Huse's Future

[Colter_Nuanez]

that's a great post colter. for me personally i said that if huse wasn't fired before the season than all he need to do was get into the tourney and there is no way he'd lose his job. and he won't. and while i agree that this team faced serious adversity it played out like all of the other seasons under huse. the big difference being these last few games that we won that we have lost every other year.

i guess for me i just want to see higher expectations with this program and i hate being labled a whiner or a bad fan because of my unhappiness. it's been what...a decade since we last hosted a conference tourney?! and even then we didn't win it. it's been nearly two decades since we represented the conference in the dance?! i'm just not happy with it.

so while i'd obviously rather be a 4 seed in a terrible conference tourney than not in the tourney at all i'm still not happy. i just want to see expectations raised. we would never tolerate this in football so i don't see why we should in hoops. as i said huse shouldn't have been fired because he was clearly doing a "good enough" job for administration before so he's doing "good enough" now. but for how long? what is not acceptable? if we don't win the conference for another 10 years is that ok? if we go another 17+ years without winning a conference championship is that fine too?

this conference is the worst i have ever seen it. you got um....weber a little below them....and everyone else. so there is no doubt in my mind the cats could wina couple games. but as you said we also could be outted in the first round. then we will do the exact same thing next year and the year after that.

my question is what should our expectations be and why is it out of line to expect that we can host a tourney more than once every ten plus years and make the dance once in every 20 years? i just don't get it.

I'll play Devil's advocate to stimulate discussion...what if expectations don't matter? What if this is as good as it gets for Montana State?

What if Weber State and Montana are too far ahead of everyone else in the Big Sky for anyone to catch them? Montana and Weber are mid-major programs. Weber loses Lillard, they reload. Will Cherry and Mathias Ward go down, the guys behind them step up and UM still wins in Bozeman. From facilities to talent to tradition, the Big Sky is a two-tier league: UM and Weber and everybody else.

The rest of the Big Sky is low major. I don't see anything at either UM or Weber changing anytime soon. Weber pays Rahe, so he's not going anywhere. Tinkle won't be on the move until Tres graduates. And what if Montana is in the midst of six straight 20-win seasons and a few more Big Dance bids and Tinkle can convince Tres to stay home and REALLY put the Griz on the map?

So if you're part of the inner workings of the MSU athletics department...what if you realize this is true, so you cut your losses, keep your likeable coach for the long run and keep churning out 3rd-5th place finishes? It takes resources to win. But if the lead dogs you're chasing are winning the race by such a great margin, is it worth investing to try to catch them? Fans would certainly say yes, but administrators might think differently.

Fans see a program that's failed to meet expectations. Fans see a program stuck in the mud and stuck in the middle of one of the worst basketball leagues in the country. In Huse's tenure, MSU has finished 5th, 6th, 6th, 3rd, 5th, 5th, 4th and 4th. That's consistent, if underwhelming.

[wbtfg]

The most frustrating part of our bball freefall, for me, is that 10 yrs ago we were even, if not a slightly better program than UM. Krystko and Tinkle have built a stong tradition, and for whatever reason um was left in the dust.

I think msu admin owes it to the fans and to the conference to make a statement that they wont continue to settle for mediocrity.

[DicTater]

I think it's time to move forward and that means hiring a new staff. I'm tired of excuses, "too hard to bring urban kids to Bozeman, too many injuries, on and on. Recruiting to Missoula can't be much easier than recruiting to Bozeman. The football program was mired in mediocrity with all the same excuses before ash got here. Rob doesn't make excuses. Remember, UM was the dominant program when Ash got here. Instead of whining about how he couldn't recruit against their tradition, their stadium, and their fan base, Ash changed the mindset, quit trying to bring in the quick fix guys like kramer, and has quickly built the best program in the west. For whatever reason or reasons, Huse has proven that he can't get to the next level. Huse's players refuse to play hard for him. they refuse to play defense except when they feel like it, and its impossible to tell what the offensive philosophy is, other than jack it up when you feel it.

The biggest problem, to me, is that Huse seems to be satisfied with .500 seasons.

[mslacat]

that's a great post colter. for me personally i said that if huse wasn't fired before the season than all he need to do was get into the tourney and there is no way he'd lose his job. and he won't. and while i agree that this team faced serious adversity it played out like all of the other seasons under huse. the big difference being these last few games that we won that we have lost every other year.

i guess for me i just want to see higher expectations with this program and i hate being labled a whiner or a bad fan because of my unhappiness. it's been what...a decade since we last hosted a conference tourney?! and even then we didn't win it. it's been nearly two decades since we represented the conference in the dance?! i'm just not happy with it.

so while i'd obviously rather be a 4 seed in a terrible conference tourney than not in the tourney at all i'm still not happy. i just want to see expectations raised. we would never tolerate this in football so i don't see why we should in hoops. as i said huse shouldn't have been fired because he was clearly doing a "good enough" job for administration before so he's doing "good enough" now. but for how long? what is not acceptable? if we don't win the conference for another 10 years is that ok? if we go another 17+ years without winning a conference championship is that fine too?

this conference is the worst i have ever seen it. you got um....weber a little below them....and everyone else. so there is no doubt in my mind the cats could wina couple games. but as you said we also could be outted in the first round. then we will do the exact same thing next year and the year after that.

my question is what should our expectations be and why is it out of line to expect that we can host a tourney more than once every ten plus years and make the dance once in every 20 years? i just don't get it.

I'll play Devil's advocate to stimulate discussion...what if expectations don't matter? What if this is as good as it gets for Montana State?

What if Weber State and Montana are too far ahead of everyone else in the Big Sky for anyone to catch them? Montana and Weber are mid-major programs. Weber loses Lillard, they reload. Will Cherry and Mathias Ward go down, the guys behind them step up and UM still wins in Bozeman. From facilities to talent to tradition, the Big Sky is a two-tier league: UM and Weber and everybody else.

The rest of the Big Sky is low major. I don't see anything at either UM or Weber changing anytime soon. Weber pays Rahe, so he's not going anywhere. Tinkle won't be on the move until Tres graduates. And what if Montana is in the midst of six straight 20-win seasons and a few more Big Dance bids and Tinkle can convince Tres to stay home and REALLY put the Griz on the map?

So if you're part of the inner workings of the MSU athletics department...what if you realize this is true, so you cut your losses, keep your likeable coach for the long run and keep churning out 3rd-5th place finishes? It takes resources to win. But if the lead dogs you're chasing are winning the race by such a great margin, is it worth investing to try to catch them? Fans would certainly say yes, but administrators might think differently.

Fans see a program that's failed to meet expectations. Fans see a program stuck in the mud and stuck in the middle of one of the worst basketball leagues in the country. In Huse's tenure, MSU has finished 5th, 6th, 6th, 3rd, 5th, 5th, 4th and 4th. That's consistent, if underwhelming.

This was the same argument made about football by some before we hired Kramer. Montana is too far ahead of us we will always be second fiddle in the state of Montana and the Big Sky Conference. This is the same argument made about women's basketball with Selvig in control of Montana and the Big Sky conference. I am certainly glad Binford, Kramer and Ash did not take your additude! I am not saying it will/would be easy but to give up before we try for men's basketball is the easy way out. At least on the good side in a weeks time you can get back to football full time and not worry about this minor stupid sport.

[BelgradeBobcat]

I don't care who the coach is, I just want to see a viable men's basketball program. MSU currently has an RPI somewhere in 300's! I don't care what the limitations are, MSU is better than that! I don't expect to see us win the Big Sky every year, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a confernce championship run every now and then, and it's certainly not unreasonable to expect to see griz fans leave Worthington Arena disappointed now and then.

I appreciate Colter's comments, but he hasn't been here that long. Believe it or not, it wasn't that long ago the Worthington Arena was a feared venue where teams much better than this edition of the griz or Weber got their rear ends handed to them. Teams like Colorado, Colorado State, Mississppi State, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, just to name a few. This season our biggest home non-conference win was over a terrible Portland Pilots team. 10 years ago, a crowd of 4600 for a Cat-griz was unthinkable. We used to get 5,000 in the Brick for the league also-rans. Now the place is a morgue and visiting teams love playing here. Heck look at this message board! On a week where MSU won two exciting hard fought ball games against two desparate and determined opponents the leading talk here is about football recruits and beer...IN 2014!!! Nobody cares now, but that is not how it used to be.

Coaches do make difference and can overcome a lot of program deficiencies. Look at what Howland did at NAU or Giacoletti did at EWU. UM and Weber do not have a birthright to first and second every year-the rest of the league needs to step up and get better and MSU should be leading that charge.

I have no problem with Huse getting another year. For one thing, there's nothing to lose. And money's always tight and coaching changes are expensive. Fan interest can't really sink much lower and the team coming back (if they all do indeed come back) has a chance to be pretty darn good. But there's got to be some goals and those goals can't just be making the Big Sky tournament. They've got to start winning more games than they lose and they've got to start being a real threat in the post season.

[BelgradeBobcat]

Despite all the heat Brad Huse took on here all winter, his team rallied when it needed to. The Bobcats won three out of four down the stretch to go from borderline tournament team to solid four seed with a decent shot at making a tournament run. You can all challenge the merits of Brad's coaching ability, but the fact is, here's what my Big Sky Coach of the Year ballot would look like if I got a vote:

1. Wayne Tinkle — despite devastating injuries to both his seniors, Tinkle's squad won 20 games for the fourth straight year and will host the tournament for a second straight year. The Griz have now won 34 of their last 36 conference games.

2. Randy Rahe — no Lillard, no problem. The Wildcats played tremendous team basketball all winter and handed Montana its lone league loss.

3. Brad Huse - despite working in four new starters and six newcomers overall, the Bobcats managed to finish fourth in the league. The coaches picked them 7th, the media 8th. I picked them 9th on my preseason ballot.

I think the award should go to North Dakota's coach. They took third in a league where they didn't know their opponents, hadn't made most of the Big Sky road trips (which can be brutal), and did it mostly with recruits brought to the school when they didn't play in a conference with an automatic bid and for most of the time were in transition purgatory. With their facilities and being in the basketball crazy midwest, UND is going to be a league heavy real soon, and another team MSU has fallen behind if we don't get it together.

[fatcatsat]

The football program goes as the qbc goes. Money us badley needed for recruiting snd teaching. I strongly beleieve this. So how large is the 6th man club or who knows about it or does it exist. I bwlieve this is a direct vorrwlTion in this age of msu basketball and getting a coach than can sell the state on this.

[fatcatsat]

Bad typing above sorry.

[ilovethecats]

I'll play Devil's advocate to stimulate discussion...what if expectations don't matter? What if this is as good as it gets for Montana State?

What if Weber State and Montana are too far ahead of everyone else in the Big Sky for anyone to catch them? Montana and Weber are mid-major programs. Weber loses Lillard, they reload. Will Cherry and Mathias Ward go down, the guys behind them step up and UM still wins in Bozeman. From facilities to talent to tradition, the Big Sky is a two-tier league: UM and Weber and everybody else.

The rest of the Big Sky is low major. I don't see anything at either UM or Weber changing anytime soon. Weber pays Rahe, so he's not going anywhere. Tinkle won't be on the move until Tres graduates. And what if Montana is in the midst of six straight 20-win seasons and a few more Big Dance bids and Tinkle can convince Tres to stay home and REALLY put the Griz on the map?

So if you're part of the inner workings of the MSU athletics department...what if you realize this is true, so you cut your losses, keep your likeable coach for the long run and keep churning out 3rd-5th place finishes? It takes resources to win. But if the lead dogs you're chasing are winning the race by such a great margin, is it worth investing to try to catch them? Fans would certainly say yes, but administrators might think differently.

Fans see a program that's failed to meet expectations. Fans see a program stuck in the mud and stuck in the middle of one of the worst basketball leagues in the country. In Huse's tenure, MSU has finished 5th, 6th, 6th, 3rd, 5th, 5th, 4th and 4th. That's consistent, if underwhelming.

appreciate the discussion colter...

i'd say that if this was the "reality" and this was really the line of thinking from our AD, pres, and administration....i'd be more pissed than i am right now. it seems defeatest. we can't keep up with um and weber so why bother?! that is asinine. especially considering that not too many years ago msu was on par or perhaps even better in hoops than um. they got tinkle, we got huse, and the rest is history.

in the not so distant past um was king in football. they beat our asses 17 times staright and were winning conference championships like it was their job. i thank god we didn't have this attitude that they were uncatchable and we should be fine being middle of the road.

bottom line is if our administration feels that we can't catch our peers and is fine being mediocre i'd be pissed and they better not let those feelings reach the public. they would lose a ton of support and more importantly dollars if our boosters got wind that they feel it's not worth the investment to stop being middle of the road.

i understand this is just for the sake of discussion but i would be livid if this was the case and they better get used to lackluster fan support and an empty brick...

[allcat]

One reason that you do bring in someone new is to infuse hope in the fanbase. You do sell more tickets with hope than you do with lost cause. If admin people don't change, they admit to us all that mediocrity is fine with them. If we get a successful coach, will he leave, certainly. This guy wil have given you the foundation to continue that success. If that falls apart, which it did in football with Solomonson, that is what happens. It is easier to maintain a good program tha build one, but we have all seen good programs spiral down, when the coach changes, but you don't just quit and say oh well, you move on. Huse is a nice guy, to the fan base, that can't keep players and thus can't generate any continuity on his teams. I think the guy is a very good coach on the x's and o's, but he starts with a new team every year.

[AlphaOAlum]

The football program goes as the qbc goes. Money us badley needed for recruiting snd teaching. I strongly beleieve this. So how large is the 6th man club or who knows about it or does it exist. I bwlieve this is a direct vorrwlTion in this age of msu basketball and getting a coach than can sell the state on this.

Ding Ding Ding.

Football turned around after huge infusions of cash from the QBC. Though we'd like to think otherwise, at the end of the day it usually takes $$$$ to win. To pay good coaches (especially assistants), facilities, gear, etc.

I've raised this issue before: Durham was fired, Huse came in and the product on the court is effectively the same. Maybe it's not the coaches? What else is happening on the periphery of the program to stymie the program's growth and success?

[mslacat]

Durham was not fired. The only thing that kept him from returning was himself.

[AlphaOAlum]

Durham was not fired. The only thing that kept him from returning was himself.

Forced out=Fired. He didn't leave of his own volition.

[mslacat]

No one in the administration asked Durham to leave. Fields offered him a new contract the Friday before he resigned. The 6th man club was solidly behind him, he got tired of listening to the bitching of the fans on venues like Bobcatnation and Billings Gazette. There was no "forced" to quit. I would accepted "harassed to quit", but no one with any real power asked or forced him to quit. I can even tell you a handful of folks tried to talk him into changing his mind between the day he told the administration of his decision (Sunday I believe) and when it was officially announced (Tuesday).

[John K]

The football program goes as the qbc goes. Money us badley needed for recruiting snd teaching. I strongly beleieve this. So how large is the 6th man club or who knows about it or does it exist. I bwlieve this is a direct vorrwlTion in this age of msu basketball and getting a coach than can sell the state on this.

Ding Ding Ding.

Football turned around after huge infusions of cash from the QBC. Though we'd like to think otherwise, at the end of the day it usually takes $$$$ to win. To pay good coaches (especially assistants), facilities, gear, etc.

I've raised this issue before: Durham was fired, Huse came in and the product on the court is effectively the same. Maybe it's not the coaches? What else is happening on the periphery of the program to stymie the program's growth and success?

That's not completely accurate. Durham had some pretty good seasons during the mid-90's to early 2000's. From 1995-2002, MSU won two regular season titles, one tourney title, played in the title game twice, and made the semi-finals 5 times. Those results would be considered fairly modest if you lived in Missoula or Ogden, but those years look pretty good compared to the last 7 seasons under Huse. We were probably the 3rd best program in the BSC during that era. Things fell off a bit during the last few years of Durham's tenure, but if we could just get back to that 1995-2002 level, I think most fans would be satisfied. I don't think most of us expect to win the BSC title every year, but it's not unreasonable to expect that we should be one of the top 3-4 programs in the BSC. And despite Colter's assertions otherwise, it's also not impossible.

[The Butcher]

I know player turnover has been a tremendous point of contention, and I agree, with no foundation, it's impossible to build a program. But this year's team could have been DRASTICALLY different with a little luck.

Huse had absolutely zero idea Mohamed Fall played in some irrelevant player showcase and would lose his senior season years down the road.

Huse couldn't have predicted that Shawn Reid would hate Bozeman and it's weather. We love Bozeman. It's a sweet place. We probably all think it's beautiful and appreciate it's quality of life. But think back to when you were 19. Did you want to live somewhere peaceful, serene and beautiful, a place devoid of traffic with short lines at the grocery store and a ski hill just 15 minutes away? Maybe you did. My point is, we value much different things as we mature. Not very many 19 year olds think where they live is sweet because of the quality of life.

Huse couldn't have predicted Tre Johnson would break into a car and steal a GPS nor could he have predicted the tumultuous tenure of Jamie Stewart.

I would concede the Mohamed issue, but certainly not the other occurrence. Your job as coach is to bring the right players into the program, and that includes how they will adjust to their surroundings. Stealing from cars and getting home sick are issues Huse is responsible for; that is his responsibility as a recruiter and head coach. Also, I would ask the question, why is there always high turnover each year? This isn't a fluke year, he has an exudes of players after each season. Justifying mediocrity does not sit well for me…

[John K]

Something that really jumped out at me when looking at our results from previous seasons, is the trend of collapsing in the 2nd half of conference play, and that was just as prevalent (well...almost) during the Durham era, as it has been under Huse. I looked at MSU's results going back as far as the 1999-2000 season, and with only a couple of exceptions, our record was always worse (often significantly worse) the 2nd time through the conference schedule. It seems really strange that trend would continue for so many years, and through two different coaching regimes.

[AlphaOAlum]

Something that really jumped out at me when looking at our results from previous seasons, is the trend of collapsing in the 2nd half of conference play, and that was just as prevalent (well...almost) during the Durham era, as it has been under Huse. I looked at MSU's results going back as far as the 1999-2000 season, and with only a couple of exceptions, our record was always worse (often significantly worse) the 2nd time through the conference schedule. It seems really strange that trend would continue for so many years, and through two different coaching regimes.

This is what I'm trying to get at. There are trends that occur regardless of who the Head Coach is. What is the root of those trends? Are they fixable? What does it take to fix them?

[Helcat72]

Something that really jumped out at me when looking at our results from previous seasons, is the trend of collapsing in the 2nd half of conference play, and that was just as prevalent (well...almost) during the Durham era, as it has been under Huse. I looked at MSU's results going back as far as the 1999-2000 season, and with only a couple of exceptions, our record was always worse (often significantly worse) the 2nd time through the conference schedule. It seems really strange that trend would continue for so many years, and through two different coaching regimes.

This is what I'm trying to get at. There are trends that occur regardless of who the Head Coach is. What is the root of those trends? Are they fixable? What does it take to fix them?

I believe the determining element is talent. A team that has mediocre talent and is well coached can do well the first time around when coaches don't know who the "go to" guys are and what kind of defenses the coaches like to play...but the second time through talent takes over and the mediocre talent just isn't enough to get teams over the hump! Add in injuries, fatigue, and discord and you have a late season "el foldo"!

Look at the talent that UM and WSU have....they appear like they are playing effortlessly and confidently. Then look at our team or the rest of them...it appears as if they are playing really hard but can't seem to get confident and put it together consistently.

[oedipuss]

Last 10 years of RPI:

2012-2013: 310
2011-2012: 276
2010-2011: 265
2009-2010: 200
2008-2009: 210
2007-2008: 237
2006-2007: 288
2005-2006: 240
2004-2005: 247
2003-2004: 235