Official Announcement of TJ as the New Iowa State Mens BBall Coach

[Jayshellberg]

Not sure who was worse during their time at ISU, Prohm or McDermott. It’s a subjective question as each person inherited different situations and had different players at their disposal. However, both clearly underachieved during their tenures. There were moments of success under Prohm, while McDermott had virtually none. One can argue that any success Prohm had were despite his poor coaching abilities, but they did occur. Having said that, I think it‘s clear McDermitt has proven to be a better coach when considering his entire career.

 

[IASTATE07]

He didn't get fired which is an achievement exceeding prohm. And that's a pretty objective measurement.

I can't tell if you're being serious with this. JP is too loyal. Keeping McDermott, giving Chizik an extension, keeping Rhoads too long, and keeping Prohm too long.

 

[CYEATHAWK]

Since when I have I ever been upset about scoring margin?

You've officially gone off the deep end, it's a beautiful day outside, go do something more productive.

Like dealing with Alfred E. Nuemann.

You know what, you are correct. I need to smoke some cigars and watch some captain kangaroo.

I'll give it to you jere......you always have known when the argument is lost.

 

[twincyties]

I have defended Prohm many times on here. But this defense is trash, absolute trash considering we're watching a huge 1 year turnaround right now. He had a full 2 years to rebuild the roster. He didn't do it and he got justifiably fired for it and what he took over was better than any coach ever has at ISU. I'm absolutely sick and tired of reading this crap on here.

I plainly state in my post this is not a defense of Steve. I’m only saying people give Fred a free pass for his complete inability to recruit his last two years. The idea that the cabinet was fully stocked depends entirely on what timeline you’re talking about.

 

[twincyties]

I can't tell if you're being serious with this. JP is too loyal. Keeping McDermott, giving Chizik an extension, keeping Rhoads too long, and keeping Prohm too long.

I will never criticize JP for getting rid of Prohm, but how much sooner would you have expected him to do it?

 

[AuH2O]

Beat Iona and Little Rock. Not exactly a huge accomplishment and doesn’t erase the fact we finished #22 with a loaded roster. Major head scratcher how we were squeaking into the top 25 with Burton coming off the bench.

Junior Burton was definitely good, but not the Deonte Burton tearing up the Big 12 tourney and Purdue as a Senior. Let's also keep in mind the other two bench guys that year that played were Cooke and Ashton.

If you want to really take a painful trip down memory lane, we had three guys come off the bench in the loss to UAB. All three NBA guys - Nader, Thomas and Dejean-Jones.

 

[rochclone]

With the same roster.

Steve Prohm minus Naz Long made the sweet 16.

The year before with Naz Long lost to UAB in the first round.

Who did less with more?

I liked Fred so I'm really not into this. Just don't like all the re-imaging of good things under Prohm.

Steve’s best coaching job at Iowa State was year 2. When that team went 12-6 in the conference and won the Big 12 Tournament. That season was more successful than year 1 despite the Round of 32 versus Sweet 16. UAB sucked as did Ohio State. Clearly UAB was a bigger upset.

I think overall Year 1 under CSP didn’t meet the expectations of a pre-season Top 10 team. In the end they got to the Sweet 16 so perhaps it’s a wash.

The biggest issue I have is that we talk about 15-16 and 16-17 like these rosters were just ordinary. Some of the best players to ever play at Iowa State were on those rosters as upperclassmen.

 

[CyTwister]

With the same roster.

Steve Prohm minus Naz Long made the sweet 16.

The year before with Naz Long lost to UAB in the first round.

Who did less with more?

I liked Fred so I'm really not into this. Just don't like all the re-imaging of good things under Prohm.

Your sample size is one game in a sport where the weaker team upsets the stronger team relatively often. 3 seeds lose to 14 seeds 15% of the time and UAB was #135 in KP.

Fred’s 2014-2015 season on the whole was better. Look at the rest of Fred’s last season vs Prohm’s first season. Steve lost more conference games, overall games, and the team regressed from #9 to #22.

It would be dumb for us to say UMBC had a better season than 2015 ISU just because they beat UVA. Memorable? Yes. Better? No.

 

[CyTwister]

Junior Burton was definitely good, but not the Deonte Burton tearing up the Big 12 tourney and Purdue as a Senior. Let's also keep in mind the other two bench guys that year that played were Cooke and Ashton.

If you want to really take a painful trip down memory lane, we had three guys come off the bench in the loss to UAB. All three NBA guys - Nader, Thomas and Dejean-Jones.

Good points. This is the first pushback which I actually agree with. Deonte went from good to great his senior year. BDJ was pretty good. Thomas wasn’t anything special till his senior year imo. Cooke and Ashton weren’t impactful.

 

[rochclone]

I plainly state in my post this is not a defense of Steve. I’m only saying people give Fred a free pass for his complete inability to recruit his last two years. The idea that the cabinet was fully stocked depends entirely on what timeline you’re talking about.

I think it was fairly clear at the end that Fred was willing to stock the roster in a year by year format with grad transfers. The Vaughn situation broke Fred from a high school recruiting standpoint.
That being said CSP had plenty of time to (1) greatly exceed expectations and take the program to another level which would have opened up recruiting doors and (2) supplement the rosters with high level transfers; which really didn’t happen until Shayok.

 

[cyfanatic13]

We both need to man up and stop dumbing each other's posts. You're smart enough to know neither one of us is right and it all depends on personal opinion on what we think it's more important.
Like I already said, I enjoy watching basketball 5 months, not for a weekend in March. Upsets happen in March, it doesn't diminish the fact that the 2001 team won the Big 12 championship.

That's fine if that is your opinion, but the heavy majority of sports fans all across the country judge seasons based on postseason play. For hypothetical sake, you would rather have the UAB year over let's say Shayok's team making a run to the elite 8? I know which one I'm choosing

 

[flynnhicks03]

I just made the mistake of reading the last couple of pages, and I still don't have a clue about what people are arguing about...

 

[Sigmapolis]

Your sample size is one game in a sport where the weaker team upsets the stronger team relatively often. 3 seeds lose to 14 seeds 15% of the time and UAB was #135 in KP.

Fred’s 2014-2015 season on the whole was better. Look at the rest of Fred’s last season vs Prohm’s first season. Steve lost more conference games, overall games, and the team regressed from #9 to #22.

It would be dumb for us to say UMBC had a better season than 2015 ISU just because they beat UVA. Memorable? Yes. Better? No.

By their standards, UMBC had an incredible year --

Inaugurated a new home arena
12-4 conference record in the America East
Beat Northern Kentucky at home, an eventual tournament team
#2 seed in the conference tournament
Defeated #1 seed Vermont (15-1 conference record) in the conference tournament
AQ with their conference championship
Second NCAA tournament appearance (2008, 2018)
First NCAA tournament win
Forever will be the first #16 to defeat a #1
Hung with Kansas State in the Ro32... were down one with 5:00 left in the game

By their standards, I doubt it will ever be much better.

So good for their five fans.

 

[IASTATE07]

I will never criticize JP for getting rid of Prohm, but how much sooner would you have expected him to do it?

A year.

 

[CyTwister]

Good grief. After watching TJ Coach this group of players that he absolutely built from scratch to the NCAA’s in an absolutely loaded Big 12 Conference, I am left considering what TJ might have done had he been named Coach previously.

Those who say they do not like the “process” have never wanted TJ as Coach. They want another Prohm. Anyone but TJ.

Agreed. There is a reason no one is clamoring to pick up Prohm as their coach just like Lickliter after he left Iowa.

I was very “meh” on TJ and am glad he has proven me wrong thus far. I’m not completely sold yet on him given it’s one year, but I like how he is overachieving and trending so far. Doesn’t need to be top 3 in the conference in year 3 to be a success.

 

[twincyties]

A year.

People would have gone ape $hit firing a coach that just brought in a class with Haliburton and THT, just won the Big 12 tournament, etc.

I’m not saying we would not have been better off in retrospect, but that would have been a really quick trigger for a program of this stature.

I have been a die hard ISU basketball fan for as long as I remember, but sometimes I think our fan base confuses our passion for the program with how successful it’s actually been. No ISU AD is going to fire a coach after one bad year.

 

[AuH2O]

Steve’s best coaching job at Iowa State was year 2. When that team went 12-6 in the conference and won the Big 12 Tournament. That season was more successful than year 1 despite the Round of 32 versus Sweet 16. UAB sucked as did Ohio State. Clearly UAB was a bigger upset.

I think overall Year 1 under CSP didn’t meet the expectations of a pre-season Top 10 team. In the end they got to the Sweet 16 so perhaps it’s a wash.

The biggest issue I have is that we talk about 15-16 and 16-17 like these rosters were just ordinary. Some of the best players to ever play at Iowa State were on those rosters as upperclassmen.

15-16 and 16-17 were really good college basketball rosters. No, there aren't NBA all-stars on them, but those were a great way to build damn good teams at a non-blue blood like ISU. I think it's fine for people to consider those years disappointments because they were capable of making deep runs. But there's no way to call them failures in my opinion. Year 1 - preseason top 10, but then Naz goes down. So they still should have been top 15ish. Their seed agrees with that, a sweet 16 agrees with that, and final ranking is pretty close. That's about as chalk a finish as you can get all things considered.

The next season you lose Niang but bring back a lot of really good players, plus get Naz back. All things considered, I think that team should've been expected to be in the 15-20 range. NCAA seed suggests that was about right, as does a close loss in the round of 32. Again, disappointing, but pretty close to in line with what expectations were outside of those with the ISU blinders on.

The Prohm-McDoormat debate is sort of like the negative version of Eustachy vs. Fred. Do you take the sustained sub-mediocrity of McDoormat, or the success (by historical ISU standards) of getting a 6 seed sandwiched between a couple bad years and followed up by a historical dumpster fire.

In the end, if McD led to Fred, and Prohm led to a more tested and experienced TJ, then I'm going to say it all worked out pretty well in the end.

 

[mjhavlo76]

Not sure who was worse during their time at ISU, Prohm or McDermott. It’s a subjective question as each person inherited different situations and had different players at their disposal. However, both clearly underachieved during their tenures. There were moments of success under Prohm, while McDermott had virtually none. One can argue that any success Prohm had were despite his poor coaching abilities, but they did occur. Having said that, I think it‘s clear McDermitt has proven to be a better coach when considering his entire career.

Who’s worse McDermott or Prohm. I’d say McDermott. He just couldn’t get it done here. And the crazy thing is he isn’t a bad coach. We’ve had some lousy ones over the history. Maybe Ken Trickey being the most awful. Put it to you this way, it’s harder to decide the worst coach in history than the best.

 

[rochclone]

People would have gone ape $hit firing a coach that just brought in a class with Haliburton and THT, just won the Big 12 tournament, etc.

I’m not saying we would not have been better off in retrospect, but that would have been a really quick trigger for a program of this stature.

I have been a die hard ISU basketball fan for as long as I remember, but sometimes I think our fan base confuses our passion for the program with how successful it’s actually been. No ISU AD is going to fire a coach after one bad year.

I think he was talking about March 2020 after 12-20 and 5-13. At that point we had finished 9th or 10th in two of the last 3 years. I think at that point CSP had lost the program but I don’t disagree with JP giving him another year given the uncertainty that we were facing at that time.

 

[Sigmapolis]

Agreed. There is a reason no one is clamoring to pick up Prohm as their coach just like Lickliter after he left Iowa.

I was very “meh” on TJ and am glad he has proven me wrong thus far. I’m not completely sold yet on him given it’s one year, but I like how he is overachieving and trending so far. Doesn’t need to be top 3 in the conference in year 3 to be a success.

I think much of that is Prohm wanting some time off.