We have nothing to be ashamed of losing to Utah State.
"Real fans" as you like to call yourself, tend to put all of their eggs in the "we won" or "we lost" basket. Those who feel that Mooney's tenure should have expired long ago, see it quite differently.
One could use this year's two early losses to explain the point. Utah State and Drake appear to be fairly high caliber teams. Both may indeed make the big dance. You, as a "real fan" see those as good losses. While losing to a decent team may have
some merit with the NCAA selection committee, that is not the point for those whose frustration level is exceedingly high.
Over his 17-year head coaching career at Richmond (actually 18 because his performance at Air Force is a mirror image), Mooney has a repeated pattern of
how his teams lose.
Repetitively, we see poor execution, bad decisions, and/or a complete team collapse at crucial moments down the stretch. This is a coaching issue because you see the exact same story time and time again with different players over many different years.
To name a few of the symptoms and patterns: 1) Fail to have team ready for early season games, 2) Laissez faire attitude; no worries,
we competed, 3) Lose the rebounding battle nearly every game, 4) Frequently poor defense, too often one of the worst defensive teams in the country, 5) Repeatedly mismanages end of game decision-making, 6) Unusual strategies involving timeouts, player rotations, and forgetting about players, 7) Consistent underperformance, roughly .500 career winning percentage
Not an all-inclusive list, but the point is made. Your prerogative, celebrate a good loss all you like, but some of the "plastic" or fake fans as you call us have concerns about the bigger picture.
