What would it take to turn MSU into a basketball power?

[gtapp]

Our women's basketball team seems to be getting better every year and on the verge (if not there) of being the premier team in the BSC. They have the same budget constraints and facilities as the men's team. It seems that asking for a men's team that finishes in the top two of the BSC every year is resonable.

[John K]

Our women's basketball team seems to be getting better every year and on the verge (if not there) of being the premier team in the BSC. They have the same budget constraints and facilities as the men's team. It seems that asking for a men's team that finishes in the top two of the BSC every year is resonable.

I agree completely. I don't care if we ever become "the next Gonazaga" or not, but I would just like to see MBB consisently finish among the top 2 or 3 in the regular season, win a game in the BSC tourney more than once every 10 years, and win the tourney and advance to the Big Dance more than once every 15 years. Both WBB and football displayed incremental improvement virtually every year under the current coaching regimes, and now both have taken a huge step forward during the most recent seasons. But I just haven't seen even incremental improvement for MBB under Huse. The program is no better than it was during his first season, maybe even worse, which makes me think it's unlikely that we'll ever see that huge step forward that we've seen in the other two sports.

[BelgradeBobcat]

Yeah-it seems to me that kids play a lot more games now-a-days in summer, and of course everybody plays rat ball (pickup games)-which is about the worst thing for fundamentals. And players spend way more time in the weight room than they used to. But what I don't think is happening (and I could be wrong) is players don't lock themselves in to a gym by themselves and work on individual skills, dribbling, shooting, and footwork-especially for the big guys. Eric Rush is definitely stronger than he was when he got here, but he's not any better at shooting the ball. Bobby Howard has the same bad free shot that he had when he got here-which incidently is a simple mechanical problem that could be fixed with a little more arch on his shot.

[ilovethecats]

you guys bring up great points, but they appear to be issues that likely happen everywhere in the country. it still doesn't explain why we are consistently not very good, and why we haven't made the dance forever. it certainly doesn't explain why we have only won a game or two in the conference tourney in a decade!

as with most things in life, i look to the top. like johnk said, i haven't seen an ounce of improvement from this program since huse took over. even more scary to me is his inability to recruit talent necessary to compete at this level. everything you guys posted is likely true. guys probably are spending too much time playing pick-up games rather than working on individual skills. some are probably taking a little time off to enjoy their summer rather than working on their game, although i have no proof of this. but their college kids, and their guys, so i can imagine that from time to time an outing with the fairer sex rather then a visit to the gym to work on ball-handling is a possibility!

teams that are good, and have talent top to bottom can get away with this. hell, these teams can play ball against eachother all summer long and benefit because they are playing against other D1 players. so what happens when a coach is unable to recruit consistent D1 talent? all of a sudden his guys are competing against talent not helping them get better. do we really think jeff is going to improve his post-game by going up against anderson? will piepoli really become a better shooter when all summer long he's playing against guys that can't stop him? do we really expect rush to get a lot better when there is no one on this team capable of making him better? can our 2 point guards that are both tiny really expect to compete with bigger and stronger players once conference starts?

i think it all has to start with our coaching, and our recruiting first. once we have the talent available i'm confident in huse's coaching ability. then you need to win some tough games and even get a little lucky along the way like tom suggested. once the wins start coming more regularly then confidence increases and you go from there. but if you don't have the talent, you can only go so far.

all this has me thinking....in the last 10 to 15 years, who do you guys think are the best players we have brought in? did they get better as the years went on? did they even last or did they leave the program? are there any players that you think we were able to sneak in and he ended up being a stud? i'm just trying to get a feel of what kind of players people feel like were the best here.

[MT2AK_CAT]

I have not watched much bball latlely but I think the best team/players i have ever seen at msu was the team that had scott hatler, nico harrison, mike elliott, quadre lollis, danny sprinkle, etc. . . I rember those guys ripping up the floor and busting their a$$ every game. To me, they were the most exciting to watch. Sense then I have not been that impressed. On that team even the bench players produced results when they were called upon. My dad still says one of the best all around athletes he has ever seen was scott harry. He played both football and basketball and was not the best at either but had the heart to always want to improve and bust his a$$.

[wbtfg]

all this has me thinking....in the last 10 to 15 years, who do you guys think are the best players we have brought in? did they get better as the years went on? did they even last or did they leave the program? are there any players that you think we were able to sneak in and he ended up being a stud? i'm just trying to get a feel of what kind of players people feel like were the best here.

Great question...I have no idea. Marvin Moss, Bobby Howard, Will Bynum, Damir Latovic?

However, of the (fairly recent) guys who I think really improved their game while in Bozeman the few that come to mind are...

Casey Durham
Kenny Plummer
Al Beye
Casey Reynolds
Brandon Johnson
Ted Morris
James Clark
Carson Durr
Carlos Taylor (he was pretty good when he got here, but I thought he improved)
Marquisse Navarre (I thought he got much better between jur and sr year)

Busts:

Bo Segeberg
Travis Derochowski
Tom Duffy
Dennis Woodall
Matt Townsley
Taylor Pratt
Luke Anderson
Jeff Williams
Ryan Holmes
Derrick Edmonds
Jeff Edwards
Cameron Henderson
Austin Brown

[Domako]

teams that are good, and have talent top to bottom can get away with this. hell, these teams can play ball against eachother all summer long and benefit because they are playing against other D1 players. so what happens when a coach is unable to recruit consistent D1 talent? all of a sudden his guys are competing against talent not helping them get better. do we really think jeff is going to improve his post-game by going up against anderson? will piepoli really become a better shooter when all summer long he's playing against guys that can't stop him? do we really expect rush to get a lot better when there is no one on this team capable of making him better? can our 2 point guards that are both tiny really expect to compete with bigger and stronger players once conference starts?

I am going to say that YES, you can improve even if you are practicing against inferior talent. If you have a player that can knock down an open jumper but can't get his own shot off, you get him in the gym
taking on any defender off the dribble and pulling up for a 12 foot fade away. Can he do this in a game after he practices it 100 times? probably not...Can he do it in a game after he does it 1000 times?
Maybe, but I bet he is better...Can he do it in a game after he practices it 10,000 times?...I say yes. (I think we have a couple of kids that fit my example perfectly)

I'm trying to be realistic about the players we can recruit to MSU right now. We probably have to take kids that are underdeveloped physically or in their skillset. If it was easy to somehow recuit 3 kids that
were going to go to an ACC school and get them to come to MSU, coaching would be easy as would turning around a program.

I am trying to answer the original question of what would it take to turn MSU into a basketball power. If your answer is recuit a bunch of studs...my opinion is you are dreaming. If you want a real plan,
start with developing marginal players into solid D1 basketball players. Start to win some conference titles and go to the big dance once in a while. Pack the fieldhouse and make better players want to
play for MSU and pretty soon you have your powerhouse.

Way easier said than done!

[TomCat88]

I am trying to answer the original question of what would it take to turn MSU into a basketball power. If your answer is recuit a bunch of studs...my opinion is you are dreaming. If you want a real plan,
start with developing marginal players into solid D1 basketball players. Start to win some conference titles and go to the big dance once in a while. Pack the fieldhouse and make better players want to
play for MSU and pretty soon you have your powerhouse.

Way easier said than done!

Man if MSU could just do that one I underlined it would be sweet music. I think the coolest thing a BSC team can do right now is win the regular season title, host the tournament and just get to the championship game. Winning it is cool and going to the tourney is nice, but until going to the tourney with a serious chance of winning becomes a reality the BSC tourney at home is tops.

[ilovethecats]

I am trying to answer the original question of what would it take to turn MSU into a basketball power. If your answer is recuit a bunch of studs...my opinion is you are dreaming. If you want a real plan,
start with developing marginal players into solid D1 basketball players. Start to win some conference titles and go to the big dance once in a while. Pack the fieldhouse and make better players want to
play for MSU and pretty soon you have your powerhouse.

no disagreement with anything you said tom. there is no doubt that if a kid spends enough time in the gym shooting tens of thousands of jumpers it doesn't matter if he's doing it against inferior talent, or just by himself. but frankly, in all my years watching cat basketball, and the lack of improvement that even you mentioned, i'm not sure this is being done. so if i'm speculating that this type of commitment might not be taking place, and the only thing these guys are doing is playing pick-up....wouldn't you agree the better the talent the better?

but no, my solution isn't to recruit a bunch of studs. in my first post i touched on the fact that we'll never get those kids, but we can get better kids then we have been, and we can do a much better job developing them. i also mentioned that some luck is involved. but there are certainly some good players in this conference, so by big sky standards they are "studs". i'm not comparing msu to duke or kansas. i'm comparing msu to um, weber, eastern washington, northern colorado, etc. and compared to those teams the cats still haven't been getting it done.

but if we can get a guy or two that are considered elite in the conference, we can develop them and find the right guys to surround them, and win some big games along the way then maybe that can get the ball rolling. we just haven't seemed to do that for a while.

[grizzh8r]

all this has me thinking....in the last 10 to 15 years, who do you guys think are the best players we have brought in? did they get better as the years went on? did they even last or did they leave the program? are there any players that you think we were able to sneak in and he ended up being a stud? i'm just trying to get a feel of what kind of players people feel like were the best here.

Great question...I have no idea. Marvin Moss, Bobby Howard, Will Bynum, Damir Latovic?

However, of the (fairly recent) guys who I think really improved their game while in Bozeman the few that come to mind are...

Casey Durham
Kenny Plummer
Al Beye
Casey Reynolds
Brandon Johnson
Ted Morris
James Clark
Carson Durr
Carlos Taylor (he was pretty good when he got here, but I thought he improved)
Marquisse Navarre (I thought he got much better between jur and sr year)

Busts:

Bo Segeberg
Travis Derochowski
Tom Duffy
Dennis Woodall
Matt Townsley
Taylor Pratt
Luke Anderson
Jeff Williams
Ryan Holmes
Derrick Edmonds
Jeff Edwards
Cameron Henderson
Austin Brown

You missed one MAJOR player. Jason Erickson. http://statsheet.com/mcb/players/player ... n-erickson

He was always a very good shooter (see the stats), but he became a scorer in his last season at MSU.

In all fairness to Austin Brown, he transferred. He would have gotten better had he stayed. You could see his raw talent.

[Domako]

The answer probably lands somewhere in the middle. Are the coaches getting the players focused on the skills they need to become elite players?
Are the coaches recruiting kids that have a great works ethic and desire to be better? Are the kids willing to do the work if the coaches identify
weaknesses? Hard to tell from the outside looking in...but it is frustrating to watch the results.

I hope they pull it together. I do see some young kids with potential on this team too...who knows what will become of it.

[LTown Cat]

Brad is going to lose 3 major contributors after this season. How he reacts to that will tell us if we can start to turn the page and improve or remain with more of the same. There are 9 freshman on the roster that will be soph. next season. If Brad draws a line and "sacrifices" the next season (maybe 2) to develop around that group and recruits to their weaknesses I could see major improvement down the road--because there is a lot of talent in that group. If Brad gets in the win now mode (which rarely works at this level) and tries to fill with JC's, transfers, etc., we will see more of the same.

I felt that Bobby's freshman year was an opportunity to do that as well. Had Bobby redshirted that year would we have done any worse? My guess is we would have finished nearly identical. How valuable would he be next year with another year of eligibility? Those are my 2 cents on the matter.

[classicat]

Well this is a "duh" response, but as seen with football, getting a few key players that help create wins, certainly helps recruiting other good players.

I've honestly not watched alot of Bobcat basketball and don't really know what their method of recruiting has been but I will say that when I heard they had recruited Brumwell from Big Sandy prior to his senior season I really had to scratch my head. Yes, he's big, yes he ended up by playing on the state winning team, but if whoever recruited him had actually watched him play a game, they would have seen that he will need alot of development before he is going to be a contributing player. His teammate, Pearson, should have been recruited, IMO, as he was the all-around player with athleticism, inside and outside shots, ball handling skills and a work ethic. Maybe he wouldn't have gone, I heard he wanted to stay close to home so he chose Northern, but I still think Pearson would have been a player that could have contributed earlier than Brumwell likely will. Perhaps he'll surprise me, obviously the Cats will need someone to step in and help, and hopefully there is a diamond in the rough sitting on the bench.

[CatBlitz]

Well this is a "duh" response, but as seen with football, getting a few key players that help create wins, certainly helps recruiting other good players.

I've honestly not watched alot of Bobcat basketball and don't really know what their method of recruiting has been but I will say that when I heard they had recruited Brumwell from Big Sandy prior to his senior season I really had to scratch my head. Yes, he's big, yes he ended up by playing on the state winning team, but if whoever recruited him had actually watched him play a game, they would have seen that he will need alot of development before he is going to be a contributing player. His teammate, Pearson, should have been recruited, IMO, as he was the all-around player with athleticism, inside and outside shots, ball handling skills and a work ethic. Maybe he wouldn't have gone, I heard he wanted to stay close to home so he chose Northern, but I still think Pearson would have been a player that could have contributed earlier than Brumwell likely will. Perhaps he'll surprise me, obviously the Cats will need someone to step in and help, and hopefully there is a diamond in the rough sitting on the bench.

Hence why he's redshirting?

[ilovethecats]

it is going to be interesting to see where this team goes from here. we lose 3 guys to graduation and they account for about 55% of our scoring this year! i think we have some other question marks on our roster. i'm not the biggest fan of our top 2 point guards being shorter than 5'10 for starters. personally i'd like to see more of mccall next year. but no matter what i really can't see us keeping all of the guards we have right now. i haven't seen enough of mcintyre or anderson to lean one way or another but i'd bet one or both won't be around. think the same could be said about davis and brumwell. i just don't see either having enough talent to get many minutes, so it'd probably be better for the team, and these guys to move on if playing time means anything. i like the prospects of budinich, allou, johnson and reid. i think we could something with those guys.

personally, i would like to see anderson, brumwell, davis, and trujeque (sp?) move on and bring in some depth. i know we won't get rid of cody, but at the very least i hope we can bring in another big body to compete for the job. if i could only build a starting five for next year off our current roster i'd probably go:

singleton
mccall
reid/budinich (can't decide!)
allou
anderson

although we'd probably be a better team if we just small, increased the tempo, and went singleton, mccall, reid, allou, and budinich....

[BelgradeBobcat]

it is going to be interesting to see where this team goes from here. we lose 3 guys to graduation and they account for about 55% of our scoring this year! i think we have some other question marks on our roster. i'm not the biggest fan of our top 2 point guards being shorter than 5'10 for starters. personally i'd like to see more of mccall next year. but no matter what i really can't see us keeping all of the guards we have right now. i haven't seen enough of mcintyre or anderson to lean one way or another but i'd bet one or both won't be around. think the same could be said about davis and brumwell. i just don't see either having enough talent to get many minutes, so it'd probably be better for the team, and these guys to move on if playing time means anything. i like the prospects of budinich, allou, johnson and reid. i think we could something with those guys.

personally, i would like to see anderson, brumwell, davis, and trujeque (sp?) move on and bring in some depth. i know we won't get rid of cody, but at the very least i hope we can bring in another big body to compete for the job. if i could only build a starting five for next year off our current roster i'd probably go:

singleton
mccall
reid/budinich (can't decide!)
allou
anderson

although we'd probably be a better team if we just small, increased the tempo, and went singleton, mccall, reid, allou, and budinich....

I'm pretty sure Brumwell is a walk-on, so in a sense he's not costing us anything. Same with Davis. It is good to have those extra big bodies on the bench-for practice players if for nothing else. The playing big guys need someone to work them over in practice.

You can't just cut loose scholarship guys anymore. It kills your APR.

Next season's JC signees are 6'8" Mohamed Fall who sounds like a Mbunga type of player, and 6'3" Jamie Stewart who looks to me like a similar player to Will Bynum but with greater range. I figure these guys, especially Stewart, will challenge for starting spots at the 5 and the 2 respectively. I posted a video of Stewart a few threads down.

My best guess at a starting lineup next season is: Singleton, Stewart, Reed, Budnich/Allou (probably will depend on the matchup), and Fall/Anderson (depends of if Anderson gets healthier). Unless Stewart is a Carlos Taylor type of scorer (he might be), or our young guys improve a whole lot-I see points hard to come by again.

[ilovethecats]

ya i knew we had some guys coming in i was basically just ranking our guys right now. and i know it doesn't hurt guys like brumwell and davis to hang out...but i just don't know if they will get minutes here so it might be better for them to move on. but who knows, i haven't really seen either play since last fall.

do you know how much releasing a schollie guy hurts the apr? i know it does i'm just not sure how much. it seems to me you see a guy or two on a lot of teams leaving after a year or two when things don't pan out. i'm just not aware of the circumstances?

[BelgradeBobcat]

do you know how much releasing a schollie guy hurts the apr? i know it does i'm just not sure how much. it seems to me you see a guy or two on a lot of teams leaving after a year or two when things don't pan out. i'm just not aware of the circumstances?

I sure don't-but I figure a team loses guys because of the player's choice so a team isn't going be cutting guys loose who want to stay here-even if they're not playing as well as hoped due to the APR issue.

[ilovethecats]

do you know how much releasing a schollie guy hurts the apr? i know it does i'm just not sure how much. it seems to me you see a guy or two on a lot of teams leaving after a year or two when things don't pan out. i'm just not aware of the circumstances?

I sure don't-but I figure a team loses guys because of the player's choice so a team isn't going be cutting guys loose who want to stay here-even if they're not playing as well as hoped due to the APR issue.

ya that is a good point. i think this is going to be a very interesting offseason for both this team...and huse.

[60's Cat]

Not one since Ott Romney in the 20's has moved up to a bigger job. All other coaches have either retired here (Breeden and Craft), gotten fired (Juarez), taken a lateral move and not really succeeded (Starner), or took a demotion (Haroldson, Durham). Compare our coaching tree to the griz or even Weber State...it's quite a difference.

One might say that MSU is where good coaches go... and stall out. Replace the names, and you've got the coaching history of the football program too. I sincerely hope Ash breaks the cycle.

So, you are implying Earle solmonson was a good football coach.