The reason I won't apologize for the negativity
Posted on: July 6, 2022 at 09:21:44 CT
FIJItiger
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is that in actuality I'm probably not being negative enough. Its difficult to put in proper context how bad the state of the program is and what a disaster has occurred with MU basketball. Yes we have a fresh start and an optimistic opportunity to turn the corner, but its such a massive uphill climb and the benchmarks of success have been shifted so significantly that we are essentially starting a new program from scratch.
From 1970-1995 this was the combined Big8 conference records:
Kansas : 228 -- 122
Missouri : 221 -- 129
Oklahoma : 214 -- 136
Kansas State : 189 -- 161
Nebraska : 172 -- 178
Oklahoma State : 141 -- 209
Iowa State : 135 -- 215
Colorado : 100 -- 250
That is the frame of reference of what MU basketball was to people of my generation. We didn't cheat like ku, but even so we were right there with them year in and year out at the top of a conference that cared very much about men's basketball. We won a ton of conference championships, were in the NCAA tourney field pretty much every year and when we weren't it was considered a disaster, we almost always had 2 or 3 NBA caliber players on our team, and were consistently nationally ranked.
We left the Big 12 as the conference champion, a #2 seed in the NCAA tourney, and a 30 win team. We had averaged 26.75 wins per season the prior 4 years. We were joining a conference that historically didn't really care much about men's basketball but came with a massive windfall in resources and national prestige. It was entirely reasonable to assume MU would year in and year out be among the top 3 or 4 men's basketball programs at worst in the SEC going forward.
Here are the combined SEC records since 2014:
Kentucky : 119 -- 42
Tennessee : 95 -- 66
Arkansas : 95 -- 66
Florida : 91 -- 69
Louisiana State : 88 -- 73
Auburn : 87 -- 75
Alabama : 83 -- 79
South Carolina : 77 -- 83
Texas A&M : 77 -- 77
Mississippi State : 74 -- 88
Mississippi : 71 -- 91
Georgia : 59 -- 103
Vanderbilt : 55 -- 105
Missouri : 53 -- 107
Its almost impossible to accurately describe how implausibly bad that is, MU is the worst program in a 14 field SEC and is getting ready to be passed by 2 more joining programs. We haven't won an NCAA tourney game since 2010. Our only NBA footprint is a guy who played 1 season at MU in 2013-14, and a guy who played 3 games for MU. We hired a D2 coach and found our most recent hire as an unproven coach from Cleveland State. Our recruiting has been comically inept class over class over class. MU basketball is a complete afterthought and non-entity in the SEC, nationally, and for the most part to the MU fanbase. Given what we were and the opportunity we had laid in front of us, to see the extent to which MU has blown it and the monumental uphill battle ahead due to self inflicted issues is certainly disheartening for long time fans who care about the program a good deal.
Edited by FIJItiger at 09:26:48 on 07/06/22