uostudent wrote:Mike is one of the few guys on the basketball team that I actually know. I'm still not convinced that this is true. Mike and his mother were adamant about him obtaining a college degree. Mike was on pace to graduate at the end of this year. I'm going to try to get in contact with him because I'm having a hard time believing an Israeli newspaper.
BillM wrote:I had always read that one of the reasons Dunigan came to Oregon was our term system and that he and his Mom saw in it, the opportunity to graduate in three years. This is really disappointing.
EK and a bunch of his recruits are gone. Whether or not we should have let him go is a moot point. We have a new coach and a new arena. I can only hope that the new staff can bring in their players and make Oregon Basketball in Matt Court fun to watch. As an alum, fan, and donor with a great seat in the new arena, I've got to get behind our program 100%.
His and his mother's talk of graduating in 3 years was always what made me think him transferring was never going to happen. They always seemed to value his education and him leaving for a pro team makes all that talk look hollow. There has to be something else going on to possibly make him leave before he got his degree.
He apparently was a great student in high school and the article that ran in the RG earlier this year talked a lot about the sacrifices his Mom made to make sure he went to good schools and kept busy. He's got to be close to his degree with summer school credits. Too bad!
greenyellow wrote:
But after possibly 2 good years, we would be back to square one with a whole new big freshman class. I think the athletic department wanted a clean start for the program as they enter the new arena. They probably knew that players would transfer out due to Kent leaving but are probably thinking more long-term than just short-term. Short-term the prospects of this team look bad, but long-term, the foundation of the program can hopefully be built up by Altman so that there is no boom or bust type trajectory for the team. Altman will more than likely have 6 scholarships to offer next season and then 4 after that, so he can rebuild the program into his liking in a short order.
If Altman doesn't pulls in some major talent in these next 2 basketball classes......... then Oregon basketball will become irrelevant and fans wont be showing up to our new arena.....
It would have been a lot easier to rebuild after a couple of winning seasons in the new arena... and with a likely better coaching hire.
I don't think you understand how fed up boosters were with Kent. A lot of people weren't going to continue to be season ticket holders, even with the new arena. The team finished .500 only because Ernie put together the softest OOC scheduled I've ever seen assembled by a DI program.
This is coming from someone who was an Ernie Kent supporter. I talked to Ernie a few times and he was very kind to me. He was personable around students, but apparently his act had worn thin with boosters.
“If everybody in this room just want to be real with themselves, this game could have went either way,” he said. “We turned the ball over a lot. We beat ourself. Just be real with yourself right now. We beat ourself.”
-Jameis Winston after Oregon's decisive 59-20 victory over Florida State in the Rose Bowl
Oregon wasn't going to be good under Kent. If Dunigan goes, we're not going to be good under Altman right now, either. The difference is that Kent would have brought in another cycle of mediocrity once this current group graduates, whereas the new staff might actually be able to build something.
The team wasn't going to be good under Kent over the next few years, he had decent talent but couldn't coach them up so getting Altman and losing players doesn't really change things in the short term. Yes the loss of Dunigan and others makes things more difficult for Altman next season but if he is able to sell himself and the program to recruits this season, and things might be easier for him to do that because of the small number of scholarship players, and if he is a s good of a coach as he is said to be, he can get the program on the right track pretty quickly once he has a full roster of players again. The next couple years are probably not going to be pretty regardless of who the coach was/is.
gofightingducks wrote:The team wasn't going to be good under Kent over the next few years, he had decent talent but couldn't coach them up so getting Altman and losing players doesn't really change things in the short term. Yes the loss of Dunigan and others makes things more difficult for Altman next season but if he is able to sell himself and the program to recruits this season, and things might be easier for him to do that because of the small number of scholarship players, and if he is a s good of a coach as he is said to be, he can get the program on the right track pretty quickly once he has a full roster of players again. The next couple years are probably not going to be pretty regardless of who the coach was/is.
gofightingducks wrote:The team wasn't going to be good under Kent over the next few years, he had decent talent but couldn't coach them up so getting Altman and losing players doesn't really change things in the short term. Yes the loss of Dunigan and others makes things more difficult for Altman next season but if he is able to sell himself and the program to recruits this season, and things might be easier for him to do that because of the small number of scholarship players, and if he is a s good of a coach as he is said to be, he can get the program on the right track pretty quickly once he has a full roster of players again. The next couple years are probably not going to be pretty regardless of who the coach was/is.
I disagree.... This team would have likely made similar improvement as past EK teams and would have been competing for post season play.
I understand that there is a perception that Altman is a better basketball coach..... but do you really think he's going to get Pac 10 caliber talent?
I think most kids want to play for a winning team with a coach that will get them to the NBA......... Altman is far from that.
gofightingducks wrote:The team wasn't going to be good under Kent over the next few years, he had decent talent but couldn't coach them up so getting Altman and losing players doesn't really change things in the short term. Yes the loss of Dunigan and others makes things more difficult for Altman next season but if he is able to sell himself and the program to recruits this season, and things might be easier for him to do that because of the small number of scholarship players, and if he is a s good of a coach as he is said to be, he can get the program on the right track pretty quickly once he has a full roster of players again. The next couple years are probably not going to be pretty regardless of who the coach was/is.
I disagree.... This team would have likely made similar improvement as past EK teams and would have been competing for post season play.
I understand that there is a perception that Altman is a better basketball coach..... but do you really think he's going to get Pac 10 caliber talent?
I think most kids want to play for a winning team with a coach that will get them to the NBA......... Altman is far from that.
Based on what? We were loaded with talent in 2001 and 2006, and showed flashes of being a really, really good team before taking off for big seasons in 2002 and 2007. What did we do last year that even hinted at such promise? Where are the 3 future NBA players having All Pac-10 level seasons that will carry the team far into the Tournament? This current group is NOTHING like the other groups in Kent's earlier years.
gofightingducks wrote:The team wasn't going to be good under Kent over the next few years, he had decent talent but couldn't coach them up so getting Altman and losing players doesn't really change things in the short term. Yes the loss of Dunigan and others makes things more difficult for Altman next season but if he is able to sell himself and the program to recruits this season, and things might be easier for him to do that because of the small number of scholarship players, and if he is a s good of a coach as he is said to be, he can get the program on the right track pretty quickly once he has a full roster of players again. The next couple years are probably not going to be pretty regardless of who the coach was/is.
I disagree.... This team would have likely made similar improvement as past EK teams and would have been competing for post season play.
I understand that there is a perception that Altman is a better basketball coach..... but do you really think he's going to get Pac 10 caliber talent?
I think most kids want to play for a winning team with a coach that will get them to the NBA......... Altman is far from that.
Based on what? We were loaded with talent in 2001 and 2006, and showed flashes of being a really, really good team before taking off for big seasons in 2002 and 2007. What did we do last year that even hinted at such promise? Where are the 3 future NBA players having All Pac-10 level seasons that will carry the team far into the Tournament? This current group is NOTHING like the other groups in Kent's earlier years.
Agreed. This current group under Kent showed very little promise and no real improvement. There is no reason to believe that they would have been a post season team if Kent was still here.
gofightingducks wrote:The team wasn't going to be good under Kent over the next few years, he had decent talent but couldn't coach them up so getting Altman and losing players doesn't really change things in the short term. Yes the loss of Dunigan and others makes things more difficult for Altman next season but if he is able to sell himself and the program to recruits this season, and things might be easier for him to do that because of the small number of scholarship players, and if he is a s good of a coach as he is said to be, he can get the program on the right track pretty quickly once he has a full roster of players again. The next couple years are probably not going to be pretty regardless of who the coach was/is.
I disagree.... This team would have likely made similar improvement as past EK teams and would have been competing for post season play.
I understand that there is a perception that Altman is a better basketball coach..... but do you really think he's going to get Pac 10 caliber talent?
I think most kids want to play for a winning team with a coach that will get them to the NBA......... Altman is far from that.
Based on what? We were loaded with talent in 2001 and 2006, and showed flashes of being a really, really good team before taking off for big seasons in 2002 and 2007. What did we do last year that even hinted at such promise? Where are the 3 future NBA players having All Pac-10 level seasons that will carry the team far into the Tournament? This current group is NOTHING like the other groups in Kent's earlier years.
I respectfully disagree again
Last years team prominently played 2 freshman and 8 sophomores. Two of are best players (Armstead & Jacob) were rookies to the team....... Our most talented wing prospect (Humphrey) missed a big chunk of the season due to injury. I
As far as talent goes..... I think this team is easily the deepest Kent has ever had..... and at the very least I think Dunigan & Wilson will end up getting drafted.
And as far as "flashes" go.... we swept the LA schools and played Washington tough...... I think it's a little tough to judge last season though because I do think the player gave up when the news broke that Kent was already fired....
I don't know what team you were watching, but the guys looked like they weren't trying long before any date was announced that EK was supposedly notified of his termination...
Autzen Stadium... Where great teams go to die...Hard!
The fact that "sweeping the LA schools" was the first thing you mentioned when recalling how we showed promise last year is all that really needs to be said. We swept a pair of schools who combined to go 30-32? Sign me up! The blowout home loss to Montana takes far more precedent than than sweeping a pair of bad schools.
In '01 and '06, we beat several ranked teams and in '06, specifically, things started to click towards the end of the season that served as a good lead-in to the '07 Elite Eight year. Weren't we a double OT loss to Cal -- played without Brooks -- away from the Pac-10 Tourney title game? We had a lot of close losses that year, several late game Brooks implosions, and we played in a MUCH, MUCH more difficult Pac-10. We got some wins this year because the Pac-10 was horrific. If Oregon played anything resembling a legit OOC schedule -- heck, or even the one the '06 team played, when they played @ Vanderbilt (another game that flashed the '06 team's potential), Georgetown, and Illinois -- and if they didn't play in arguably the worst Pac-10 of all time, they wouldn't have even sniffed .500. Not even close.
I don't think the fact that there were 8 sophomores on last year's team matters, either. In addition to the 3 future NBA Draft picks that Ernie Kent absolutely has to have to win an NCAA Tournament game, one of them has to be a 1st round PG prospect. I like Malcolm Armstead as much as the next guy, but he's not sniffing the NBA. Where's the All American (Jones/Brooks)? Where are the shooters? Malcolm and Humphrey were our best longball shooters, and they are/were inconsistent as hell, nothing like the barrage of shooters we had in '02 (Rid, Jackson, Jones, Davis, Lever) or '07 (Brooks, TP, Taylor, Malik).
There's just no similarities between this team and Kent's good teams from earlier in his regime. The ceiling was always through the roof for the other groups, and you had serious talent just waiting to explode. The only kid who had that kind of potential with last year's group was Jamil, and I think he was at least another year away, and that's if he stayed (which is no guarantee, even if Kent was retained).
