First let me say that I am OK with Coach Groce having another year, but I think his seat needs to be warm enough that he changes some things, and I am not seeing that. He needs to shake up the staff - big time. I am so tired of losing second halves of games. For some reason well coached teams adjust to us better than we adjust to them. I'm so tired of a team that gets two offensive rebounds in an entire game, and doesn't play defense. The team flat out gave up last year, and I think effort was a problem this year as well, although I think it got better late. Seemed like we at least figured out that a lot of defense is to paraphrase Andy Warhol, showing up at the right place. Throw in all the off court issues, and I sorely hoped we would be hearing of a big time staff shake up yesterday. Somebody mentioned adding Jim Crews to the staff, don't know if that was serious or not, but I thought it sounded great. I think Coach Groce needs a Ron Felling or a Tex Winter on his bench.
When we talk about our future optimism, I think we need to understand that the worse the present is, the better a mediocre future looks. The state of the program has gotten progressively worse every year under Groce, and yet we still hope (myself included) that he can recruit his way out of it. That has been the plan all along. A definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and hoping for a different result. I am still in Coach Groce's corner - barely. I really need to see a recognition on his part that we need to change the way we are doing things, and not assuming like we have for the last four years that we are going to recruit our way back to making the NCAA field.
