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This ran this past week in the Columbia Daily Tribune. I thought it was, to quote my friends Wang and DaLode, "spot on" ...
***
Changes in order after Tigers’ frustrating year
By JOE WALLJASPER Tribune sports editor
Published Sunday, March 21, 2004
Let’s get to the point. We have just witnessed the most disappointing season in Missouri basketball history.
There have been MU teams with far worse records than the 16-14 Tigers. There have been teams that failed to live up to lofty expectations. There have been NCAA violations. But never has a Missouri basketball team hit for the cycle like the 2003-04 Tigers.
It wasn’t just a bad season, it was the worst.
It all came to a fitting conclusion on Tuesday night, when masochistic Missouri fans could flip between an NIT loss to Michigan on ESPN and a revisiting of the Ricky Clemons fiasco on HBO - a basketball program dissected on and off the court for a national television audience.
It would be easy enough to keep kicking this dead carcass, but I would rather kick around some ideas about why the Tigers fell so hard and how they can get better.
The most obvious problems Quin Snyder’s team faced this season were the lack of a point guard, the lack of discipline and the abundance of distractions.
The point guard issue has persisted since Keyon Dooling departed for the NBA in 2000. The previous replacement candidates have included Wesley Stokes, Ricky Clemons and Randy Pulley - none of whom fit in at MU - along with Brian Grawer and Clarence Gilbert. This season, Jimmy McKinney and Jason Conley were troopers playing out of position at the point, way out of position in Conley’s case.
What we’ve seen is a pattern of talent-evaluation mistakes by Snyder. Stokes was a defensive liability whose attitude didn’t connect with Snyder’s. Snyder hadn’t recruited a backup for Stokes because he was courting McKinney and wanted to save the point guard spot for him. Desperate to replace Stokes, Snyder gambled on Clemons, with well-documented ramifications. When Clemons got the boot, Snyder turned to Pulley, who was such an atrocious shooter that defenses simply ignored him, forcing Missouri to play four on five.
Because of these mistakes, Missouri had to tinker with the position in midseason in each of the last three years. Snyder turned to Gilbert in 2002, McKinney in 2003 and Conley in 2004. That was akin to constantly rotating quarterbacks and eventually sticking a tailback under center. Some teams can get by without a true point guard - the 1994 undefeated Big Eight champion MU team, for example - but this season’s Tigers were generally bad ball-handlers and decision-makers. When it became obvious that Arthur Johnson was the best player on the floor this season, he would still go multiple possessions without touching the ball while the other guys passed it around the perimeter and shot 3-pointers.
Snyder, a former point guard himself, hopes the answer will be incoming recruit Jason Horton. Snyder needs to prove he can develop a point guard. If Horton is the answer, it would allow McKinney and Conley to get most of their minutes at the wing positions where they are most comfortable.
To a certain degree, the lack of a point guard makes a team look undisciplined offensively, but Missouri’s discipline problems go deeper. It starts at the top. Snyder’s inability to be on time is legendary and makes travel an adventure. On the rare occasions he meets with the press between games, reporters kill the minutes by guessing how much of their time will be wasted waiting for the tardy coach to arrive - 30-45 minutes is typical.
You can laugh that off, but teams reflect their coaches. In his five seasons, the procrastinating Tigers have rarely gotten their acts together until the last possible moment, and this year they couldn’t rescue the season. It’s almost as if the team needs a crisis before getting down to business. Snyder would be wise to follow MU football Coach Gary Pinkel’s lead - five minutes early is on time - and then he could rightfully expect his team to be more disciplined.
The other discipline issue involves NCAA violations. Depending on your level of skepticism, Snyder and his staff have been careless about following the rules, cheating deliberately or both. Coming from a private institution, Duke, under respected Coach Mike Krzyzewski, Snyder underestimated the lengths to which the media and rival coaches could - and would - go to expose MU’s NCAA violations. With 17 reported minor violations and a pending NCAA investigation, safe to say he’s got the hint.
But getting the hint isn’t good enough. If it’s not too late to alter the floor plan of the Paige Sports Arena, the compliance offices should be next door to the coaches offices, with plenty of two-way mirrors and wire taps. Compliance officers should shadow the coaches like the Secret Service, complete with mirrored sunglasses, walkie-talkies and firearms: "Mr. Snyder, put down that cell phone."
The discipline issue is tied directly to the distraction issue. Coaches often lump every problem into the catch-all category of adversity, all the better for claiming their teams have overcome adversity. But there is a difference between unavoidable adversity every team faces, such as Linas Kleiza’s injury, and man-made disasters, such as inviting Clemons to an unsuspecting campus. NCAA investigations are incredibly distracting, which is a good reason to think twice about that impermissible phone call you’re about to make to a recruit.
This off-season represents a crossroads for the basketball program. The NCAA’s judgment will come down. It’s likely that at least two assistants will take the fall. Although his credibility is obviously shaky, Clemons identified assistants Tony Harvey and Lane Odom as giving money to players. Hiring the right replacements is critical.
Snyder needs to realize what he does and doesn’t do well and find assistants whose strengths are his weaknesses. Find a basketball version of a defensive coordinator. Find someone with some wrinkles and bench experience, the kind of guy MU lost when John Hammond left for the NBA after one year with Snyder. Recruiting prowess is helpful but not mandatory.
Snyder’s disastrous year isn’t out of character for a young coach. Other high-profile coaches in his age group are going through their own growing pains. Florida’s Billy Donovan can’t win in the NCAA Tournament. Iowa’s Steve Alford can’t make the NCAA Tournament. Keep in mind that Snyder has made the tournament four out of five years, so what we’re talking about here is correcting problems, not rebuilding an entire program.
Next year offers an almost clean slate. There will be some NCAA sanctions, but at least the investigation won’t be hanging over the team’s head. It will be a squad much like Snyder’s first at Missouri, when he did a great job molding a bunch of perimeter players and an out-of-position center - T.J. Soyoye - into an NCAA Tournament team. The burden of expectations will be lifted. There will be a shiny new arena.
It will be better. That’s the good thing about ending MU’s most disappointing season ever. There’s nowhere to go but up.
***
Changes in order after Tigers’ frustrating year
By JOE WALLJASPER Tribune sports editor
Published Sunday, March 21, 2004
Let’s get to the point. We have just witnessed the most disappointing season in Missouri basketball history.
There have been MU teams with far worse records than the 16-14 Tigers. There have been teams that failed to live up to lofty expectations. There have been NCAA violations. But never has a Missouri basketball team hit for the cycle like the 2003-04 Tigers.
It wasn’t just a bad season, it was the worst.
It all came to a fitting conclusion on Tuesday night, when masochistic Missouri fans could flip between an NIT loss to Michigan on ESPN and a revisiting of the Ricky Clemons fiasco on HBO - a basketball program dissected on and off the court for a national television audience.
It would be easy enough to keep kicking this dead carcass, but I would rather kick around some ideas about why the Tigers fell so hard and how they can get better.
The most obvious problems Quin Snyder’s team faced this season were the lack of a point guard, the lack of discipline and the abundance of distractions.
The point guard issue has persisted since Keyon Dooling departed for the NBA in 2000. The previous replacement candidates have included Wesley Stokes, Ricky Clemons and Randy Pulley - none of whom fit in at MU - along with Brian Grawer and Clarence Gilbert. This season, Jimmy McKinney and Jason Conley were troopers playing out of position at the point, way out of position in Conley’s case.
What we’ve seen is a pattern of talent-evaluation mistakes by Snyder. Stokes was a defensive liability whose attitude didn’t connect with Snyder’s. Snyder hadn’t recruited a backup for Stokes because he was courting McKinney and wanted to save the point guard spot for him. Desperate to replace Stokes, Snyder gambled on Clemons, with well-documented ramifications. When Clemons got the boot, Snyder turned to Pulley, who was such an atrocious shooter that defenses simply ignored him, forcing Missouri to play four on five.
Because of these mistakes, Missouri had to tinker with the position in midseason in each of the last three years. Snyder turned to Gilbert in 2002, McKinney in 2003 and Conley in 2004. That was akin to constantly rotating quarterbacks and eventually sticking a tailback under center. Some teams can get by without a true point guard - the 1994 undefeated Big Eight champion MU team, for example - but this season’s Tigers were generally bad ball-handlers and decision-makers. When it became obvious that Arthur Johnson was the best player on the floor this season, he would still go multiple possessions without touching the ball while the other guys passed it around the perimeter and shot 3-pointers.
Snyder, a former point guard himself, hopes the answer will be incoming recruit Jason Horton. Snyder needs to prove he can develop a point guard. If Horton is the answer, it would allow McKinney and Conley to get most of their minutes at the wing positions where they are most comfortable.
To a certain degree, the lack of a point guard makes a team look undisciplined offensively, but Missouri’s discipline problems go deeper. It starts at the top. Snyder’s inability to be on time is legendary and makes travel an adventure. On the rare occasions he meets with the press between games, reporters kill the minutes by guessing how much of their time will be wasted waiting for the tardy coach to arrive - 30-45 minutes is typical.
You can laugh that off, but teams reflect their coaches. In his five seasons, the procrastinating Tigers have rarely gotten their acts together until the last possible moment, and this year they couldn’t rescue the season. It’s almost as if the team needs a crisis before getting down to business. Snyder would be wise to follow MU football Coach Gary Pinkel’s lead - five minutes early is on time - and then he could rightfully expect his team to be more disciplined.
The other discipline issue involves NCAA violations. Depending on your level of skepticism, Snyder and his staff have been careless about following the rules, cheating deliberately or both. Coming from a private institution, Duke, under respected Coach Mike Krzyzewski, Snyder underestimated the lengths to which the media and rival coaches could - and would - go to expose MU’s NCAA violations. With 17 reported minor violations and a pending NCAA investigation, safe to say he’s got the hint.
But getting the hint isn’t good enough. If it’s not too late to alter the floor plan of the Paige Sports Arena, the compliance offices should be next door to the coaches offices, with plenty of two-way mirrors and wire taps. Compliance officers should shadow the coaches like the Secret Service, complete with mirrored sunglasses, walkie-talkies and firearms: "Mr. Snyder, put down that cell phone."
The discipline issue is tied directly to the distraction issue. Coaches often lump every problem into the catch-all category of adversity, all the better for claiming their teams have overcome adversity. But there is a difference between unavoidable adversity every team faces, such as Linas Kleiza’s injury, and man-made disasters, such as inviting Clemons to an unsuspecting campus. NCAA investigations are incredibly distracting, which is a good reason to think twice about that impermissible phone call you’re about to make to a recruit.
This off-season represents a crossroads for the basketball program. The NCAA’s judgment will come down. It’s likely that at least two assistants will take the fall. Although his credibility is obviously shaky, Clemons identified assistants Tony Harvey and Lane Odom as giving money to players. Hiring the right replacements is critical.
Snyder needs to realize what he does and doesn’t do well and find assistants whose strengths are his weaknesses. Find a basketball version of a defensive coordinator. Find someone with some wrinkles and bench experience, the kind of guy MU lost when John Hammond left for the NBA after one year with Snyder. Recruiting prowess is helpful but not mandatory.
Snyder’s disastrous year isn’t out of character for a young coach. Other high-profile coaches in his age group are going through their own growing pains. Florida’s Billy Donovan can’t win in the NCAA Tournament. Iowa’s Steve Alford can’t make the NCAA Tournament. Keep in mind that Snyder has made the tournament four out of five years, so what we’re talking about here is correcting problems, not rebuilding an entire program.
Next year offers an almost clean slate. There will be some NCAA sanctions, but at least the investigation won’t be hanging over the team’s head. It will be a squad much like Snyder’s first at Missouri, when he did a great job molding a bunch of perimeter players and an out-of-position center - T.J. Soyoye - into an NCAA Tournament team. The burden of expectations will be lifted. There will be a shiny new arena.
It will be better. That’s the good thing about ending MU’s most disappointing season ever. There’s nowhere to go but up.
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