Nelson.

If you remember, Coach Killings was the Associate Head Coach at Marquette under Steve Wojciechowski. The Associate Head Coach at Marquette under Steve Wojciechowski before Killings was Brett Nelson.

Nelson is in his 4th year as the head coach at Holy Cross and is 27-80 so far. He may be there for another season, I'm not sure but the Holy Cross fans are not happy.

Not saying Nelson and Killings are the same, but it's not a great track record for former Marquette assistants.

Technically we're still alive for the 7 seed.

Jamel Horton has left the Mississippi State team. I didn't see any reason given but his playing time was going down as the season went on. He was starting early in the season but has been coming off the bench since they started conference play. That looks like one transfer portal move that didn't work out for either team.

21 minutes ago, dslyank said:

Not disputing you on Sanders, don’t know enough/anything about him; and beating UA 3 of 4 is no great testament. Maybe he is a great coach or maybe like a lot of what is going on these days, he just hit the “lottery portal” better than UA???

Whoa whoa whoa. Nobody said anything about "great."

I'm just saying, if you compare where Bing has been the last decade or so, he's done a decent job recruiting and coaching to a place that has seen a lot of losing in the past.

I don't like to say nice things about Bing but Sanders has done a nice job. They've beaten us 3 of the last 4 and might end up in 2nd by the end of the day.

Pretty clear contrast of two programs that made coaching changes last year and are now headed in different directions.

25 minutes ago, godanesgo99 said:

I was giving Jackson credit. I watched the replay on my phone right after it happened, and it looked like Jackson directed him into a standing wall of another player to intentionally knock him down hard. To me it looked intentional and I now love Jackson because of it. Sullivan always seemed to be a trash talking ahole. The player you want on your team but hate if he is the opponent. Kind like it felt that Beagle was going to become when he barked at the Siena bench earlier in the year.

No doubt Sullivan is a PITA. Vermont tends to always have one of those guys on their roster.

I guess I wasn't crazy about Killings talking about Vermont being tough and Albany not being tough. The word I would have used was "discipline." Vermont was organized and disciplined and we were unorganized and undisciplined. 

20 hours ago, dslyank said:

Got two T’s for hustle. 

I don't generally defend the refs and I certainly don't recommend anyone watching that game again but you should take another look at the second tech. Jackson plays tough D but that wasn't a good play although I understand the frustration.

Lets make sure Beagle and Becker don't talk in the handshake line.

On 1/30/2023 at 6:50 PM, godanesgo99 said:

Why didn't Davis play? Because he just hasn't been good in conference play, which is where most of us thought he would perform well with the level of competition.

 

I know Davis hasn't played well. I'm just curious why you would leave a healthy guard bolted to the bench when we're playing Drumgoole a gazillion minutes a game.

Edmead is (I think) still playing with a broken finger so I'm cutting him some slack.

On 1/30/2023 at 5:45 PM, Clickclack said:

He sucks?

Dude.

Did Davis get injured in the UNH game and I missed it? 

Just curious why he didn't play against Maine.

2 hours ago, dslyank said:

I certainly respect your opinion. Wanting DK fired for the dumpster fire season he has produced is reason enough to want him fired. But IMHO wanting him fired for Fiz incident, without all the facts [or for that matter any facts or collaboration at all] IMHO seems inherently unfair.

I actually feel the opposite way. Losing games sucks, but there are actually worse things than losing games and our program has done some of them lately.

On 1/25/2023 at 8:41 PM, B9j2j6s said:

I was a Sophmore during Coach Brown second season so I remember the team being bad and injured but i dont remember much else.  Is this season comparable to that one?  Yes I know Brown wasn't dealing with civil and criminal litigation.  Just curious seem to remember Jamar being hurt and we had no height. 

It's kind of funny you brought this up because this year is kind of comparable to those years. 

I don't want to disparage the players in the early years of D1 because those guys played hard and won some games they probably shouldn't have.

The thing I remember from those years is that when we started bringing in guys who were clearly legitimate D1 players, it was pretty recognizable in the P+G games. Not just Jamar, but Levi Levine and Iati and later Lillis and Wilson. You could kind of see us going up the later recruit-wise.

Once we got the full roster of guys, Jamar was clearly better, but there wasn't such a huge gulf between him and the rest of the team like at the beginning of his career. This team is a little more like those early years where it's Drumgoole and Beagle and then there's a dropoff (in my opinion.)