Just because I don't agree with you doesn't mean I don't support the team. At this point we can forget about last year. It's not earning us a darn thing for this year. Why pick the last 2 years, how about the last 5 years?
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Rhode Island
- Thread starter spider23
- Start date
I know how you feel here lately, where a majority of people disagree with your views so it kind of gets a “you vs. the world” type of view. I felt that way here in 2019, but at the end of the day I remembered (and realized for the first time) we are all here for one reason. That reason is we are Spiders through and through. We spend time every day on a message board discussing the team, and unexpectedly we all have different views on what those steps should be.
We have a lot of personalities here, some of us clash often but we all want to see the Spiders have success. I think seeing a tournament appearance would alleviate a lot of the stress and tension that has built up here for what I assume has been the past 9 years. I never imagined when I stepped foot on campus that 5 years after graduating I would still not see us in the tournament.
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While this is technically accurate it lacks context. Close to a dozen of our impact freshmen did so out of necessity, there just weren’t other options. Not all of course, but the lion share.
CM plays best guys. For many years, best guys have been freshmen because we whiffed on recruiting in prior years. That’s both a criticism and a testament, not necessarily of equivalence.
Right, have not seen you on here for 10 years, and then all you do is defend Mooney 24/7. Meanwhile you were active on another board for years attacking a top acc coach. But we are the effing weird ones. GO AWAY TROLL!!!!
Wow - this thread really took off.
VT - my point was purely that when you don’t manage minutes and develop the players it can be an issue. So, use the OOC (maybe say the WVU game when we’re down by 30) to find minutes when you can because you need them. I mean, it didn’t matter that we played the starters the whole time against Hofstra.
That being said, if Mooney thinks the right option is to play Gilly & Blake 38 minutes, that’s fine. I just don’t want to hear the excuse in February & March that they are too tired, or that a 2nd round loss in the A10 is because our starters got tired. I believe that is why you need to play 8-9 players, and you have to hold them accountable. That is a team. The team is more than just 5 or 6 players. Every team faces injuries. Being a coach is managing it all and preparing to overcome the challenges. I’m tired of hearing for a decade that it’s just bad luck.
VT - my point was purely that when you don’t manage minutes and develop the players it can be an issue. So, use the OOC (maybe say the WVU game when we’re down by 30) to find minutes when you can because you need them. I mean, it didn’t matter that we played the starters the whole time against Hofstra.
That being said, if Mooney thinks the right option is to play Gilly & Blake 38 minutes, that’s fine. I just don’t want to hear the excuse in February & March that they are too tired, or that a 2nd round loss in the A10 is because our starters got tired. I believe that is why you need to play 8-9 players, and you have to hold them accountable. That is a team. The team is more than just 5 or 6 players. Every team faces injuries. Being a coach is managing it all and preparing to overcome the challenges. I’m tired of hearing for a decade that it’s just bad luck.
Not sure that was directed to me but if so, you didn’t seem to digest the guidance that plydogg shared earlier about not putting words in people’s mouths. Nowhere did I say he’s a terrible coach. My comment wasn’t really about that.
CM has played freshmen because we had no other decent options, this is not particularly disputable. This was true when he took over the team for example and was playing almost entirely freshmen in year two. It was true with Nick and Demonte and a year later when he had to play Gilyard, Grant and Jake/Andre.
This is not to say those guys weren’t worthy of starting, many of them were. Many of them wouldn’t have had there been competent upperclassmen in front of them like this year.
I have stated that now isn’t the time to worry about getting the young guys minutes. If we start posting bigger leads then we should be doing it. But it means we are going to be exceptionally game-inexperienced next year, so I get why people are frustrated. A team this experienced should be able to post big enough leads we can get a backup PG more than 3mpg.
He should probably give him a breather a little more often.
I’m a little worried about him. Hasn’t posted in 3 hours. Hope he’s OK.
Probably just picking up take out for the Mooneys.
Well, right before this game started John Rothstein tweeted out that Gustavson would not be playing due to illness. I responded by saying
“Jon he has a GROIN injury not an illness. Third time you’ve reported it wrong. Do you care about accuracy or just selling merch?!”
After that tweet I was blocked by Rothstein. So I’m in on the screw Rothstein train now. Think it proves my point though lol
“Jon he has a GROIN injury not an illness. Third time you’ve reported it wrong. Do you care about accuracy or just selling merch?!”
After that tweet I was blocked by Rothstein. So I’m in on the screw Rothstein train now. Think it proves my point though lol
I was simply questioning the posts that said Mooney doesn't play freshman. And then, when I mentioned he does, I hear that it is out of necessity? So, it went like this on here: Mooney doesn't play freshman. I said yes, he does. Then, I hear well, that's because ........ I mean, give me a break.
Why would you go from year two to Nick's and Buck's class, and skip everything in between? Year three was Kevin Anderson and Kevin Smith. After that, we had guys like Garrett, Martel, Brothers, and Robbins play as freshmen. What about Ced? And Kendall Anthony? And ShawnDre? Terry Allen? ANO? And a few others? No other decent options? So these guys only played because we had no decent options? Freshman basketball players play all over the country. When they do, is it because their teams have no other options? Are teams always supposed to have the perfect recruiting cycles where only sophomores, juniors, and seniors should play each year?
Sorry, I just don't understand the argument here. I get called out a lot on here because people say I praise Mooney too much, but what about the numerous times people are just reaching for something to get on him for?
This right here is the issue. A team as experienced and as good as we are should be blowing out more teams. Instead, we are in a dog fight every night. We have 4 seniors and one of the most athletically gifted players ever in our starting 5, and we are going down to the wire with teams like Hofstra and St. Bonny, a below .500 Rhody team.
This is Mooney though, that even when he does have overwhelming talent and experience, he only gets about 80% out of it.
I think the bigger problem over his tenure has been with putting together overwhelmingly talented and experienced teams, not what he gets out of them when he has the talent, experience and depth.
but he's done a terrific job putting this current talented roster together. we just haven't played great yet. and we took big hits with Sherod and Crabtree. there's a lot of basketball left.
but he's done a terrific job putting this current talented roster together. we just haven't played great yet. and we took big hits with Sherod and Crabtree. there's a lot of basketball left.
The season is about half over already. I suggest he get on it.
Crabtree wasn't even able to practice with us due to injury, played like 4 games and got injured again. I like the kids talents, but no way can you say Mooney has to adjust to his loss. If anything, the adjustment would be to include him in our rotation if he were still healthy.
This doesn't need to be a drawn-out discussion. I didn't think it was necessary to talk about all 15 years of CM's tenure to establish the point which is that CM historically presses freshmen into meaningful minutes out of need. That in and of itself isn't anomalous, many coaches do that, we just have had more years where we have an overreliance on freshmen where 2 or more starters have been first-year guys.
Notably, many of the guys you cite above wouldn't register as significant use freshmen other than Kendall. As freshmen, guys like Martel, Shawndre, and Terry Allen got anywhere from 13-16mpg which I think is what folks are asking for with guys who are reasonably touted like Isaiah and Dji. Many of the others were sub-10 or even sub-5 mpg.
All I'm saying is that it's a false equivalence to state that CM plays freshmen a lot. He plays them a lot when they are needed. He isn't anti-freshmen like some people seem to think either. Some guys just aren't ready and won't play much when we aren't blowing people out or are getting blown out.
Crabtree was always part of the plan as a big part of the rotation off the bench this year.
Crabtree as well as Sherod and even Weir were all part of the talented depth Mooney put on this roster that I was talking about. Plus we've missed Goose for 3 games.
8-3 isn't what anyone wanted, but nobody predicted this level of attrition.
You can't predict attrition but you have to expect injuries because they occur every year. We are fortunate that an injuries have been to our depth not our main guys. Sherod's injury was tough but it also gave far more minutes to probably our most talent player.
Injuries have also helped us. We have no Golden without his med redshirt. No Sherod either. I feel for Sherod because he's a good player and good person and he didn't deserve that especially as a 5th year senior. He was a loss tho I agree w 97 it forced Mooney to play Burton most of game which I categorically believe he would not have done otherwise. So somewhat mitigated. If Goose is out for more than this next Goo Moo game that will be a concern. He's a loss too but hopefully we're near end of it.
No excuses, injuries certainly got us here partially and Golden a huge huge piece of that. We're still loaded at the top 6 with Goose. Expectations have not changed, we're just not playing well enough per our own players. If we can't get it done with this group we're going to be confident to give Mooney 2, 3 years or more just for another *maybe*? Point is I wish we had full roster but we have plenty. I think PQ may even know that & will have reached his breaking point.
No excuses, injuries certainly got us here partially and Golden a huge huge piece of that. We're still loaded at the top 6 with Goose. Expectations have not changed, we're just not playing well enough per our own players. If we can't get it done with this group we're going to be confident to give Mooney 2, 3 years or more just for another *maybe*? Point is I wish we had full roster but we have plenty. I think PQ may even know that & will have reached his breaking point.
agreed. Burton is a starter who would have to come off the bench with Nick here. but a big of our problem this season has been a lack of productivity from our bench. I can only imagine the top of our bench being Burton, Crabtree and Goose. that's really strong. and we were hoping Weir was a strong backup too.
Actually, I think Shawn'dre is a good barometer. He didn't play much at all for about 2/3 of his first year, and then Ced got hurt, and he started playing a ton after that. I side on the view that I want Mooney to do a better job in actually getting a few minutes here and there in every game for the freshman, because I think it is good for both their physical and tactical development, but also for emotional development to give them the carrot and not just the stick.
But, I'm also sympathetic that this has been a pretty strong schedule we've played by any objective metric, and regardless of what people think SHOULD have played out, the way it ACTUALLY played out is that we had a bunch of close games. So I would not sacrifice wins this year for playing time for freshmen.
When we were 12-20, and 13-20? Totally different story.
But, I'm also sympathetic that this has been a pretty strong schedule we've played by any objective metric, and regardless of what people think SHOULD have played out, the way it ACTUALLY played out is that we had a bunch of close games. So I would not sacrifice wins this year for playing time for freshmen.
When we were 12-20, and 13-20? Totally different story.
in a year with 13 guys, it's impossible to get everyone time for their development. it should be much easier with the injuries and departure as we've had. but we didn't schedule soft early games like we normally would, and we haven't played well enough to get leads.
we have to play to win first, then to develop a distant second. this year is about this year. it's a year we're supposed to win.
we have to play to win first, then to develop a distant second. this year is about this year. it's a year we're supposed to win.
