What grade do you give Ben Johnson for his first year?

What grade do you give Ben Johnson for his first year?

  • A

    Votes: 14 5.9%

  • B

    Votes: 75 31.8%

  • C

    Votes: 92 39.0%

  • D

    Votes: 41 17.4%

  • F

    Votes: 14 5.9%
  • Total voters
    236
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50PoundHead said:
I voted B. I really have to laugh at all the tough-guy F grades. Go back to the exodus and see how many were predicting things like 4- or 5-win seasons. The team exceeded expectations by a good measure in my view.

Ben's clearly not there yet as a coach, but it's his first year in the big chair so I'm going to cut him some slack. My biggest disappointment is that he didn't give Thompson more playing time. If Ben didn't think Thompson was ready physically, he should have just red-shirted him.

The team did regress in the second half and I hate to break it to you guys, but the other teams do scout us and that is probably the primary reason for the regression. Battle is a stud and Willis is a good B1G-level player, but we didn't have the personnel to counterpunch when the opposition made adjustments. Willis, while good, isn't a true point guard and that showed up as he started to do a Marcus Carr imitation (and a pretty convincing one) during the second half of the B1G season.

Roster construction could have been better (no surprise). Would have been nice if Brandon Johnson had stuck around (and Ihnen and Fox were healthy), but I don't know if that makes a major difference other than giving them a better opportunity to red-shirt Thompson. They clearly needed a true point guard and that, along with some front court muscle, are the biggest needs going into next season. Nice recruiting class coming in and we'll see how much they can contribute. It's probably going to take awhile.
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All of this is true if you think the coach is 0% responsible for the roster.
If the coach is 100% responsible for the roster this is an F.
So the answer is likely somewhere between B and F.
I give the coach at least 75% responsibility for the roster. I don’t know who else is responsible other than him. Maybe 25% to injuries (but that seems high to have lost only two guys neither of which has ever played at the level of a key contributor at the big ten level).

So for me this is a D/F

But if you think he isn’t responsible for the roster…it is very reasonable to give a B



I voted D BTW
 

Recruiting Freshman: His initial group of TT and Thiam wasn't good. He also had little time to recruit new players and most had already signed somewhere else. The class that will be coming in this fall looks to be good and he was able to keep some MN talent home. Now that he has an established system that he can show recruits, I look for him to start bringing in better FR talent. Grade: C to B
Recruiting Transfers: He got a couple a great ones in Battle and Willis while Stephens, Sutherlin and Loewe were good. The rest were not, but he needed bodies to have practice. He also missed on some guys and I think a big reason for the misses is because this was his first HC job and those players wanted to go into a more stable situation. Can't blame them nor can I blame Ben for that. Grade B
Non-Conference: We didn't lose. They played inspired ball, looked to have a plan of attack that featured good ball movement and took care of the basketball. Defensively they competed and played sound positional defense. They lacked inside presence to prevent points in the paint and that really hurt them heading into the conference season. Grade A
Conference: Started great with a competitive home loss to MSU and the win at Michigan. After that the grind of the season and short bench took its toll. Teams took away things on offense and our lack of any inside scoring was exposed as we sometimes didn't shoot well. On defense they still competed and played sound positionally, but the lack of any post defense outside of Eric Curry and no shot blockers caused many problems. Losing sucks and wears on players and it showed in those big losses. Those didn't happen often though and they did battle back in most games. Grade D
Player Development: Can't grade yet. I don't understand those of you who say that he didn't develop a bench during the season nor the FR. I looked at 5 BIG schools and their FR recruits. Wisc. had 5 FR. Hepburn was a starter all year and Bowman played about as much as TT, they had three others who either didn't see the floor or played mop up duty. MSU had 6 FR, Christie was a starter all year, Akins ave. about 14 min a game but played better early. Brooks ave. 4 min and 1.1 pts. The other 3 didn't play. Illini had 3 FR none of whom played much all season with Melendez ave. 8 min and 3 pts per game. PSU had no FR listed on their roster, 4 Soph with Dallion Johnson being the only one who played much. Nebraska had a whopping 9 FR. McGowins started all year and Wilcher played 25 min a night while Bridenbach played 15 per night all before January. None of the others saw any significant time. The point of showing this is to say once the season starts a line up really doesn't change. If a FR is a contributor, then they are from day 1 otherwise they don't get time to develop in season. What happens after their FR year is the key. If TT brings nothing next year, then we can start to question if he can develop players. Now that is not gradeable.
Finally, In season improvement: In the BIG, only Illinois had a better record in conference compared to their non-conference, while Rutgers stayed the same. NW was the only team who had a bigger drop in winning percent from NC to C. Were we better at the end than the start? No but it wasn't because the players quit or we got out coached, it was because the players got worn down both physically and mentally. We ran out of gas. Grade C
When I voted earlier this week I said overall a B, but would say it was more of C.
 
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50PoundHead said:
Would have been nice if Brandon Johnson had stuck around (and Ihnen and Fox were healthy), but I don't know if that makes a major difference other than giving them a better opportunity to red-shirt Thompson.
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I don't know how having those players around couldn't have made a significant difference. Our front court (excluding Battle of course who is more of a swing man) was flat out horrible. It was so bad that we rarely could put two of those four players on the court at the same time. I really think that factor accounted for at least 75% of our problems this season.
 

Some guy said:
If the coach is 100% responsible for the roster this is an F.


I voted D BTW
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Agree with the second statement, not with the first. The F grade should be reserved for truly horrible seasons like Pitino's 2015-16 season. 13-17 just isn't quite bad enough.
 



Of course he's responsible for roster construction, but I can't think of a coach in the country that had as big a challenge after taking a head job than Johnson did. This isn't fantasy basketball. You just can't virtually pick guys from the transfer pool and Pitino only had two recruits (one of whom didn't sign after Pitino was let go), so Johnson was behind a pretty big 8-ball. I'm not arguing he couldn't have done better, but it's not like there was a line going around the block of guys clamoring to be a Gopher before or after Johnson took the helm.

This off-season is when I'll start a more serious mark-up. Johnson doesn't get a pass for 2021-22, but my curve is a lot more lenient than a lot of folks here.
 

cjbfbp said:
Yes, but not with the rating systems. It doesn't appear to me that they figure in transfers.
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I think that is absolutely true which makes recruiting ratings for teams to be close to worthless. The portal is completely changing that industry and the services that figure out a way to incorporate transfers in a coherent way will separate themselves from the rest. I don’t follow it closely enough to know how it would be done but it will require more work than they appear to put in now.
 

cjbfbp said:
I don't know how having those players around couldn't have made a significant difference. Our front court (excluding Battle of course who is more of a swing man) was flat out horrible. It was so bad that we rarely could put two of those four players on the court at the same time. I really think that factor accounted for at least 75% of our problems this season.
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Hence my use of the word "major." Our front court was really thin (both physically in Thompson's case and depth wise with Daniels and Ogele). I just don't know how many wins the presence of Johnson, Ihnen, and Fox would have meant. I doubt it would have put us in the upper half of the conference standings, but we clearly would have been a more competitive team. And you're right about Battle. It's hard to call him a true front-court player.
 

50PoundHead said:
I doubt it would have put us in the upper half of the conference standings, but we clearly would have been a more competitive team. And you're right about Battle. It's hard to call him a true front-court player.
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I agree but if we could have been 17-13 instead of 13-17, we might be looking at an NIT invite (assuming they have that tournament) and that would be a significant difference in my mind.
 



GopherWeatherGuy said:
I agree with most of this.

The question that do I think Fleck would have recruited Mafe if he didn't already have an offer? Yes, he recruited a bunch of players who didn't already have MN offers over those 3 weeks, and didn't recruit a bunch of kids who had MN offers or were already committed.

This is when Kill took the Rutgers OC job and was Mafe's lead recruiter there. Fleck could have easily let him go there where his offer would have been honored by a member of the previous staff.
If Mafe truly wanted to be a Gopher from the beginning, he would have committed months earlier under Kill/Claeys. But he didn't.

Fleck went after Mafe hard because he wanted him and beat Kill out for him. This was also the first time there was a published confrontation between Fleck and Kill.
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Especially to keep an in-state (metro to boot) kid home when Kill was trying to take him with him out of state. Fleck obviously saw the Hopkins film and recognized there was a lot of potential there.
 

For the sake of clarity, someone should identify a timeline of players leaving and the date of Ben’s hiring.
 

50PoundHead said:
Of course he's responsible for roster construction, but I can't think of a coach in the country that had as big a challenge after taking a head job than Johnson did. This isn't fantasy basketball. You just can't virtually pick guys from the transfer pool and Pitino only had two recruits (one of whom didn't sign after Pitino was let go), so Johnson was behind a pretty big 8-ball. I'm not arguing he couldn't have done better, but it's not like there was a line going around the block of guys clamoring to be a Gopher before or after Johnson took the helm.

This off-season is when I'll start a more serious mark-up. Johnson doesn't get a pass for 2021-22, but my curve is a lot more lenient than a lot of folks here.
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And obviously he didn't sign Fox after he got hurt. He intended him to play.

Maybe Fox alone gets us over the hump for a few more wins, especially Wisconsin at home. That possibly would be worth a full letter grade higher.
 

cjbfbp said:
I agree but if we could have been 17-13 instead of 13-17, we might be looking at an NIT invite (assuming they have that tournament) and that would be a significant difference in my mind.
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That's true and I respect that viewpoint. NIT invite would have been good for exposure and a reward for a team that really played hard all year.

In a totally different hemisphere, did Pitino recruit Battle out of high school?
 



cjbfbp said:
I'm a firm believer that one shouldn't be judged solely by his best or worst performances. If we looked simply at overall yearly records (probably the best indicator of the overall levels of fan happiness or unhappiness in a season), I think fair grades for Pitino's tenure are:

1 A grade
2 B grades
1 C grade
3 D grades
1 F grade

That's not a B or even a C+ student. That's a 1.875 average.

As the old saying goes: Even a blind pig finds an acorn once in awhile.
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Don't get me wrong; this program was going nowhere under Pitino, and he had to go. The point, though, is that seasons like that are what we fans live for and make following sports fun. That's part of why the Tubby era was so unsatisfying: the only real highlights were an upset here and a Big Ten tourney run there and no full seasons of accomplishment. Even Monson had a year with a winning conference record and, I believe, a fifth-place finish.
 


50PoundHead said:
That's true and I respect that viewpoint. NIT invite would have been good for exposure and a reward for a team that really played hard all year.

In a totally different hemisphere, did Pitino recruit Battle out of high school?
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According to 247, Battle did not receive an offer from us and, in fact, received only 1 D1 offer: George Washington. That doesn't surprise me because Pitino never seemed like the type who went searching for those diamonds in the rough. He seemed to just take whatever well rated players he could get. That resulted in him getting commitments from some prep players who ranged from overrated to wildly overrated (e.g., Jonathan Nwanko, Michael Hurt, Isaiah Washington, Tre' Williams). It must be said that he did consistently better recruiting transfers.

According to my database search, there are two current junior forwards in the country who have averaged more than 28 minutes per game, 11 + points per game, and 5 + rebounds per game in each of their first three seasons. They are both in the Big Ten. One of them (Trayce Jackson-Davis) was the #26 RSCI consensus player coming out of high school. The other was the unrated (according to 247) Jamison Battle. When someone is located in your own backyard, I think you should take a good look at him even if he doesn't have a preferred rating. It's not like Battle was a slow developer. He averaged over 30 minutes a game as a college freshman. He must have been pretty good as a senior in high school. How was it that a school in the District of Columbia knew that but we didn't?
 


Bad Gopher said:
Don't get me wrong; this program was going nowhere under Pitino, and he had to go. The point, though, is that seasons like that are what we fans live for and make following sports fun. That's part of why the Tubby era was so unsatisfying: the only real highlights were an upset here and a Big Ten tourney run there and no full seasons of accomplishment. Even Monson had a year with a winning conference record and, I believe, a fifth-place finish.
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I look at a college basketball season as around 30 or 31 regular season games with the potential of only a small number of post-season games for most teams. Each one of those (except for maybe those games where my team is playing a really rotgut opponent) offers an opportunity for a viewing experience ranging from great to terrible. Because the post season games come at the end, they mean a little more due to being the final memories of the season but the overall record means more to me than success in any particular game.

The perspective above is consistent with my personality and temperament. I would prefer three good experiences to one great one and defeat depresses me more than victory elates me.

I only checked into Tubby's tenure during his final two years (It took me about 10 years of living in Minnesota to become a Gopher fan) but objectively I would rate Tubby's tenure as far better than Pitino's. Tubby never had a losing season in 6 years; Pitino had 4 in 8 years. Tubby had 5 post-season appearances in 6 years while Pitino had 3 in 8 years. Pitino had a single season better than any one of Tubby's (especially in conference) but he also had a single season that's probably the worst in Gopher history.

Oddly enough, the catalyst that began my Gopher fandom was the post-season run in Tubby's penultimate year after a disappointing regular season. With a lineup of Rodney Williams, sophomore Austin Hollins, freshman Andre Hollins; and a frontline consisting of redshirt freshman Elliot, redshirt freshman Oto, and a local junior college kid whose name I can't remember, they beat favored Northwestern in overtime, fell narrowly to highly ranked Michigan in overtime, and proceeded to go to the NIT championship while playing all their games on the road. I thought it was an inspiring performance under the circumstances and I've been watching ever since. Also started watching the football team regularly the following fall.
 

cjbfbp said:
According to 247, Battle did not receive an offer from us and, in fact, received only 1 D1 offer: George Washington. That doesn't surprise me because Pitino never seemed like the type who went searching for those diamonds in the rough. He seemed to just take whatever well rated players he could get. That resulted in him getting commitments from some prep players who ranged from overrated to wildly overrated (e.g., Jonathan Nwanko, Michael Hurt, Isaiah Washington, Tre' Williams). It must be said that he did consistently better recruiting transfers.

According to my database search, there are two current junior forwards in the country who have averaged more than 28 minutes per game, 11 + points per game, and 5 + rebounds per game in each of their first three seasons. They are both in the Big Ten. One of them (Trayce Jackson-Davis) was the #26 RSCI consensus player coming out of high school. The other was the unrated (according to 247) Jamison Battle. When someone is located in your own backyard, I think you should take a good look at him even if he doesn't have a preferred rating. It's not like Battle was a slow developer. He averaged over 30 minutes a game as a college freshman. He must have been pretty good as a senior in high school. How was it that a school in the District of Columbia knew that but we didn't?
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I keep going back to Jon Bryant being a key piece of the 1999 Wisconsin Final Four team. Not sure of his HS rating, but he was similarly a diamond in the rough...and from Robbinsdale, too, if memory serves. Simply put, the Badgers don't get to the FF that year without him. Whether they start or not, you want guys like that on your team, and it's worth the effort to find them.
 

Bad Gopher said:
Pitino still owns the best conference finish and only true conference title contention in the 23 years since Haskins was fired (11-7, 4th place, 3 games out of first place). That was his fourth season here. The hope is that Ben can at least duplicate that feat in his first half decade in this job.
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The bar hasn't just been lowered, the bar has been removed with respect to gopher bb.
 

Bad Gopher said:
I keep going back to Jon Bryant being a key piece of the 1999 Wisconsin Final Four team. Not sure of his HS rating, but he was similarly a diamond in the rough...and from Robbinsdale, too, if memory serves. Simply put, the Badgers don't get to the FF that year without him. Whether they start or not, you want guys like that on your team, and it's worth the effort to find them.
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Absolutely, especially if you only have to travel a few miles!
 




cjbfbp said:
I'm a firm believer that one shouldn't be judged solely by his best or worst performances. If we looked simply at overall yearly records (probably the best indicator of the overall levels of fan happiness or unhappiness in a season), I think fair grades for Pitino's tenure are:

1 A grade
2 B grades
1 C grade
3 D grades
1 F grade

That's not a B or even a C+ student. That's a 1.875 average.

As the old saying goes: Even a blind pig finds an acorn once in awhile.
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Pitino’s A was in gym class. 🤣
 



I think he deserves an A. Other than a couple of games, this team was competitive and played hard and smart. This is the first year in a long time that I have followed the team closely, and I think it is because of the hard work and enthusiasm of Ben and the coaching staff. It is nice having a coach who does not make excuses (year zero), and has the respect of the players. The season was much better than the vast majority of pundits or fans would have thought, and I appreciated the effort the team put in during some trying circumstances. I am looking forward to next season, and I hope the coaching staff gets an extension.
 

Maguire said:
I think he deserves an A. Other than a couple of games, this team was competitive and played hard and smart. This is the first year in a long time that I have followed the team closely, and I think it is because of the hard work and enthusiasm of Ben and the coaching staff. It is nice having a coach who does not make excuses (year zero), and has the respect of the players. The season was much better than the vast majority of pundits or fans would have thought, and I appreciated the effort the team put in during some trying circumstances. I am looking forward to next season, and I hope the coaching staff gets an extension.
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So, yer saying we should offer him a lifetime extension?
 

cjbfbp said:
Agree with the second statement, not with the first. The F grade should be reserved for truly horrible seasons like Pitino's 2015-16 season. 13-17 just isn't quite bad enough.
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It is the first time we finished in position for the last seed in the conference since at least 1967 I think.

2015 non conference losses were to:
20 win Milwaukee
12 win Oklahoma state
26 win South Dakota state
14 win South Dakota
21 win temple


clearly a worse year. But I would say both Fs all else being equal. All else is not equal so I rated this year a D overall.
 

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