Good questions. I'm actually working on something in my spare time that I hope will address some of this - particularly, what is an average/successful season historically? And how does BU stack up?Thanks for the thoughtful post. I generally agree with it. At the risk of stating the obvious, the above is likely the crux of the issue. What is the baseline for success? Is consistency doing the following a sufficient baseline for success? And i'm honestly asking:
- top 20-ish by end of season
- top third of big ten with the occasional win
- consistently making the tourney but consistent first weekend exits
I think the above is a fair, objective assessment of where BU has shown he can do. things deviate a bit one way or the other (the first few years + last year were below, the Ayo+Kofi years were above). But, all in all, this is what we've gotten. as a program, and we've gotten enough years to create a representative sample. should we be satisfied with this? Is there reasonable expectation that we can improve on the above and the ceiling can go higher (historically, slicing and dicing if's/but's as to why "next year will be better and this year was the anomaly", regardless of coach/program, has been a fool's game).
From what I've been looking at (data from 1980 to present, standardized to adjust for era variances like number of games played, teams invited to tourney, etc.) it all depends on your point of reference. But regardless of how you look at it, the BU tenure is very close to our historic standard.
Looking forward to sharing more later this week.