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Houston Corvallis, We have a Problem

47

From Hallice Cooke:

“I feel like that (Iowa State) coaching staff knows how to develop players,” Cooke said. “That’s something that I wasn’t as comfortable with here. I want to give myself an opportunity to win. That’s something that I didn’t feel like was going to happen at Oregon State so that stood out to me – an opportunity to play for a good coach and a winning program that just won a conference title. That stood out.”

I am going to reach out to him and try to get an interview for AB. Seems like he is willing to talk.

 

47 COMMENTS

  1. He may have some points, but Iowa State will not win a conference title in 2014 and the Big 12 is no Pac-12 in terms of competition in the top 4 teams.
    This to me is kinda like buying at the peak.

    • Jason, Big 12 was and has been superior to the PAC for several years. Hoiberg is a very good coach and has taken in so many transfers and players dismissed from other teams that it would make Dana Altman blush. See previous thread for a review of Ames. Iowa State now pops up on almost every transfer list because of Hoiberg’s NBA connections and the success of the previous transfers.
      BTW, I did not give you the minus sign as I do not want to be banned from future FTS gatherings LOL.

      The rumor that won’t die in the twin cities is that Hoiberg will end up as the coach of the Timberwolves.

  2. One of my imaginary friends still insists the reason is that he’s homesick and he’ll end up near NYC. But I teased him over lunch about the specificity of this comment, and he couldn’t counter it with anything.

    It’s also interesting that he doesn’t think he can lead a team. But I’m glad he was candid about it. It’s going to be fun reading comments here and there about this one statement alone.

  3. This where you drop the UO received commit from 4star PG Kendall Smith, but Who Gives a F***
    hoops is completely worthless and comes down to BDC ineptness.

    • I’d much rather get Noah Blackwell. I’ve watched all the tape I could find on Small, but I just don’t see four stars in his play. He’s good in HS at dribble entry and runners. But he’s got to fundamentally change his form if he’s going to become a perimeter player. And there is no option for him to play anywhere but outside being shy of 5’11”. He doesn’t have the same quickness, speed or hops Jahii has. Runners in college look a lot different than in HS.

  4. Here is a fun game.

    Things Bob D was doing while I wrote this post:

    -napping
    -mowing his lawn
    -pulling weeds
    -counting beans
    -jerking off to Riley’s career win total

    What else?

      • Mrs BDC, “Bob, what is that on your shirt?” ” Hmm….I spilled my Piña Colada mix again dear.”
        “That is the fifth time this week. You need to cut back on your drinking.”

    • -at the bank, depositing his fat UO kickback for keeping OSU down.
      -brainstorming to figure a way to get rid of that damn Pat Casey.
      -calling porn chat numbers and using an OSU credit card
      -counting his fingers and toes, again and again….ya know, just to be sure
      -watching endless Gilligans Island reruns

  5. No comparison to Wagner and her bat shit crazy behavior/antics, but the commonality is that we are starting to see a major college athletic program in free fall once again at OSU. Not sure CR’s plan for next season is working, what’s BDC’s plan for CR?

      • Jack-

        The W/L record could be described as mediocre.

        Fan attendance plummeting to historic lows (in a revenue sport) and players jumping ship over (at least in part) over coaching…that is not mediocre. Free fall is a much better term.

          • I don’t remember any recent players leaving VFC then complaining about poor coaching.

            Maybe you shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the poor attendance at Gill, a lot of people would say that is a black eye for a once proud program.

            I like CR as a person, I’ve met him, he’s got a great family, they’re regular customers (hey, I even got a christmas card-so there), he comes from a good place wanting his players to be successful in life, yet he refuses to recognize his own failings…

            Oh I get it, CR IS just like Riley

          • Pretty much.

            And players complaining about the program they just left isn’t an adult thing to do. Burning bridges will come back to bite you in the future. There are certainly many players who left football and would have been justified in ripping Riley’s methods.

            I don’t mind in hoops’ case because I feel CR has reached his apex, his norm. If he was given a lifetime contract, he could probably make a couple good runs here and there which end up with us not doing much. I think Sendek is a much worse coach with many more problems, but they still made the Tourney this last year. Would that be enough to sate the masses at OSU?

            Of course it wouldn’t. Maybe it would be another benchmark for us. But it would still be just a hiccup (or a couple fantasy future hiccups) in an overall mediocre existence. I’m in it for the long haul, and I want a team who is constantly ranked, as was our past tradition.

            But now I get to resign myself to a second sport in which I hope for awesomeness next year because this year, if it’s not an anomaly, is just another ho-hum year. And if it is an anomaly, the bubble will burst anyway.

      • That is bullshit. Saying it over and over is just not going to make it true.

        Basketball is a disaster, football is stable and consistently in the top 3rd of the conference and often finds itself in the top 25.

        • You seem to like living in the past. And that past was a window of a couple years that just weren’t that good if you want to take the time to analyze them. One could say that OSU football in the best of times under Riley has always choked under the enormity of the moment.

          Every. Damn. Time.

          That’s the best of times. That’s two or three seasons out of 13. Our football team just isn’t that good.

          If you want to take the transfer part of the story, then I guess every player is awesome about being on a roster where the head coach signs 10 players over our scholarship limit on an annual basis. I’m sure the wave of “transfers” just loves the program after that. Shall we go ask Ryan Katz how he feels?

          Perhaps Coach Rob hasn’t let people transfer before now because he took over a team whose APR was in the dirt. I’m sure he would have jettisoned 90% of the team he got in 2008 if he was allowed to do so. But he couldn’t do it, and that was the biggest hurdle of the job. No incoming coach could have done so without earning major sanctions.

          And that’s where we get to Bobby D. He hired someone with unreal parameters at that time. He could have easily told the coach to just ditch the ballast in the program like every new coach everywhere else gets to do. What’s a year of postseason ineligibility in the grand scheme? It didn’t seem to phase UCONN.

          Sorry to be the one to tell you all this for the very first time, but our football team is not that good. And the struggles are so similar in recent years it’s eerie.

          Just knock it off with the unreasonably biased shit. Our two revenue coaches are really great guys who supposedly know a ton about their sports but can’t get over the hump. They both make excuses about not recruiting well, and there are major major holes in their coaching. The only difference is that one took over a winning program with facility upgrades built in, and the other had to take a forgettable group of almost players and scratch and claw and beg to get the same for his program.

          And now that hoops is steadily mediocre, people want to call it a dumpster fire.

          People are idiots.

          • I don’t even see how you can compare the successes of the football and basketball programs. Riley has serious coaching deficiencies, but the football program is on a completely different level than the basketball program. The football program has been ranked at some point of the season for each of the past eight seasons, except 2011, with regular appearances in some mid-to-low tier bowl game. When was the last time the men’s basketball program appeared in the top 25? Analysts still mention the football team on an annual basis as a dangerous/well coached/sleeper team in the Pac 12. I’ve never heard anyone say that about the basketball team. Of course it’s annoying that Riley can’t get us into the elite of college football, but you’re acting like Robinson consistently gets us to the NIT with an occasional NCAA tournament appearance and we’re whining he can’t ever get us into or further than the Sweet 16.

          • Oooohhhh!

            I like the “ranked at some point of the season” part. That’s rich… because results always go back and look at specific parts of the season.

            I won’t argue that football is in a slightly better place in terms of results overall. Riley has managed to be over .500 in conference play in about half his 13 seasons here. So there’s that.

            But there’s not much more.

            And everyone likes to pooh-pooh the fact that CR took over the worst program in the nation and was forced to keep all the players. They probably do so because CR himself has never been shy about pointing it out, to the point that it’s a “boy who cried wolf” situation. But it was a very real condition. CR took over a program that was in worse shape than the one MR took over in 1997, let alone the one he took over in 2003.

            So we would have been better off if CR ditched us after two years. Then we would have lucked into someone who would have taken over the basic foundation of a newly healed program and turned it into a winner. Then that coach would ditch us after a historic run which included a couple NCAA runs… one which made the Final Four. Then CR would come back to OSU after failing miserably on the greener side of the fence. He wouldn’t have any expectations set on his performance other than to be better than .500. Facilities would already be built out/upgraded or promised. Fans would fill the stands and cheer on a team that wins more of their games than they lose most years. They would brag in Week 5 (or years thereafter) about being ranked in Week 2. Defense would still suck. He would oversign by 10 to 20% every year, knowing which players would “transfer” or “retire” before signing day… even if those players didn’t know it themselves (most likely they do).

            All would be hunky-dory in mediocre land.

            Yay us!

          • Yes, I would say the “ranked at some point in the season” part is rich because it shows that the football team has at least been in the conversation, or at the very least has not been a team that anybody in the Pac 12 is going to overlook, for almost a decade now. You absolutely cannot say that about the basketball program. If anything I would imagine lesser name schools look forward to seeing Oregon State on their schedule because it represents a chance for a “look at which major conference school we beat!” moment. And I would love to see your objective data showing MR took over a better program in ’97 than CR did in ’08 (remember that whole infamous 28 consecutive losing seasons thing?). Even your excuse of CR inheriting crappy players is tired. That was six seasons ago! The roster has more than turned over in his time as the head coach and even with the situation he inherited he was able to land some great recruits. He just never figured out how to win with those recruits. As I alluded to before, I’m hardly saying Oregon State football is the model collegiate football program in the country but Riley’s football team and Robinson’s basketball team are night and day different to each other.

          • Of the hoopsters who have been recruited and are now gone, I would hesitate to call any “great” besides JC. Berto was highly rated but essentially a Prop 48… and slow and offensively minded. And all the bigs were one-dimensional.

            The talent assembled now (and incoming) is better than at any point in the last six years, even with Cooke leaving. Inexperience and obvious coaching limits will make next year disappointing yet again most likely. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we finally broke .500 in-league with the talent we’ll have.

            Remember that it was only 26 years when Riley came. It was 28 when he ditched us. It was slightly better because at least Pettibone was an honorable man. And he got OSU to upgrade some of the facilities. He also recruited some decent talent that was left in place when Riley took over. Not one player CR inherited was a Pac starter, and only a couple were even Pac caliber players. Erickson had more Pettibone contributors on his Fiesta roster than he did Riley contributors. The most important just happened to be from Riley’s time. But even one of those was just a walk-on who could have gone elsewhere if not for luck.

            Be honest. Were we ever really in any serious conversation last year? Did we ever deserve to be ranked after EWU exposed our reality?

            Oh yeah… EWU wasn’t some lower division school who had us circled and thought they could beat us… then did beat us. That never happens in football. Football is so different compared to hoops… night and day… blah blah blah.

            I will say one thing. If hoops would win at the same rate football does when we have a halftime lead, then they would be night and day with hoops being the much better program. I guess we can add halftime adjustments to the list of similarities.

          • Fair enough. I personally don’t see it for next year but I’d love nothing more than for you to be right and be able to say “I told you so” to everyone while we’re watching the Beavs in March madness.

          • March Madness would be a fantasy compared to what I expect. It just wouldn’t surprise me if the talent took it upon themselves to make it there. And there will be enough talent to do so, albeit inexperienced. A 7-11 or 8-12 conference record would be about the tops of my expectations. I expected six from this past team, so seven should be fair. If they do better than that, I’ll be jumping up and down happy.

            I guess I could say I expect better of the football team this year. Last year was really disappointing. I expect this year to be 8-4 at least, and that would just be blah. Looking at our personnel, we should only have trouble @SC, @UW and for the CW. One could make an argument for @SU to be tough, but I expect a down year for them (relative to recent success). Realistically, eight wins with a couple unexpected losses and wins is about right. But I also wouldn’t be surprised if the players took it on themselves to win 10 or more.

            I would welcome them telling me to stfu with their actions on the field… for once.

          • Seeing as though it is not currently football season, of course I am living in the past. That is the only point of reference I have.

            If you are saying I am living 4 or 5 years in the past, yes, I take that into account. I also take into account 2 years ago when Oregon State was a top 10 team at one point in time.

            Aside from those teams thare are among the very elite, the fan base likely feels like their team chokes and loses a game or two every year that they should have won, and just like Oregon State, they probably recognize that they won a game or two that they shouldnt have one.

            It’s stupid that people think Oregon State and our situation with Mike Riley is unique. Every coach in the country makes mistakes that the fan base can point to and complain that their coach is costing them games.

            Why the hell did Nick Saban try to kick a field goal? What an idiot. The reward wasn’t worth the risk! Fire him!

          • OSU rarely wins or loses games they should or shouldn’t win. By halftime, the outcome is pretty much told. If you’re saying that they win or lose some they should or shouldn’t “on paper,” then I don’t care. Paper and rankings and all that are just garbage. All I’ve ever asked is for my team to get the best talent on the field and for them to play with effort. And there are pre-games where I knew I should have just left before kick-off. That’s how obvious the difference is between seeing our team when they’re ready to play and when they’re not ready. It’s like they’re bi-polar.

            And those games where we’re not ready to play are just to watch.

            And it’s because Saban knew he had a defense who would stop the other team… or take it away and score. When you have a defense who isn’t more porous than Peter Sidorkiewicz, you can actually play percentages instead of just throwing pasta at the wall.

    • and wasnt it the players enmass transferring that got that can o worms open?

      BDC’s plan? ….thumb up butt thinking “its ok, CR told me it’ll be much better next year….yea, beavs!”

      • Who’s transferring en masse? We’ve had one transfer this year and four overall in six years. Yes, the hilarity of the why in this most recent case is just precious. But wtf you talkin’ ’bout?

        • Jack….. I didnt say the men’s program is doing it…. And a mass transfer starts with one or two. If it doesnt get worse than 2, I never said it would…. But we can hope, right?

          • It’s too late to do anything now. If there were some super secret abuse and upcoming transfers which led to CR being drummed out, what hope do we have? It would be monumentally stupid to then go out and try to hire some long-term coach. What respectability and foundation the program has actually built in the last four years would all be bashed on the rocks, and our potential coaching pool turns to dust.

            I would have liked it to be immediately after this past season, but now we’re relegated to at least one more year. I think CR is a good enough mentor that he’ll never lose his team. But I don’t see him overcoming the frustrations of the fans that have built up for years before he got here. Hell… this past season was one of the best in our hoops program for the last 23 years, and people act like it’s the nadir of our depression.

            That’s what has me scratching my head. All we have to do is wait out one more year and show good faith. We’re looking really good to any coach who wants to take over after next year. He’ll be saturated with ships, so he’ll only need to pick up maybe one filler. He’ll have at least seven seniors who will play under him in that first year grace period all new coaches get. He’ll have great underclass talent and only have to concentrate on recruiting a year out. And he’ll have zero expectations from a bandwagon fan base which obviously doesn’t care about hoops.

            And that’s if we’re bad. If we’re suddenly winning, then we’ll have to wait until we start losing again before we jettison CR, not that the whiners who are screaming bloody murder right now wouldn’t continue whining through winning anyway.

  6. I don’t know, I just don’t think CR is a very good basketball coach and it’s time to try somebody else. I kind of feel that way about Riley too. It’s a shame BDC has created two situations where mediocrity has been rewarded. Nice work if you can get it!

    • And… I haven’t yet heard that Liskevych or Simmons are looking for work.

      Mediocrity for those teams would be so much better than what they are now and have been. If you want to talk about downward spirals, them’s your programs right there.

      • Yeah, not really competitive anymore. I don’t know much about women’s softball, but they are having a tough year when it appeared that things had turned around.

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