Steve Prohm
- Thread starter tyler24
- Start date
Maybe. Perhaps. We will never know.
I do know that going from a bottomfeeder to a respectable program is easier than going from respectable to routinely challenging the blue bloods for supremacy (e.g., as Virginia has to UNC and Duke) is much harder. Maybe Fred makes that leap, maybe he doesn't, but the level of competition in that rarefied air is rather homicidal.
Fred is the one who chose not to create that or commit to that.
Maybe you should direct some of your frustration towards him. He left us.
I am on the record that I think the most likely outcome of a longer Hoiberg tenure was more of the same -- good teams, great ones even by our standards, but inconsistency on defense and some lax discipline leads to debacles like UAB that hold the program back from our highest ambitions. We would have been good, but we were not about to replace Kansas as the best program in the conference and maybe in the Midwest.
Taking a trend, drawing a line, and assuming things continue on that trajectory forever is the worst kind of reasoning. Reality is not so linear as you presume.
That is what we were when Fred left, though.
He never won a Big 12 regular season title or made a deep run in the tournament.
The team that wins the Big 12 regular season title and makes consistent runs to the second and third weekends of the NCAA tournament is not the 15th best team in the country. It is like the #5 team in the country, at the worst. See Jayhawks, Kansas.
You're making a bunch of assumptions without any prior evidence that things were about to get worse and would stay that way. I made an assumption based on 4 years of evidence surrounding the program. I respect your views but you are just flat wrong about this one.
Nobody in their right mind could have said back then "Well this #3 seed is nice, but its the absolute best we'll ever do with this coaching staff, things are about to get a whole lot worse in the upcoming years".
Would an upset over a conference power mitigate the loss to FAMU? Granted, to pull such an upset off Halliburton would need to be playing but no P5 program has any business being in a close game, yet alone losing to a league doormat.
I’ve seen KU come in, commit 24 turnovers and still come out of Hilton with a win. Even us committing 18 the other night wasn’t the only difference. Defensively we were trash and you know it. There were a ton of blown assignments.
If Fred would've had the exact same roster make up as Prohm did, I think we probably would've achieved the same results. That would not have happened had Fred stayed and been committed to staying. I'm not blaming Prohm at all in this, I'm blaming Fred.
I think the default should be "stay the same." Hoiberg had kept the program at a pretty consistent level for four years before he left for Chicago --
12, 11, 11, 12 conference wins (which seems to be your favorite metric)
26, 27, 25, 20 on Bart Torvik
Elite on offense, iffy on defense, pretty much the same story every season.
I do not see a supposed "upward trajectory" there. Fred had taken the team from sucking to pretty good, and he was discovering that going from a good program to a great program is extremely difficult. There is not much room at the top.
You are going to point to the seeding, and I am going to point back that is a less useful metric because (1.) seeding can swing so wildly based on the outcome of a few close games and (2.) efficiency is a better predictor of future results than W/L. The computers said Hoiberg teams were about 20-25th in the country, had stayed there for four years, and were likely to regress to that mean if we played out that string another few seasons forward.
I am not "flat wrong." I am taking what reality gave me and, unless you have a compelling and certain reason to believe that results would improve, then the most likely scenario is Fred keeps turning in seasons like the ones above.
I would take them now, though, to be fair, given what is likely coming.
Idk how anyone can claim that Hoibergs overall trend was pretty much up with every year and that Prohms is going down overall.
I've only read this last page of the thread but I would lean to the other poster's viewpoint. Obviously our defense wasn't first-rate by any means but A&M dudes were throwing up prayers and they were all going in at times. You can't say that wasn't really good defense on that hail mary shot they hit and got fouled on in the last minute.
I feel like we make that excuse so many times. “They can’t miss!” “They make everything they throw up!” “Everybody always gets hot when they play us!” At some point you have to finally admit to yourself it’s us that’s the problem.
There comes a point when Taylor Swift should write a song --
"Maybe I'm the Problem"
If Conditt starts ahead of (or even plays more minutes) than his SENIORS, then I would take that as CSP has gone into panic mode. He is super loyal and locked in on playing guys he can "trust". I would be shocked.
I think the thing that bothers me the most about what I would consider to be Prohm's teams (the last 3 years, counting this one) is there's always a season long conversation about "buying in", "playing with effort, playing for Iowa State, playing the right way, blah blah blah" that never really seems to materialize. Why is effort and getting players to play as a team such an issue? Certainly last year's team had talent, but it's not like we're constantly landing elite, blue chip type of guys that should have these huge egos.
Also, why does Prohm get labeled as a great recruiter? His class rankings typically look nice but outside of the PG/Combo guard position, it hasn't been great. Let's go class by class with his High School recruits starting with the class of '15:
2015 (not all on Prohm, he had to scramble and some of these guys weren't his recruits):
Nick Noskowiak - never played a second at ISU - bust
Brady Ernst - averaging 5.7 minutes per game at Drake, his 4th school - bust
Simeon Carter - bust
2016 (not great):
Jakolby Long - not in the rotation at Southern Utah - bust
Cam Lard - obviously talented, was good on a terrible team, little impact last year
Solomon Young - rotation guy, decent player - hit
2017 (eh):
Lindell Wigginton - good player, badly mismanaged by Prohm in 2018-19 - hit
Terrance Lewis - still hasn't developed into a rotation player - TBD (leaning towards bust)
2018 (this class was very good!):
Talen Horton-Tucker - good player! - hit
Tyrese Haliburton - great player! - hit
George Conditt - developing, potentially very good player - hit
Zion Griffin - TBD
2019 (not looking great when 2 of the kids you sign transfer before the 1st game):
Tre Jackson - TBD
Caleb Grill - TBD
Luke Anderson - transferred to South Florida before the season
Marcedus Leach - transferred to Iowa Western before the season
He's definitely brought in some very talented, fun players, but not as many as you'd think. At the end of the day if you can't coach them up properly and manage their personalities, you're not doing your job as the head coach of a program with high expectations. Throw in consistently losing at Hilton and the leash should be getting very short.
Also, why does Prohm get labeled as a great recruiter? His class rankings typically look nice but outside of the PG/Combo guard position, it hasn't been great. Let's go class by class with his High School recruits starting with the class of '15:
2015 (not all on Prohm, he had to scramble and some of these guys weren't his recruits):
Nick Noskowiak - never played a second at ISU - bust
Brady Ernst - averaging 5.7 minutes per game at Drake, his 4th school - bust
Simeon Carter - bust
2016 (not great):
Jakolby Long - not in the rotation at Southern Utah - bust
Cam Lard - obviously talented, was good on a terrible team, little impact last year
Solomon Young - rotation guy, decent player - hit
2017 (eh):
Lindell Wigginton - good player, badly mismanaged by Prohm in 2018-19 - hit
Terrance Lewis - still hasn't developed into a rotation player - TBD (leaning towards bust)
2018 (this class was very good!):
Talen Horton-Tucker - good player! - hit
Tyrese Haliburton - great player! - hit
George Conditt - developing, potentially very good player - hit
Zion Griffin - TBD
2019 (not looking great when 2 of the kids you sign transfer before the 1st game):
Tre Jackson - TBD
Caleb Grill - TBD
Luke Anderson - transferred to South Florida before the season
Marcedus Leach - transferred to Iowa Western before the season
He's definitely brought in some very talented, fun players, but not as many as you'd think. At the end of the day if you can't coach them up properly and manage their personalities, you're not doing your job as the head coach of a program with high expectations. Throw in consistently losing at Hilton and the leash should be getting very short.
Actually we would have had Max Beifeldt, that was pretty much known. Does Max Biefeldt take that team from a 3 seed to a 2 seed? Doubtful.
Hoiberg's trend was that he plateaued at a very satisfying level right away and stayed there. Steve is ping ponging all over the place.
By ping ponging all over the place you mean his ceiling has been equal to Fred's, but floor much lower. Based on results seen to date.
*I do not want Fred back.*
This team --
Morris
Mitrou-Long
Nader
Niang
McKay
---
Thomas
Burton
Biefedlt
...could go a long ways.
But notice we did not end up with two of those guys.
Losing Naz hurt way more than losing Max Biefeldt to the regime change.
Naz was going to go down even if Hoiberg was back.
Nixon too. He needs to not play. If his defense was elite, then maybe it would compensate for his offensive problems. But it isn't, not by a long shot.
We have 2 starters that really just aren't good enough.
P5 power teams lose to conference doormats every single year.
A lot of Prohm's problems come from not establishing an identity for the program. No good comes from finding good recruits if you don't know how to develop them and then put them in the best positions to be successful. Post 17-18, can anyone say what the identity of this team has been? Even last years team was comprised of highly talented players that he failed to properly mesh together. I don't know where the program goes from here when there is not one distinguishable trait we can lean. Even teams devoid of talent can manage to play hard, something this team fails to do. As someone who has tried to give Prohm a chance, I just don't see how he has shown the ability to coach a high major basketball program.
Fair. But a P5 team should never lose to team that ranks in the bottom five of Division 1 basketball. There is no way to justify such an act.
The guy built a team that won the Big 12 tournament.
That is a pretty good accomplishment for Iowa State standards.
Johnny Orr never did that.
He also recruited Shayok, Haliburton, and Horton-Tucker -- two second-round picks and a guy who is likely to be a first-round pick in a few months.
The past few weeks have sucked and FAMU was a rake handle to the nose, and I look to the future with far more trepidation than hope at the moment. Despite that, there are still some impressive things in Prohm's tenure with the program.
