Realistic expectations for 2023-24?

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cjbfbp said:
Honestly, I'm not sure why they try so hard. Johnson doesn't need relentless hecklers to look bad.

Here are my thoughts about the coach so far.

1) The results to date have been abysmal; there's no denying that.

2) I don't have a strong convinction that he can or cannot turn it around.

3) He's faced difficult circumstances in his first two years and competing goals that may have muddied the waters a bit.

a. He had to recruit essentially a new team for his first year. He started too late to rely on the freshman recruiting market as there wouldn't be a bounty of good and accessible recruits to get from there. That made him staff his roster with almost all transfers.

b. Because he more or less pledged to recruit more high school players from in-state than we've had recently, he had to start demonstrating that he was going to do that. Because he had to have places for them, most of those transfers mentioned above had to be short-timers. That resulted in him having an almost completely new team in his second year as well. Although his freshmen recruits were decent, they weren't all the most D1 ready.

4) His 2023 freshmen recruits are about as highly rated as we could expect and higher than any pair recruited here in a long time.

5) I do blame him for not recruiting an additional transfer big man in 2021 and an additional guard in 2022. I hope he has learned his lesson and will try his best to get roster space for at least one capable transfer guard for 2023.

6) In terms of playing together and for him, next year's team should be his most experienced by far so he must show something when the disadvantages of his first two years no longer apply.
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Agree with your analysis. Ben did a better job coaching the experienced low major transfers last year than he has done this year.

Recruiting has been good first two classes.

Any real evaluation has to recognize injuries. Injuries are not excuses, they are reasons.

Ihnen and Fox, both years, all year.

Garcia a few games. Carrington half a year. Payne playing most of the year with limiting injuries.

And especially Battle. Stellar last year and a great three shooter. Conference recognition last season, pre-season pick for all conference this year and ... not much of a factor most of this year. He is hurt in some way , maybe multiple ways. If he regains what he has lost for next year this team will be fundamentally better.
 

Dakota2 said:
Agree with your analysis. Ben did a better job coaching the experienced low major transfers last year than he has done this year.

Recruiting has been good first two classes.

Any real evaluation has to recognize injuries. Injuries are not excuses, they are reasons.

Ihnen and Fox, both years, all year.

Garcia a few games. Carrington half a year. Payne playing most of the year with limiting injuries.

And especially Battle. Stellar last year and a great three shooter. Conference recognition last season, pre-season pick for all conference this year and ... not much of a factor most of this year. He is hurt in some way , maybe multiple ways. If he regains what he has lost for next year this team will be fundamentally better.
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Maybe experienced old 5th year guys are more apt to coaching than freshman too? I don’t think Ben’s done a better or worse job either yeah coaching. Roster construction is another thing.
 


EasyThere Pilgrim said:
I listed the Rivals and 247 rankings.

You listed the 247 Composite rankings...which includes sites that don't focus on recruiting and don't update.

Even so, (as you know) we're still ranked higher than Penn State in 2023...unless you rank by quantity over quality.

Plus 2 out of 3 of Penn State's recruits are the sons of the coaches.
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Jet Howard is pretty good. Fran's boys are pretty good. I wouldn't necessarily knock them for being the coaches' sons
 



forever a gopher said:
Who on Earth are you talking about? The SG on this team are Samuels, Ramberg, and Carrington. Carrington could develop into a good role player, but who is your “solid core” that we’re building around? Or are you pre-anointing Christie?
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We have Battle, Carrington, Samuels, Henley, and Christie is coming. We have small forwards in Ola-Joseph, Battle, Garcia. We have only one true power forward in Payne, but Garcia can play the position. We have a gumby in Trenton Thompson and we have a center coming in Evans.

What we don't have is a true, quick, point guard.

Despite your chicken little attitude, we are not far off from having a solid B1G team that will be competitive.

I await your Debbie Downer response.
 

Dakota2 said:
Agree with your analysis. Ben did a better job coaching the experienced low major transfers last year than he has done this year.

Recruiting has been good first two classes.

Any real evaluation has to recognize injuries. Injuries are not excuses, they are reasons.

Ihnen and Fox, both years, all year.

Garcia a few games. Carrington half a year. Payne playing most of the year with limiting injuries.

And especially Battle. Stellar last year and a great three shooter. Conference recognition last season, pre-season pick for all conference this year and ... not much of a factor most of this year. He is hurt in some way , maybe multiple ways. If he regains what he has lost for next year this team will be fundamentally better.
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You must watch the games with your head in the sand.
Henley, Ola Joseph and Payne are all showing solid improvement. Carrington was setback by injury, but was starting to take off. Any comments about Ben and staff doing a poor job compared to last year are comments of ignorant basketball fans who wouldn't know a zone from a man-to-man defense.
 

Bob_Loblaw said:
I agree 100%.

Even if they can't play together, I'll take 20 minutes from both of them. I think they will be able to play together a bit but the PF logjam makes things weird.
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Garcia needs to get 30+ minutes if he comes back next year and if Payne keeps the growth path then he needs 25+, so it's gonna be a battle for minutes amongst bigs beyond those I'd think.

I'd really like to see Garcia, Payne, Evans, and Fox at those BIG spots. Ihnen hopefully can mix at the 3/4/5 as a jack-of-all-trades. JOJ as an energy guy or foul trouble replacement.

I'm basing this on the health of Ihnen and Fox. Keeping the faith they'll stay healthy and be able to get to game speed / Big 10 level of play.
 

cjbfbp said:
I guess that's a good news-bad news sort of thing. If someone wants Ben Johnson fired after three years, finishing last three years in a row probably would be the most likely outcome to accomplish that.
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I believe he will , but won't get fired !

This is MN.
 



MennoSota said:
We have Battle, Carrington, Samuels, Henley, and Christie is coming. We have small forwards in Ola-Joseph, Battle, Garcia. We have only one true power forward in Payne, but Garcia can play the position. We have a gumby in Trenton Thompson and we have a center coming in Evans.

What we don't have is a true, quick, point guard.

Despite your chicken little attitude, we are not far off from having a solid B1G team that will be competitive.

I await your Debbie Downer response.
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We don’t have a guard period unless Christie is as advertised. The rest of our roster guard wise isn’t competitive in a mid major conference and here we are trying to use them in one of the best basketball leagues in the land
 


MennoSota said:
You must watch the games with your head in the sand.
Henley, Ola Joseph and Payne are all showing solid improvement. Carrington was setback by injury, but was starting to take off. Any comments about Ben and staff doing a poor job compared to last year are comments of ignorant basketball fans who wouldn't know a zone from a man-to-man defense.
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Thanks Nadine
 

Dakota2 said:
Do you have specific bullet points you could release to trigger "the time for change is now" program?

And feel free to tell me what else I don't understand after buying a total of 98 years of season tickets at Williams Arena.
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1. Remove faculty involvement from athletic department decisions. I don't trust any faculty from any department at a school where secretaries were allowed to pose as psychologists, prescribing medicines and treatments that led to a patient's suicide. Where audits of expense reports are swept under the carpet because you don't want to upset a media friendly professor and would rather allow theft of University funds. Where Alzheimer's projects move forward without checking the data behind it because it would be a big win for the school. It's embarrassing that other schools have to fact check our research data because it is unreliable. If faculty can't control their own departments, why are they given carte blanche input for athletics? There is no other department that gets as heavy-handed oversight as athletics, not even a One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Psychology department.

98 years of MBB Season tickets implies Stockholm Syndrome. You are their prisoner and you don't have the willpower, ire or even outrage at their on court performance to look away. You have bought in to the off the court behaviors being more important. I held student season tickets for the worst era of Golden Gopher football ever: 1981-1986. It still boggles my mind that the University Administration let outside groups convince them that moving off campus and giving up full revenue from concessions and parking was a good idea. What kind of a person thinks that 99% or less of the income from a revenue stream is better than 100%? What kind of a person looks away from core elements like on the court performance and allows fear of off the court behavior to be the sole determining factor in the program?
 



cjbfbp said:
You do realize, don't you, that producing good sports teams is not the primary purpose of a university?

I'm sure there are many administrators and far more faculty than administrators across the country that would love to see you get your wish and kick athletics completely out the door. I say this from many years of experience in higher education. But, this is the incongruous mix that our society has chosen and allowed to develop and flourish for over a century. There are lots of good basketball players in Europe and internationally who develop very well outside of the collegiate structure. For some reason our society has grown to believe that athletics and academics should be intertwined. As long as you have that structure, you're going to have to tolerate frequently less than sympathetic attitudes from administrators and faculty.
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Well, the purpose of this University certainly isn't academic integrity or even academic competence. The past twenty years have been an undercurrent of academic abuse and fabrication. From a psychology department where secretaries/receptionists got to do work they weren't trained for and were prescribing treatments for patients in experimental programs to a stem-cell researcher fabricating data and scuttling a potential groundbreaking Alzheimer's treatment.

Those twenty-some years this was going on were the same years faculty, administrators and other outside interested parties were ramping up pressure on athletics to divert any stray inquiry on their work and hiding malfeasance.

There is no other department at this University that gets more heavy handed oversight than the athletic department.

Maybe the departments that create dangerous and criminal behavior should be facing the same consequences with which they threaten athletics: being kicked out the door?
 

Go Gophs said:
We don’t have a guard period unless Christie is as advertised. The rest of our roster guard wise isn’t competitive in a mid major conference and here we are trying to use them in one of the best basketball leagues in the land
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How bad is your vision? Go to the optometrist.
 


Gopherfan84 said:
Maybe experienced old 5th year guys are more apt to coaching than freshman too? I don’t think Ben’s done a better or worse job either yeah coaching. Roster construction is another thing.
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That likely is true. I don't think it's a case of freshmen being pigheaded. I think it's just a case of them being in a new and very different environment than they were in high school and with different roles and expectations at the beginning. Most freshmen at this level of D1, unless they played for nationally elite preps or some powerhouse high schools in large metro areas, were the dominant players on their high school teams. Relatively few of them can do that initially at this level so they have to adjust to the different, and more limited, roles initially.
 

cjbfbp said:
You do realize, don't you, that producing good sports teams is not the primary purpose of a university?

I'm sure there are many administrators and far more faculty than administrators across the country that would love to see you get your wish and kick athletics completely out the door. I say this from many years of experience in higher education. But, this is the incongruous mix that our society has chosen and allowed to develop and flourish for over a century. There are lots of good basketball players in Europe and internationally who develop very well outside of the collegiate structure. For some reason our society has grown to believe that athletics and academics should be intertwined. As long as you have that structure, you're going to have to tolerate frequently less than sympathetic attitudes from administrators and faculty.
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That is, by and large, true. When we say, though, that this team's performance is an embarrassment to the institution, its students, staff and alumni, that's also true. The sports--especially the revenue sports--reflect on the school. The St. Thomas president said exactly that when he announced the big gift and the plans to build their new arena. He was doubtless trying to head off potential criticism of their priorities. How does this, the criticism would go, advance the scholastic and spiritual goals of the university? Well, it does. It all works together. They'll attract top students and more donations if they're well rounded and show broad competence.
 

Bad Gopher said:
That is, by and large, true. When we say, though, that this team's performance is an embarrassment to the institution, its students, staff and alumni, that's also true. The sports--especially the revenue sports--reflect on the school. The St. Thomas president said exactly that when he announced the big gift and the plans to build their new arena. He was doubtless trying to head off potential criticism of their priorities. How does this, the criticism would go, advance the scholastic and spiritual goals of the university? Well, it does. It all works together. They'll attract top students and more donations if they're well rounded and show broad competence.
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I don't disagree with any of that. High level administrators tend to be the most favorable university personnel in their views towards athletics because they are the most concerned about marketing, public awareness, and branding.

My main intent with that previous post was to remind a ranting knucklehead that university oversight of athletics comes with the territory of our historical environment of commingling athletics with academics. This is somewhat unique to the USA and even in the USA universities are not the exclusive training grounds of elite athletes in team sports. Although more professional baseball players come from college these days than in the past, professional baseball has never relied on this system for developing their future personnel. Each year an increasing number of elite US basketball players are choosing to forego college and go directly into the professional basketball minor leagues. This system is still in a fledgling stage but could expand if the demand increases.
 

cjbfbp said:
I don't disagree with any of that. High level administrators tend to be the most favorable university personnel in their views towards athletics because they are the most concerned about marketing, public awareness, and branding.

My main intent with that previous post was to remind a ranting knucklehead that university oversight of athletics comes with the territory of our historical environment of commingling athletics with academics. This is somewhat unique to the USA and even in the USA universities are not the exclusive training grounds of elite athletes in team sports. Although more professional baseball players come from college these days than in the past, professional baseball has never relied on this system for developing their future personnel. Each year an increasing number of elite US basketball players are choosing to forego college and go directly into the professional basketball minor leagues. This system is still in a fledgling stage but could expand if the demand increases.
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One thing I do like about Wisconsin-Madison is that they've retained their traditional logo to represent the academic side and adopted the newer Flying W to represent the recreational side.

I don't know if we still use this baby, but we should:

1677000827162.png

I have a 3-ring binder with that on the cover, so it couldn't have been too long ago that it was still in use, at least on a limited basis.
 


Go Gophs said:
Who starts out of that bunch on another power 5 team?
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Exactly how would one know the answer to this question?
The scenarios of the situation would need to be looked at. But, since there are a number of schools out there. Do you think all of our kids would sit the bench on all other P6 schools?
 

MennoSota said:
Exactly how would one know the answer to this question?
The scenarios of the situation would need to be looked at. But, since there are a number of schools out there. Do you think all of our kids would sit the bench on all other P6 schools?
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I don't think any of them would start. Possibly 55 at some of the worse ones. Guard play in the entire program is bad right now. They don't shoot 3's well, defend the perimeter and none of them can make free throws either. They need Christie + a transfer to be any better than they have been next year. I am actually pretty impressed with the front line play and with most of them being young, think they will be more than competitive in the Big Ten for a few years.
 


bga1 said:
Well...I do think that Shrewsbury would like to start Payne at PSU. :)
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I'm talking about our guards. I think the front line of Garcia, Payne, Ola, Battle, etc is something work with. Add in Evans and that is and will continue to be an area of strength.
 

Go Gophs said:
I don't think any of them would start. Possibly 55 at some of the worse ones. Guard play in the entire program is bad right now. They don't shoot 3's well, defend the perimeter and none of them can make free throws either. They need Christie + a transfer to be any better than they have been next year. I am actually pretty impressed with the front line play and with most of them being young, think they will be more than competitive in the Big Ten for a few years.
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Your use of hyperbole is impressive.
 

Ewert86PC said:
1. Remove faculty involvement from athletic department decisions. I don't trust any faculty from any department at a school where secretaries were allowed to pose as psychologists, prescribing medicines and treatments that led to a patient's suicide. Where audits of expense reports are swept under the carpet because you don't want to upset a media friendly professor and would rather allow theft of University funds. Where Alzheimer's projects move forward without checking the data behind it because it would be a big win for the school. It's embarrassing that other schools have to fact check our research data because it is unreliable. If faculty can't control their own departments, why are they given carte blanche input for athletics? There is no other department that gets as heavy-handed oversight as athletics, not even a One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Psychology department.

98 years of MBB Season tickets implies Stockholm Syndrome. You are their prisoner and you don't have the willpower, ire or even outrage at their on court performance to look away. You have bought in to the off the court behaviors being more important. I held student season tickets for the worst era of Golden Gopher football ever: 1981-1986. It still boggles my mind that the University Administration let outside groups convince them that moving off campus and giving up full revenue from concessions and parking was a good idea. What kind of a person thinks that 99% or less of the income from a revenue stream is better than 100%? What kind of a person looks away from core elements like on the court performance and allows fear of off the court behavior to be the sole determining factor in the program?
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You are quite mistaken. Ninety-eight years of season tickets brought 26 years of pure enjoyment for me, my family, and friends. Were you ever in the Barn when Muss brought the show and when Clem and Dutch coached some of the best players in the land?
 
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cjbfbp said:
Well, I hope the results next year are better than that - at least a winning season.

But, the contradictory treatment you describe is not surprising. The expectations for an 8th year coach are not the same as they are for a 3rd year coach and the longer you keep paying someone substantial amounts of money for underperformance, the more aggravated people become. Expectations may be lower for Ben Johnson than most 3rd year coaches but the circumstances of his first two years were more difficult as well. Yes, I know some will say "Coach X did this within two years and Coach Y did this" but they never do the research to see how many coaches who faced difficult circumstances failed to do those things in a short period of time. I don't imagine that Johnson will ever approach Scott Drew's level of success but Drew's first four seasons at Baylor were losing ones. Yes, I know they were on probation.
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I don't disagree with your post here. The line you quoted was largely a throwaway line by me that I probably shouldn't have written.. Expectations of a third year coach are not the same as those of an 8th year coach and frankly results aren't linear year over year. Pitino wasn't fired due to the number of wins he had in year eight. It was a cumulative feeling he had taken this program as far as he would be able to. His dismissal was overwhelmingly supported on this board.

Rationally.....I understand Ben Johnson deserves more time to prove his coaching chops and allow his recruits to get more experience. I don't agree with those on this board that are calling for a change already. The university would never make a change at this point regardless, barring a serious scandal. We will get to see year three and likely year four of the Ben Johnson regime.

Emotionally.....I'm still bothered the university went this route. I look at the resumes of all the conference coaches and I don't see anybody comparable to Ben Johnson. Shrewsberry would be the best comp but he sat on the bench of a hall of fame coach which I believe accounts for something. This is a complete lottery ticket. That doesn't mean it can't or won't work but early returns haven't been all that promising. I know there isn't anything we can do about that so why not enjoy the ride, I suppose. But I don't blame others for feeling frustrated.
 

The bare minimum is an NCAA tourney berth and that only guarantees a 4th season. That would put his conference record at somewhere beween 14-46 and and 17-43 depending on how this season finishes out and how weak the bubble is next year. On the high end, that's a 28% conference winning percentage through 3 seasons...
 

EG#9 said:
The bare minimum is an NCAA tourney berth and that only guarantees a 4th season. That would put his conference record at somewhere beween 14-46 and and 17-43 depending on how this season finishes out and how weak the bubble is next year. On the high end, that's a 28% conference winning percentage through 3 seasons...
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Bellevue is calling...
 

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