Bill Fennelly's ceiling vs. Iowa State's ceiling

[DuneFan]

First, I do not want to offer any disrespect to Bill Fennelly. He built Iowa State women's basketball into what it is today, and deserves total credit for everything that ISU has achieved while he has been coaching here.

Nevertheless, I have to wonder if his teams have a tendency to underachieve a little bit, vs the potential being offered to a team with Iowa State's fan support. The fan support being given to women's basketball at ISU is top-notch. Iowa State is consistently in the top 5 nationally in average attendance. Again, this is something that Bill Fennelly deserves total credit for. But yet, the ISU women's basketball team has trouble breaking the top 25 consistently in ratings.

I am torn. Bill Fennelly very much deserves to continue coaching here as long as his health will allow it. But at the same time, I wonder if someone else could take the solid foundation that he has worked so hard to build and turn it into a team with more consistency in staying among the top teams in the country in ratings, and winning in the NCAA tournament.

 

[Remo Gaggi]

I wonder when Uncle Randy will start up his one man rumor mill to stir up the fan base to get Bill to retire. Any minute now ....

 

[jsb]

And I was just going to make a snarky remark about how we kill the men’s coach/team for losing to an 11 seed, but fall over backwards praising the woman’s coach/team....

 

[BCClone]

From watching the women lightly throughout the years. I go back to the Becker days when working at Hilton and thinking a game was actually a scrimmage. (when 50 people are watching it is hard to believe its a game) One thing that Bill's team has been light on is physical play. That has hurt us in the tournament. The officials seem to let it be a free for all come tournament time and if our 3s arent dropping we are hurting. The years we have had the runs in the tournament are the years we have had women who had a physical side that they naturally had.

 

[acoustimac]

I agree with BCClone. Bill's teams have athletes that are more of a finesse style. Any time we play a physical team (Baylor this year) or the officials let the opponent get away with alot (last night) we can struggle. I've felt all year we need a Poppens style player that can play rough and tumble in the middle. I'd love to see us find a 6'4" or 6'5" post who has the physical size to take the pounding, solid hands and can shoot out to mid range.

In the end, we can't make overall comments about Coach Fen based off of last night's game. It just happened to be a night when our shooters couldn't find the net if they had a seeing eye dog. It happens.

 

[NenoFone]

My only comment: those attendance numbers Iowa State post are a farce. Our attendance is good, way above average, but nowhere near the reported numbers.

 

[BoxsterCy]

I wonder when Uncle Randy will start up his one man rumor mill to stir up the fan base to get Bill to retire. Any minute now ....

Unlikely, would not generate enough clicks from Cyclone hating Hawkeye fans. Additionally there aren't enough self loathing Cyclone WBB fans to follow his story either.

 

[gizzsdad]

My only comment: those attendance numbers Iowa State post are a farce. Our attendance is good, way above average, but nowhere near the reported numbers.

You are correct, as has been discussed on this site quite a few times. But we calculate attendance using the same useless formula as all the other schools, starting with season tickets sold, regardless if the seats are actually filled. I would much prefer a butts in seats count, but I suspect our "fake" numbers are essentially similar to everyone else's "fake" numbers.

 

[BoxsterCy]

I think this is our ceiling for the foreseeable future. We are a good program, just not a great one. Top 25 this year, not Top 25 last year nor likely Top 25 next year. It would take another young Fennelly redux to do better than that. I don't expect us to crash and burn like Sherri Cole is in Oklahoma but I am also not expecting us to rise to some new level of national prominence either.

Twenty years ago when Fennelly started out like a house afire I thought maybe a lot of Sweet Sixteens or Elite Eights were on the horizon with maybe a Final Four in there at some point. He was never able to sustain that. It could have happened re: Sherri Cole at Norman but it did not. We might still get a deep run every ten years (this was our year to do it as a #3 playing at Hilton) but my personal annual expectations are quite a bit lower. I've gone from expecting a NCAA run to expecting us to make the NCAA each year and now to hoping we make it each year. After mid-season I bumped this years expectations since they were doing so well and had one of the nations best players as a senior. Middleton was doing decent at PG and Scott emerged so bumping expectations was reasonable.

It's a little like our volleyball program IMHO. Johnson had a great start and just missed out on a Final Four (damn that fifth set!) but has fallen back to where I am not expecting "great", just "good". Not dissing, just realistically adjusting expectations and not being blind to the competition.

 

[runbikeswim]

Agreeing with others, if we look at the best ISU teams, elite 8, sweet sixteen teams, they had a post player in the middle that score the ball one-on-one and not have to be set up.

Part of it is recruiting misses, part of it is there are just fewer and fewer girls willing to play in the post like that,.

When 3s do not fall, you need a post who can score. Kristen is awesome, but Welle, Weiben, Poppens even Hallie were of a different style and could always be counted on to score.

 

[mitten1975]

First, I do not want to offer any disrespect to Bill Fennelly. He built Iowa State women's basketball into what it is today, and deserves total credit for everything that ISU has achieved while he has been coaching here.

Nevertheless, I have to wonder if his teams have a tendency to underachieve a little bit, vs the potential being offered to a team with Iowa State's fan support. The fan support being given to women's basketball at ISU is top-notch. Iowa State is consistently in the top 5 nationally in average attendance. Again, this is something that Bill Fennelly deserves total credit for. But yet, the ISU women's basketball team has trouble breaking the top 25 consistently in ratings.

I am torn. Bill Fennelly very much deserves to continue coaching here as long as his health will allow it. But at the same time, I wonder if someone else could take the solid foundation that he has worked so hard to build and turn it into a team with more consistency in staying among the top teams in the country in ratings, and winning in the NCAA tournament.

I think this Fennelly team has achieved more than I thought possible 3-4 years ago, and therefore I don't really trust my own opinion on this one, there is no telling what Bill could achieve.

 

[Cyclonepride]

I think this team was just a step below elite (as evidenced by their really close losses to Baylor and their overall success). I think that might be the ceiling, though we'd all obviously like to see that ceiling reached more often. The recruiting seems to be back on the upswing, so hopefully the recent resurgence can continue!

 

[DuneFan]

My only comment: those attendance numbers Iowa State post are a farce. Our attendance is good, way above average, but nowhere near the reported numbers.

I got my numbers from here:

http://www.ncaa.org/championships/statistics/womens-basketball-attendance

OK, just for the sake of argument, let's say you are totally right and that we fudge our attendance figures and nobody else does. If we then subtract 30% from our numbers to erase the "fudging", we are still consistently well in the top 10.

 

[kcdc4isu]

On attendance we do like every other team does. As was posted they take season tickets sold and add walk up sales. I have watched a number of other teams play on TV and we almost always have way more fans then they have. I would like to see true numbers through the doors at a game as long as everyone else does the same. For the Mississippi State Clemson tourney they said it was a sellout then showed the crowd and there was a section of maybe 50 seats empty behind the Clemson bench. Tickets sold to the University but no one there.

 

[Fishhead]

I feel that attendance/fan support has less meaning than we want it to have in regards to fielding talented teams.

 

[mwwbbfan]

I feel that attendance/fan support has less meaning than we want it to have in regards to fielding talented teams.

Agree - WBB players look much more at the lifestyle (big city / weather / academic choices) than do elite MBB players. A lot of this is due to there not being a huge payday possible from the game for women.

 

[BoxsterCy]

I feel that attendance/fan support has less meaning than we want it to have in regards to fielding talented teams.

^Truth. While I think playing in front of an enthusiastic crowd of 4,500 and not 1,000 would be a big deal, it doesn't seem to make that much difference to the gals playing at a lot of schools. I always try and spy the crowd size when wanting on TV and the attendance at most schools is abysmal. Mostly spying Cyclone and Gopher road games and their league opponent crowds would seem to make it more neutral court but it doesn't seem to play out that way for some reason. Heck, some games it looks like the prep band, cheerleaders, family and friends and a couple of janitors waiting to clean up.

 

[acoustimac]

I feel that attendance/fan support has less meaning than we want it to have in regards to fielding talented teams.

Disagree completely. Many of the recruits specifically have said the Hilton crowd had a direct influence in their decision.