Rumor that Howland won't be back next year..
- Thread starter fishwater99
- Start date
Where are you hearing the rumor? All indications from the folks I've talked to is that he'll be back and he's ready to build around Reggie and Robert
If we are being honest, this isn’t the funnest program to coach or play at right now. Fan support is, to borrow a term from Hadad, putrid.
I can’t blame any coach or player that wants to leave.
How many school have big time men’s and women’s programs? I just imagine it’s hard to sustain both with fan support
Gonna have to respectfully disagree with ya on that. It's not about our fans. Our fans show up for baseball even when we're not good. Our fans show up (pretty much) in football even when we're not good. This is about the way this team has been coached and the players not playing with the type of mentality our people love...tough, gritty, physical. Our FB teams have been known for it. Our women's BKB team is as tough as they come, especially mentally. This is about the product on the floor. Ben Howland may have been a great coach 10 years ago, but his teams have been very bad defensively since he's been here. And even Stans ran sets to get favorable matchups. Howland is stubborn. You can't put all of this on the fans.
You need new "folks". He may be back, but he's def deciding to retire or not. Don't think the ath dept is pushing him to retire. Not real sure on that though.
They did a great job of that themselves. Nobody wants another Stands program.
I think the fans don't support the team for the same reason I didn't watch a lot of the games. Yes we had talent, but we were frustrating as hell to watch with all the dumb decisions they made and on top of that not giving effort in a lot of games. It wasn't that I didn't like the players or the team or the coach. I just got frustrated as hell watching them, when I knew how much talent we had on the floor. We played a lot of selfish basketball as well which was frustrating. Now when we were playing unselfish basketball, I don't know many teams in the country that could have beat us, but those games were few and far between. I think that's why the women's basketball team gets so much support. I don't even like women's basketball, but I love watching our girls play because they bust their *** all game, and they play unselfish basketball with very few dumb shot selections or decision making.
It’s not all on the fans, absolutely. It’s a culmination of the end of the Stans era, the RR hire, and the women’s team success...those are the primary reasons for our struggling program.
We have just now, after 10 years of unwatchable basketball and alienating our fans, gotten barely back to that level.
That’s completely false. My guess is you don’t remember 2008-2010 very well. You may also not remember 2015, or even 2016 when we were really 17ing good and still had 50% full chairbacks and about 6,000 fans watching us clinch the regular season SEC title against Arkansas....on a perfect weather Saturday.
Is there really not another fundamentals coach out there that can take advantage of local talent? Another Richard Williams. We don't have to swing the damn pendulum all the way to Rick Ray. Stans and Howland are recruiters and that approach obviously doesn't get us past the current level, and it brings headaches.
I guess it all depends on what you want.
I'd like to see him coach 1 or 2 more years and then retire back in Malibu. I'm sure Cohen has a list ready to go.
You obviously don’t remember the recovery process from the last time we wandered the wilderness in baseball. It took the better part of a decade of winning to really get the people back. They sure as hell weren’t in the stadium in 2011. Or 2012. Or 2013. The postseason run in 2013 is where we really rounded back into form in terms of support.
This is not even remotely true. There was some regression defensively this year however.
Our fan base is fickle as 17. In every sport. And the bandwagon hopping just as he’s starting to really get us back on our feet is the dumbest thing I can imagine. Par for the course around here though.
I agree on the team not endearing themselves to fans in multiple ways though.
Thank you for a very nicely stated post, and also completely summing up how I feel about this matter. I've seen it put similarly to this earlier in the season, yet it was jumped on and denounced as shitting on the team because someone made an observation and stated an opinion that was contrary to theirs. I don't understand how people think that statements made on message boards mean even 3 ***** to a basketball coach making over two million dollars a year to coach a damn game. Look, if they can't take some form of criticism in their lives, I say 17 em.
Hope he doesn’t decide to leave this year.
With four openings in conference (Bama, Vandy, A&M, Arkansas) I don’t like our chances to hire someone better than him right now.
With four openings in conference (Bama, Vandy, A&M, Arkansas) I don’t like our chances to hire someone better than him right now.
A winning program has support win or lose. The baseball program is a winning program. Our bad support years that you mention are great support years in 80% of the programs across the country. Then you add in the Polk stuff and you can still have a little dip like we did.
Same thing happened on a smaller scale with basketball, but since we didn't have the program stature of baseball, it crumbled. The guy to blame for all this is the benedict arnold sitting down the hall from Steve Spurrier. He fired Stans at the wrong time, he fractured the fanbase, he helped Byrned mess up the Hump, he hired Rick Ray, and he hired Stans Part 2.
I disagree on our fanbase. We actually have a very loyal fanbase, it's just smaller in general. If we had another million or so people in this state, we'd have support on par with most of the big boys. But there's only so much even a loyal fanbase can take.
Students aren't stupid either. They show up when there's reason for excitement.
Either way, if you want football or basketball to ever win consistently, look to our baseball program. Or Clemson's or Alabama's football program. Or Louisville's basketball program. Fans that show up because it's tradition to do so.
If you have all that, MAYBE you can get the great coach, who gets the great recruits. Then you win.
You can circumvent all this by getting lucky but not many can pull that off, and usually it takes a little lucky to build a fanbase that shows up consistently. Chicken egg deal.
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I mentioned this last week. He’s a west coast guy living in Starkville. He was brought in to rebuild a program and he’s done that. He doesn’t need another Sweet 16 on his record. The only thing his record lacks is a natty and he’s not going to get that in Starkville. I don’t blame him if he decides to leave, he’s done a great job.
The basketball attendance has sucked for many reasons and some have been listed. However, lets not forget to bring up this point....There is a huge difference in basketball games vs baseball/football.
Baseball and Football games are day long events. You can make a day out of them or just go to the game. Basketball just involves the game. There are no festivities. So anyone in their normal minds is not driving 3hrs round trip to watch a 2hr basketball game with a bunch of AAU amateurs with an out of touch coach. It’s up to the locals to fill up the games during the week, ie womens. Combine all that with TV and you get subpar live fan support.
Now back to Howland. The guy forgot to put in the best 1st half performing player into the 2nd half, TWICE. Get your tail out of town already.
Baseball and Football games are day long events. You can make a day out of them or just go to the game. Basketball just involves the game. There are no festivities. So anyone in their normal minds is not driving 3hrs round trip to watch a 2hr basketball game with a bunch of AAU amateurs with an out of touch coach. It’s up to the locals to fill up the games during the week, ie womens. Combine all that with TV and you get subpar live fan support.
Now back to Howland. The guy forgot to put in the best 1st half performing player into the 2nd half, TWICE. Get your tail out of town already.
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Ben wasn’t a perfect coach but we had a year that gets us back in the conversation. I figured we would be 4th preseason and we finished 5th in the SEC. we did better OOC than I expected and if we are being honest if we had a full house against LSU we would have won. Does any of that change the fact Nick got himself suspended and we lost a lot of games we shouldn’t have? No it does not but it was substantially better than what we have been witnessing. Remember all you Kermit lovers??? How did they finish??? Auburn was some small 17 ups from BLOWING their game. Anyone here criticizing Bruce Pearl?
Pearl is an excellent example. Howland is following the exact same trajectory here -- just one year behind him basically.
Or maybe you have a great coach that decides to leave because no one comes out and supports the program. The arena has fallen to last place among your competitors without any imminent plan to fix it. And the fans are deciding to show up for women's games and not yours.
I do agree that Howland doesn't play a flashy style of basketball however and that's what got him run out of UCLA eventually. Although they have gone downhill since they lost him too.
I hope he isn't prone to the level or hyperbole that our fanbase is however. His program is finally built to the point it is nearing sustainability. And there's a glorious opportunity to poach recruits and players to fill needs around the league right now with waivers being granted constantly now. It is amazing to me that as a fanbase after the shitshow of the last decade, it doesn't appear that we learned anything at all from chasing the rabbit in the Stansbury deal and how to avoid heading straight back toward the wilderness. So count me as one that hopes he's here and stays. I'll put up with perceived shortcomings to play postseason basketball every season. I was wrong about Stans and I'll stick with "mediocre" with a smile on my face this time. I still think the best is yet to come.
I do agree that Howland doesn't play a flashy style of basketball however and that's what got him run out of UCLA eventually. Although they have gone downhill since they lost him too.
I hope he isn't prone to the level or hyperbole that our fanbase is however. His program is finally built to the point it is nearing sustainability. And there's a glorious opportunity to poach recruits and players to fill needs around the league right now with waivers being granted constantly now. It is amazing to me that as a fanbase after the shitshow of the last decade, it doesn't appear that we learned anything at all from chasing the rabbit in the Stansbury deal and how to avoid heading straight back toward the wilderness. So count me as one that hopes he's here and stays. I'll put up with perceived shortcomings to play postseason basketball every season. I was wrong about Stans and I'll stick with "mediocre" with a smile on my face this time. I still think the best is yet to come.
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Our problem is that our fanbase isn't huge and there are no big population centers near campus. SO, you are asking the same fans to drive a long way to support 3 or 4 different sports. Just hard to get the same ol' group of folks to commit that kind of time and money into that many different sports. Heck, if I lived inside an hour of campus I would come to most everything but I don't so I can't.
Well you get up off your tail and TAKE control of your players and change it. When I see players walk up and down the floor over and over and they stay in the game and still get beat, I'm done, that's the system letting it happen and that is coaching. There are no other excuses to be made and I saw plenty of it.
What exactly is a fundamentals coach? The kind that taught you those drills in Upward basketball?
Are you saying Howland doesn’t know the fundamentals of the game? They all do. But they also know that a player that is fundamentally sound but has no talent is usually filling a support role.
Agree. He’s turned it around but Starkville wouldn’t appear to me to be his cup of tea. I wouldn’t blame him if he decided to explore greener pastures.
My thoughts. We ended up a 5 seed. At the first of the season I would of taken it. We took some bad losses, had some effort issues and obviously so internal issues. To me our biggest problem was our bigs weren’t bigs. They were tall players built like our wings,Ado and Holman. Our other bigs were freshmen who probably were physical enough but how do you teach more physical play to freshmen that are stronger than our upperclassmen.
I really thought early we had issues with our perimeter guys not liking each other but I think when they went in a funk as individuals they shut down mentally. They were very fragile in the confidence which translated to other parts of their games ie: weak defense, poor passing because they wanted to make a impact and this in turn caused high turnovers.
By the end Holman and Peters confidence seemed to reappear. Funny it was after Nick suspension but late they started playing better together. Not always mind you which caused a crappy performance in SEC tournament.
The NCAA game , which is the heartbreaker was nip and tuck as I expected for the first 30. We take a 10 point lead and then the foul on the 3. Now as pissed as I was on some calls I’m not blaming the refs but I’m just saying from that point forward we had a couple guys looking to blame somebody else instead of fighting. I blame Howland here for not getting in a couple players **** or the refs to show some fight for his team
I really thought early we had issues with our perimeter guys not liking each other but I think when they went in a funk as individuals they shut down mentally. They were very fragile in the confidence which translated to other parts of their games ie: weak defense, poor passing because they wanted to make a impact and this in turn caused high turnovers.
By the end Holman and Peters confidence seemed to reappear. Funny it was after Nick suspension but late they started playing better together. Not always mind you which caused a crappy performance in SEC tournament.
The NCAA game , which is the heartbreaker was nip and tuck as I expected for the first 30. We take a 10 point lead and then the foul on the 3. Now as pissed as I was on some calls I’m not blaming the refs but I’m just saying from that point forward we had a couple guys looking to blame somebody else instead of fighting. I blame Howland here for not getting in a couple players **** or the refs to show some fight for his team
Lastly, while disappointing, thank God for being at the Dude Saturday to get over it but as disappointing as Friday was **** like that happens. We can’t say it always happens to us because we haven’t been there in 10 years. I’m not a conspiracy guy but if Duke doesn’t get a helluva lot of love tell me who **** the bed worse. Duke or us? Bottom line we have weak bodies for bigs as our upperclassmen and a couple players who are weak minded.
I’m not gonna dog them but Nick and Lamar needed to worry about loving the game and being college ATHLETES instead of creating something most top 35 teams don’t endure.
I’m not gonna dog them but Nick and Lamar needed to worry about loving the game and being college ATHLETES instead of creating something most top 35 teams don’t endure.
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Gonna have to respectfully disagree with ya on that. It's not about our fans. Our fans show up for baseball even when we're not good. Our fans show up (pretty much) in football even when we're not good. This is about the way this team has been coached and the players not playing with the type of mentality our people love...tough, gritty, physical. Our FB teams have been known for it. Our women's BKB team is as tough as they come, especially mentally. This is about the product on the floor. Ben Howland may have been a great coach 10 years ago, but his teams have been very bad defensively since he's been here. And even Stans ran sets to get favorable matchups. Howland is stubborn. You can't put all of this on the fans.
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This is not about the product on the floor at all. The product on the floor has been there for two years now. No reason the hump shouldn’t be packed at least on weekend games. It wasn’t even close to were it should be for a 5 seed type team like this year. I actually felt bad for the players having to play in a empty hump when they really deserved the support.
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This is not about the product on the floor at all. The product on the floor has been there for two years now. No reason the hump shouldn’t be packed at least on weekend games. It wasn’t even close to were it should be for a 5 seed type team like this year. I actually felt bad for the players having to play in a empty hump when they really deserved the support.
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Wouldn’t blame him for leaving. Fan support is horrible. The few times I see him around town I always make a point to tell him I appreciate what he’s doing and this season ticket holder is there for it all. Really comes across as a positive guy though, so I would think negative outside influences don’t have much bearing on him.
If there's any doubt in his mind, he should go on and retire. We need a coach that's 110% focused, obviously.
Provided this is all true of course.
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