May We Never Fall To Bruce Status
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Also I’m not trying to use this discussion to demean Bruce as a person, or to pump Self up. Self’s tournament issues are what they are, and are unrelated to Bruce entirely. I just think, if I were a KSU fan, I would want better. Of course like KU football, KSU hoops is not a destination job, so maybe they just want someone they can keep around that will sometimes make the tournament.
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I was having a conversation with an OSU grad about the Big12 bball coaches. I posited that Bruce was a pretty good X’s and O’s coach, but couldn’t recruit. A KSU grad (his four boys are KSU grads also) piped up and said, his coaching decisions late in games cost KSU at least 3 games last year. I don’t watch KSU unless they are playing KU so I really don’t know, but his own fan base is blasting him and pissed he won those last two games allowing him to retain his job. The OSU guy thought that’s where Underwood would end up at next year, so his very early exit was only a mild surprise.
In a nutshell KU could use a better coach at KSU if they want pushed harder. I miss Hoiberg he was pushing Self to be better. Bruce never will push Self that hard.
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@BShark Folks continue to want to demean his final four by saying he did it with Self’s players. The fact is, he did it. He made it to the final four and to the title game. That is a simple undeniable fact that stands alone, and puts him in some pretty exclusive company.
The recruiting narrative is a relevant discussion point, but that has no connection to (thus is irrelevant to) his success with the 2004-05 team.
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@dylans His technical at the end of one game, if I recall correctly, cost them any chance of tying that game.
@HighEliteMajor My reiteration of his performance at Illinois was not intended to do anything other than highlight his lack of success with his own recruits. Self thought his last two recruiting classes at Illinois were among his best, and their performance certainly proved it. That does not detract from the fact that it still takes good coaching in the tournament, and Weber did that. But I hate Weber for acting like he is solely responsible for assembling the team.
The teams he assembled and coached? The next seven years are a much better measure of his abilities in both facets of coaching, and that isn’t based on anything but him.
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Thanks to everyone for responding to my query. I’m still not seeing how Weber’s annoying physical attributes or sideline antics or superstitious nature make him a fool for recruiting what he believes are good players wherever he can find them. Isn’t that the job of any coach? To leave no stone un-turned when seeking out players that can potentially thrive in one’s system?
KU has all the advantages when it comes to recruiting and still we’re looking in the Sun Belt and the CAA for players. We’re a blue blood with a rich history and yet we still rely on Landen Lucas type guys to man our 5-spot. That’s no knock on those conferences or Landen, whom I really like. My point is that K-State is not a blue blood program with a rich history in the sport. With the exception of Michael Beasley, there aren’t exactly getting a steady supply of OAD-types beating down their door to play there, which means Weber is doing his due diligence to find guys that can compete.
As for personality clashes with players, why would anyone stay in a relationship that isn’t working? What did belaboring things with Bragg, for example, do for us in the long run, except keep us in the national spotlight for all the wrong reasons? Maybe Weber is the wiser for jettisoning problem children before they make national headlines instead of handing out deferred punishments and diversion programs that make our program look really bad to the average viewer.
If someone has a bone to pick with Weber’s physical attributes or his quirkiness, that’s a very different thread than chastising him for getting what he feels are quality players wherever he can find them. I simply can’t fault him for that. So are we picking on the man or his M.O.?
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Weber’s antics and voice are irrelevant to me. He’s just not major conference coach.
He can’t retain players, so he uses the excuse that he has recruited some players that succeeded in other places. Happened to him at Illinois. Is currently happening at KSU. He is a guy that would be incredibly successful as a D2 coach or a low major coach. He just doesn’t have the chops to recruit/retain at the highest level.
Mizzou learned the same lesson with Kim Anderson. D1 ain’t D2. You can’t approach it with the same mentality. Weber showed in his statements about recruiting that he is approaching recruiting at a major conference like he’s at a low or mid major program. It’s not just that he’s not getting top 50 or top 100 guys. He’s signing guys because he’s their only major conference offer. If you sign a guy that considered Auburn and Minnesota, but ultimately picked K-State, that’s a solid signing because you’re looking at major conference type guys. When you’re getting guys that were only offered by Pacific, Siena and Weber State, you can’t hope to compete in a Power 5 conference.
I think Weber is a coach that has fallen into the same trap a lot of coaches fall into. As a coach, most guys favor fundamentals, hard work and execution because at each level, those things are important. However, as you move up the chain, talent becomes so much more important because the baseline of talent rises so quickly that if you don’t have X amount of talent, no level of hard work, fundamentals or execution is going to hide your lack of overall ability.
This happens at every level. A junior high coach may love the skinny kid that always hustles, and you can ignore the fact that the kid isn’t at all athletic because the skill level hasn’t ramped up. But that kid has no chance and gets cut the first day of freshman practice because he isn’t skilled enough. High school coaches have the same situation with kids that work hard and execute, but those kids quickly recognize that their competitive days are over after high school.
Weber is trying to coach against pro level talent, but he’s trying to do it by recruiting a ton of less talented, but hard working guys. Sometimes, a guy like Iwundu rewards that. Other times, you end up with a guy that’s outright unplayable because he’s too small, too slow, too whatever. That’s the mistake guys make when evaluating players. You evaluate talent first, effort second. If you find that the most talented kid in the gym is also the hardest worker, you get Josh Jackson. If you just look for effort, you get the annoying guy in the pickup game.
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@tis4tim The reason I give Bruce Weber hell is because he coaches Silo Tech. And he’s a whiny little girl. Not just an enemy…a sworn enemy.
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BeddieKU23 said:
Funniest coach in the land by far. And I don’t mean funny in a good way, he’s absolutely delusional.
I truly find Bruce to be funny in an entertaining way.
In the real world we have comedians that TRY to be funny. Their efforts show in their attempts… making it tough to fool a fool like me.
Bruce is the “real deal”…
He is as odd as the 3 of clubs.
His voice cracks like he just hit puberty.
He’s animated like the penguin in Batman.
He really believes he is going to win.
I laugh every time I see him. I’m not laughing at him to be mean or belittling. I just can’t help myself.
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It’s funny, I had totally forgotten Bruce had got to a Final 4 until HEM mentioned it
12 years of average teams will do that to one’s ability to remember the one blip on the map
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@BeddieKU23 Weber has been to a Final Four and in the entire history of the University of Missouri, the Tigers have not. They always seem to shoot themselves in the foot.
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I’d feel bad for the Missouri fans hyping themselves up for Romar 2.0 and the Porters, but nah, they are Missouri fans.
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I believe we all agree that Coach Weber is not a good recruiter, but he is not a bad coach either. Here is his complete coaching record:
He did very well at Southern Illinois and it got him the job at Illinois. At Illinois he did extremely well with Self players and went to the Final in his second year but he also finished second twice and 4th twice in what at the time was a very strong Big 10 Conference.
In his first year at KSU, if not for a loss in the last game of the season to OSU and a KU win, KSU would have won the Conference and the streak would have been over.
I find it interesting that people say he is such a lousy recruiter and poor coach but with his second rates players he has beaten KU and came one Svi play short of almost winning at AFH last season. Not bad for a coach that can only recruit scrubs and cannot coach.
Yes, he is annoying and his voice is like nails on a chalkboard, but he can coach and he seems to be principled in the way he will dismiss players that break the rules, even when the team, and by extension his own record, will suffer.
It is OK if we don’t like him but we need to be also fair. Don’t we always point out that KU fans are some of the more knowledgeable and fair fans around? Let’s show some of that knowledge and fairness and leave the personal bias behind and give credit where credit is due.
I personally don’t care for him but I will grudgingly admit he is not a bad coach.
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I believe the svi play at AFH would have gone to overtime
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@JayHawkFanToo Oh, heck, based on those 3 – count 'em, 3 – victories in the NCAA tournament in the past 12 – count, 'em, 12 – years, let’s just say he has been mediocre at best.
And for those of you pointing out his KSU teams have beaten KU sometimes, and wow! almost beat us other times (while ignoring the overall record), and extolling his single F4 run, I have heard no one asserting that Shaka proved his quality coaching bona fides by beating KU and taking perennial powerhouse VCU to a single F4.
He was good at SIU, he managed to do well with Self’s leftover elite talent at Illinois for 2 years, and he has not distinguished himself since. That tie for the Big 12 championship? Again, success with another coach’s recruits – Frank Martin’s after he ran out of Silo T as fast as he could. Big 12 champion, yes, and out in the round of 64, again. .500 record in the Big 12 overall. More years in the bottom half of the conference than the top. Like Illinois, a nice start, then a pretty rapid race out of sight.
You can admire him all you want, but to me he strikes no chord remotely sounding like good.
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@JayHawkFanToo Agreed. He is a 2nd tier P5 conference coach. A guy that a football school like KSU should not steer away from. Give him support and I think he will be successful every 4 or 5 years. The other years, just mediocre. But mediocre is good. Shooting for the stars with gamble hires is what sets programs back years. Bruce is a proven coach that won’t go 5-25. Probably not even 10-20. Frank Martin’s and Dana Altman’s don’t grow on trees. It is KSU’s fault for letting those two get away. Now they are stuck with a Bruce. And should be happy the program is in as good of shape as it is.
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@mayjay said:
Did you even read my post? Way to take things out of context.
You said:
"That tie for the Big 12 championship? Again, success with another coach’s recruits – Frank Martin’s after he ran out of Silo T as fast as he could."
You indicate that Frank Martin is a great coach yet his record against KU is 2-9 and one of the wins was on his first game against KU with Huggy’s players including POY Michael Beasley while Weber and his rag tag band is 2-10; essentially the same record. You also mentioned Shaka Smart, last season Weber went 2-0 against Texas and its much higher ranked players and 2-1 against Baylor, including a win when Baylor was ranked #2.
You said:
"You can admire him all you want, but to me he strikes no chord remotely sounding like good."
what part of:
I personally don’t care for him but I will grudgingly admit he is not a bad coach.
is so hard to understand? I did not say he was a great coach, I said he was not a bad coach. I posted his record so people can decide for themselves how good…or bad, he is. You obviously think he is bad, I happen to think he is not bad. Reasonable people can have reasonably disagreements, right?
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@JayHawkFanToo
You said , “I believe we all agree that Coach Weber is not a good recruiter, but he is not a bad coach either. Here is his complete coaching record:”Pretty simple. “Not a good recruiter” and “Not a bad coach.”
How can there be disagreement there?
I’m sorry, but anyone that actually understands the game would have to agree that Weber is “Not a bad coach.” @mayjay agrees. Anyone really disagree? I might have to reconsider my understanding of the game.
Now, I think he’s actually a good coach. That is different. But I do think he is. But that voice …
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@JayHawkFanToo I would take Frank Martin over Bruce Weber any day of a Neptunian length year. Frank just rebuilt a program over a course of 5 years from the utter depths of darkness to a Final 4.
I do happen to think that is a better job than taking a Final 4-caliber team to not being in the tournament in a mere 2 years, and winning 3 whole NCAA games in 12 years. (One this year in the First Four in Dayton.)
But you are right, we can disagree on whether terms like “good,” “bad,” “mediocre,” or “deluded self-aggrandizing whiny jerk” apply to Weber. Not on one thing, though: my dislike of Weber is not out of bias, but on a combination of his record and his lack of respect for the coaches who paved his way. You never saw any KU coach trashing a successful predecessor to try to raise his own sense of worth. (Incidentally, I dislike Boeheim almost entirely due to his whiny personality. His record would normally be a reason to try to like him more, but not after his NCAA sanctions that have caused me not to have any respect for him. I dislike Cal, but grudgingly admire his success.)
As for Shaka, please read that again. I never said he was good. But people are saying Bruce is good because he went to the Final 4. I simply asked why no one thinks that of Shaka.
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Here is a scenario appropriate to this discussion. Picture the 3 coaches, Bruce Weber, Frank Martin, and Bill Self on the recruiting trail, walking into the home of a top level recruit to speak with player and parent(s), attempting to sell a program. Wily Bill and Eager Frank are bound to out-recruit Unfortunate Bruce at every stop. I do think that the guy is a much better than average (see Shaka Smart) coach; but probably the weakest recruiter from the weakest hoops recruiting site in our league.
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Tough enough for Bill to lure top ten recruits to Lawrence, Kansas. But just imagine the difficulty fetching an Andrew Wiggins or Josh Jackson to Manhattan!
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Weber belongs in the mid majors. His lack of recruiting ability is much less of an issue at that level than it is at a P5 school. The guy is an exceptional X’s and O’s coach as we’ve all seen what he’s capable of when he has talented players.
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Bruce is not worth the ink.
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I did not say who is the better coach between Weber and Martin, all I said is both had just about identical records against KU and both won games against KU with players they inherited and overall, Martin had the better players. Having said that, Weber has won Confernce titles in 3 conferences including the Big 12 while Martin’s best finish is tying for second in the Big 12 and Weber trumps Martin’s Final Four with a Title game appearance.
I have always been a big fan of Coach Martin, even when he was not popular. I don’t really care much for Weber.
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Weber not a bad coach, and he’s beat Self more than once. But he has flaws in his personality, and in his recruiting…proven over time.
The thing to hate at KSU isnt Weber, or their players, who just want to play…but their fans. Look, Weber beat Self, they rush the court, Weber tied for Big12 title once, and just won a Tourney game…but those fans still want him gone.
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Far more entertaining coaches to talk about: Frank Martin. Never hated or disliked him, ever. But of course some of those purple fans didnt like him either. Brad Underwood and Lon Kruger too smart to go back to coach purple.
John Calipari is also far more entertaining than Weber.
KSU needs to leave Weber alone, and get deadly serious about trying to replace Snyder.
