2025-26 PSU MBB Thread
- Thread starter Tom McAndrew
- Start date
What about Carey Booth, what happened to him? He was supposed to be our savior. Then his own kid was supposed to be very good. Has he not recruited well? It surprises me they are this much of a doormat. I guess the player they lost really hurt them but it shouldn't be this bad.
To brighten everyone's day I was thinking we probably are in the pole position for the worst Power 4 team in the nation. We are clearly the worst in the B10.
Our competition would be...
Notre Lame
Pitt
BC
Ga Tech
Utah
Kansas State
LSU
South Carolina
Ole Miss
By the way, the worst of the Big East have 5 conference wins so much better than us. Not as good a conference perhaps but I still see us dead last in that league.
I think we would lose a 7 game series to all of these teams on a neutral floor.
That is my cheery tidbit of the day. Carry on.
Our competition would be...
Notre Lame
Pitt
BC
Ga Tech
Utah
Kansas State
LSU
South Carolina
Ole Miss
By the way, the worst of the Big East have 5 conference wins so much better than us. Not as good a conference perhaps but I still see us dead last in that league.
I think we would lose a 7 game series to all of these teams on a neutral floor.
That is my cheery tidbit of the day. Carry on.
PSU definitely is worse than any team on your list, and already was crushed by one of those teams on a neutral court. By the way, because I don't have much better to do, I actually have seen almost every team on your list play this season, if only for parts of a single game.
Booth couldn’t explore all his hair ~ options in South Bend due to dress code.
I'm not trying to make him John Wooden. I'm just saying that the program would be in better shape if he was still the coach. Changing coaches every few years doesn't send a signal of stability. Sometimes continuity matters.
FWIW, tonight on a neutral court, we'd be favored over two of those teams on the list (and one power 5 team not on the list). So it's a stretch to say we're "definitely" worse than all of them.
18 months passed between the comment and the termination. If they wanted to fire him and needed the ammo, he would have been gone much sooner.
I’ve said in the past that I respect your basketball opinions, and of course on a given day PSU can give a team a team like MSU a good game. However, I’d be very surprised if any of those other teams would get blown out at home by Rutgers and/or on a neutral court by Pitt; it takes a special kind of “bad” to do that perfecta.
Georgia Tech got blown out at home by Pitt...you think they couldn't on a neutral court? They lost to Drake by double digits on a neutral.
Boston College has lost to 4 teams outside the top 150 (Central Connecticut, Tulane, UMass, Georgia Tech).
You're focusing way too much on two games if that leads you to believe that we're clearly worse than some of these other teams.
My biggest issue there is that I don't want to create more possessions against teams that are going to have much more talent than us. And we'd need to have quality depth, which makes recruiting that much more of a challenge. It sounds good in theory (and was what Rhoades wanted to do here to an extent), but tough to implement with a Big Ten team and our recruiting challenges.
In a perfect world, I'd be looking to slow things down and play at a snails pace to try and minimize possessions, but then you run into the issue of kids not wanting to play in that system.
I liked what both Pat and Micah did with the 5 out system...the blue bloods in the B1G can recruit NBA caliber 5's, but forcing them out on the perimeter to defend was a way to neutralize them (it gave Illinois fits for years...heck, it probably won the NCAA game against A&M too since they could have killed us inside but had to go away from it).
We could go out and make a splash hire and get a BIG TIME coach, and most of our fanbase that's ignorant to college hoops would say "Josh Schertz? Who the hell is that, we need a big time coach". It's part of the problem....not to mention that we were relevant with an assistant from Purdue that certainly wasn't a splash hire (even though I absolutely loved the hire).
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He's currently down his top 2 players, and 3 of his top 7. Burton's health has really done him in the past few years...I could see him being one of the key guys in the transfer portal this spring that gets a pot of gold and is playing on a Final Four team next season.
Again, I don’t follow basketball, but wasn’t Shrewsberry just riding the hard work that Chambers put in? Would he have had success had he stayed long term? It seems like Chambers did the heavy lifting to get the program to that point by recruiting Philadelphia hard and getting some really good players. That’s something no other PSU coach was able to do.
I wouldn't characterize it that way at all. Our starting 5 in our NCAA run was Pickett-Wynter-Funk-Lundy-Njie...Lundy is the only guy that was here under Pat. Main bench guys were Dread, Clary, Mahaffey, and Henn. Again, just one more (Dread) guy that was inherited.
I loved what Pat did in Philly (the Roman Catholic pipeline was huge)...but when it came to that team, the Rochester, NY pipeline was the one we couldn't have done without.
Not with a barely average coach who can't control his behavior and makes a racist comment.
Your "FWIW" answer is "very little". We are a horrible team that gets blown out by bad teams like Pitt, Rutgers and Maryland. Oregon handled us easily. Also weren't we favored over Rutgers at home? How did that work out? We lose close games, we get blown out. We are good at losing. Heck, Indiana who is not a bad team but an average team loses to bottom feeder NW at home yet destroyed PSU by about 40.
Could we beat one of these other bottom feeders? Sure. But I believe we would find a way to lose to any of these teams on a neutral court in a 7 game or 5 game series. A series of games factors out the blind squirrel finds a nut theory in one game (see Minny and UDub). I think it would also show how Rhoades is a lousy coach and would get outcoached in a series versus these other teams.
LOL Seriously you think he made a racist comment. I don't think so.
Yay, we’re not the worst, only the second or third worst in the entire country.
Incredible offensive performance today...second best shooting performance for PSU of the KenPom era (past 30 years), with a 75.6% eFG%.
Worried that this was the last we'll see of Mingo this season...had all the signs of something concussion related (or something further with the nose).
Worried that this was the last we'll see of Mingo this season...had all the signs of something concussion related (or something further with the nose).
Iowa had 10 offensive rebounds vs only 2 for PSU
PSU had 15 turnovers and missed 5 FTs
The only reason they won was because they shot 64% from the field including 60% from 3 pt range. That's nice when it happens but it's not something you can count on.
Reed was awesome again today. PSU will really miss him next year.
Juric continues to improve. I sure hope we can keep him for a few years. I think he's going to be a good one.
Tunca scares me when he's out there.
Stewart made a couple of 3s in the 1st half but he struggled on defense and committed a couple of unnecessary TOs.
I don't know what's going on with Mingo. He hit his head on Juric's bottom.
PSU had 15 turnovers and missed 5 FTs
The only reason they won was because they shot 64% from the field including 60% from 3 pt range. That's nice when it happens but it's not something you can count on.
Reed was awesome again today. PSU will really miss him next year.
Juric continues to improve. I sure hope we can keep him for a few years. I think he's going to be a good one.
Tunca scares me when he's out there.
Stewart made a couple of 3s in the 1st half but he struggled on defense and committed a couple of unnecessary TOs.
I don't know what's going on with Mingo. He hit his head on Juric's bottom.
I have said all year, the greatest job this coaching staff can do this year is stay competitive through the end of the season and keep as much as the roster as possible intact for next season. Hoping they can use today's win to springboard them to finish the season strong.
Rhoades needs to keep Mingo, Juric, and Dillione. I'd also like to keep Mirtic, Hauser, and Rice because I think they will improve with time. Then you need 2 solid players from the portal. One has to be a strong PF and one has to be able to shoot and back Mingo up at PG.
I'd also like to keep Ciani, Stewart, and Tunca but I wouldn't spend too much on them.
It's not quite as bad as it looks when you consider that Iowa had 32 opportunities for offensive rebounds, and we only had 16.
Yippee we beat Iowa! I honestly want Rhoades to succeed....but not sure what PK will do after such a disappointing season. Hopefully he decides to support MBB with additional resources. Fans attended during past seasons with some success....a winning team would supply nice revenue.
There is nothing that can happen the rest of the year short of some kind of miraculous BTen tourney run that should change the fact that we need a different basketball coach. For financial reasons it most likely won't happen this year which is disappointing because it means another last place finish next season.
Addressing the dumpster fire that is the men's basketball program including how to allocate significantly more resources towards it needs to be one of Kraft's top priorities. How does Wisconsin do it? Nebraska? Minnesota is decent. These schools don't have huge NIL budgets for hoops.
Addressing the dumpster fire that is the men's basketball program including how to allocate significantly more resources towards it needs to be one of Kraft's top priorities. How does Wisconsin do it? Nebraska? Minnesota is decent. These schools don't have huge NIL budgets for hoops.
We have a roster that has produced a last place team. No one's spot on the team should be guaranteed. I get the fact that it is not the right move to turn over the whole roster nor should we do that but beyond Mingo there is no one on this team with talent that would say they are a "must keep".
I would put a decent bet down that this roster, kept intact, is competing for an NCAA tournament berth in 2 years.
It almost certainly won't happen. Doesn't make sense from a financial standpoint at this moment.
But there also isn't really a reason to assume that we'd be some lock to finish last next season. It's really jumping to conclusions until we see where things land with the offseason merry-go-round.