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[profyote]

Jan 30, 2023 21:34:40 GMT -6 yote18 said:

Jan 30, 2023 20:09:42 GMT -6 profyote said:

Sorry friends, you lost me at the Maren Walseth reference. If you want to criticize a young staff working with a young team (3 players with any kind of minutes prior to this season), at least try to remember that we're still 3rd in conference with the team that we have on the floor. That includes our starting center who is essentially playing out what would have been her senior year of high school (Demers).

Trust me, I'm as frustrated as all of you are to see that we fell off so significantly from a Sweet 16 team that was almost a guaranteed victory in every Summit game. We've been spoiled with a seemingly never-ending rise since we moved to D1 just over a decade ago.

But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Unless I missed many years of Coyote basketball, what I saw Saturday was far from being outcoached to being outmaneuvered by a veteran team. The scoring drought and ways that we continuously missed assignments happened earlier this season and was very much a measure of an extremely young team...

...who almost completed a comeback and are still in 3rd in the Summit, all things considered.

If you want to say that this is a coaching staff unwilling to take blame, that's fine. But also remember the context of the team. The fact that we're missing 3 seniors and 1 sophomore with the majority of size and experience and are still, somehow, in 3rd place with two bad losses in conference play says a lot for our coaching staff and our program expectations.

Did you remember that we fell to 4th place and lost 1st round of Summit League Tournament in Dawn Plitzuweit's first season? Have patience. This is a rough year but far, far from a place of panic.

I said that was the sideline vibe I got. Not that she was a reincarnation of her. You are correct tho we are somehow still in 3rd and hopefully we stay there. But let’s stop using dawns first year as a comparison, it makes hers look worse than it was. Dawn still finished 23-9 (11-5) with a fresh starting lineup against tougher competition. She had healthy players which helped out but to compare the two seasons and how they’ve went isn’t justifiable imo.

You're right about Dawn's record and competitiveness of the conference that season. You also made my point for me.

This team isn't healthy. It isn't a fresh starting lineup. They have 8 players, overwhelming majority of which are first-year players with a 17-year-old post player.

And we could still end up as a 2 seed in conference.

The point is: this was a game we normally wouldn't dream of losing, but we did. We can get frustrated, but it's far from time to reference behaviors of our coaching staff to arguably one of the worst women's coaches in Summit League history.

[Men's League Waterboy]

I understand having some minor gripes about in-game coaching decisions and whatnot ... entirely fair. I get taking some issue with media relations and what is said and not said between games. Also fair.

But developing any overarching theories about this staff and its potential or lack thereof after 20 games of this season is, in my view, entirely unfair.