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- Thread starter sargemo
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OMGosh. You people just keep living 15+ years in the past (when we had "10000 in Mackey for every game" -- Haha!) Meanwhile the world of WBB has completely changed. There are 3 or 4 schools that can get anybody they want (collectively).
Meanwhile, the B1G has plummeted in prominence and elite young women rarely choose to play in our league if they have better options. It has been that way for a long time now, but some of you can't get over it. It has incredibly damaged WBB as a national sport, but that has nothing to do with Sharon Versyp and our present Boiler women.
So keep on whining about how things used to be and being Debbie downers or support our present Boiler team who had an incredible turnaround this season. I know what I will do and while doing that I will wait for time to change the imbalance we see in WBB right now. Because everything is cyclic.
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Is it really whining to expect Purdue to compete with Notre Dame?
I mean, this isn't football. There is no century-old leather helmet tradition to overcome in women's basketball. This is a sport that in which Purdue consistently ranked among the top 10 and made deep tournament runs just a decade and a half ago. There were other dominant programs back in the 90s and 00s (Tennessee, Louisiana Tech, USC, etc.)
I mean, this isn't football. There is no century-old leather helmet tradition to overcome in women's basketball. This is a sport that in which Purdue consistently ranked among the top 10 and made deep tournament runs just a decade and a half ago. There were other dominant programs back in the 90s and 00s (Tennessee, Louisiana Tech, USC, etc.)
My reply is the same as in another thread on this forum - recruiting. How did we lose our edge in recruiting? I can understand why a gal might choose ND over Purdue but we're also losing 'em to academic skanks like Louisville and Kaintuck. Why? What's going on?
A few thoughts:
1) To get back to DocRon's point --- part of the problem is the B1G, and it's similar to the men's side. While the B1G has fine program: PSU and Iowa during the 1990s; Purdue, Ohio State, now MSU and Maryland, only one B1G program has ever won it all, and that was nearly two decades ago. Plus, the bottom half of the B1G has a lot of chronic underachievers.
2) Notre Dame's explosion since 2010. Purdue and ND had roughly equivalent women's basketball programs during the 1990s and 2000s, but ND has exploded since 2010 while Purdue has stagnated. Some of that might have to do with coaching turnover finally catching up to Purdue. Muffet McGraw has been cultivating a hall of fame career in South Bend since the early 90s, while Purdue has had five coaches during that period. Versyp is the first to last more than 10 years.
3) Sharon Versyp. In many ways she's a great fit at Purdue --- hard-working, loyal, clean as a whistle, competitive. And, it's just cruel to throw someone who's battling cancer under the bus. But, even before this year there have been plenty of indications that she's much more Gene Keady than Geno Auriemma. Versyp's record at Purdue puts the administration in something of a bind. She's really been too good to fire (especially given her legacy at Purdue), but her ceiling doesn't look that high.
1) To get back to DocRon's point --- part of the problem is the B1G, and it's similar to the men's side. While the B1G has fine program: PSU and Iowa during the 1990s; Purdue, Ohio State, now MSU and Maryland, only one B1G program has ever won it all, and that was nearly two decades ago. Plus, the bottom half of the B1G has a lot of chronic underachievers.
2) Notre Dame's explosion since 2010. Purdue and ND had roughly equivalent women's basketball programs during the 1990s and 2000s, but ND has exploded since 2010 while Purdue has stagnated. Some of that might have to do with coaching turnover finally catching up to Purdue. Muffet McGraw has been cultivating a hall of fame career in South Bend since the early 90s, while Purdue has had five coaches during that period. Versyp is the first to last more than 10 years.
3) Sharon Versyp. In many ways she's a great fit at Purdue --- hard-working, loyal, clean as a whistle, competitive. And, it's just cruel to throw someone who's battling cancer under the bus. But, even before this year there have been plenty of indications that she's much more Gene Keady than Geno Auriemma. Versyp's record at Purdue puts the administration in something of a bind. She's really been too good to fire (especially given her legacy at Purdue), but her ceiling doesn't look that high.
That still doesn't explain why we're losing recruits to schools like Louisville. Take a hard look at Louisville. Abysmal academics, a commuter school that becomes a ghost town every night, located in a squalid neighborhood, no WBB tradition. What's the appeal?
I agree with you. I think all of your points are excellent, especially the lackluster programs in the B1G lately and the fact they do so poorly on the national stage (how can Maryland be ranked 4th in the nation and yet only get a 3rd seed in the NCAA?). None of these kids remember 1999 and 2000. And yes, the coaching merry-go-round and the term paper fiasco has caught up to us.
I just pray we get an amazing recruit (lke Jones for Maryland) one day soon that will turn things around. AND... there is only one Geno. Until he retires even Muffet McGraw will play for seconds. Hate it that it is that way but "thems the facts."
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There are plenty of players would find abysmal academics appealing and tradition is somewhat overrated, especially since they've gone deep in the tourney a lot more often than we have lately, plus can point to Angel McCoughtry in the W. Not the response I like giving but the truth hurts too often.
Recruiting is 5%...what you do with the talent when you get it, is the other 95%.
So you get "amazing talent" i.e., Taylor Manuel, and she can't leave fast enough.
You are some kind of lunatic if you truly believe that. It's more like recruiting is 95% and coaching is 5%.
I think our recruiting niche is building a team out of the best Indiana players we can get. We are not currently a national brand no matter what happened in our program before today's recruits were born.
We need to be able to sell Indiana kids to come to Purdue and be special together. We won't always be elite with just Indiana players but if we can consistently land most of the top ones we will have that potential in given windows.
In order to do that we at least have to land some of these recruits that have automatically been going to Notre Dame, Louisville, and other places recently. How do we do that? At this point you have to be able to sell the vision of a group coming in and doing something special together.
I often wonder if UCONN isn't in the next round of B1G expansion. Women's basketball is barely an afterthought in expansion but so it wouldn't drive the expansion but it would elevate the Big Ten quickly if we did add them. Then teams could recruit by selling the chance to be a team that topples UCONN. I just don't know if UCONN has the demographics we would be looking for to expand again.
We need to be able to sell Indiana kids to come to Purdue and be special together. We won't always be elite with just Indiana players but if we can consistently land most of the top ones we will have that potential in given windows.
In order to do that we at least have to land some of these recruits that have automatically been going to Notre Dame, Louisville, and other places recently. How do we do that? At this point you have to be able to sell the vision of a group coming in and doing something special together.
I often wonder if UCONN isn't in the next round of B1G expansion. Women's basketball is barely an afterthought in expansion but so it wouldn't drive the expansion but it would elevate the Big Ten quickly if we did add them. Then teams could recruit by selling the chance to be a team that topples UCONN. I just don't know if UCONN has the demographics we would be looking for to expand again.
I'm the lunatic. You're the idiot.
The point is simple. Try to grasp it.
What good is getting talent when the root cause is not the talent?
LOL at Taylor Manuel being an "amazing talent" or doing anything "fast" other than maybe turning the ball over. She averaged 9 and 4 as a grad transfer this year at Ole Miss and averaged all of 23 minutes a game. Her first year at Purdue she averaged 8 and 3. She had potential but I think clearly lacked the work ethic necessary to develop her game or get/stay in decent playing shape.
The point is simple, but you're not on it. In basketball, you must have both the raw talent, and the X&O coaching skills, as well as good player development to make any progress at all. IMHO, Purdue does very well in developing talent, but we are not getting the elite talent to have a national impact. We also have pretty good game coaching. Your percentages of talent vs development (5% vs 95%) are a bit off. I do get what you are saying, but I don't agree with it. I think it is closer to 50%/50%.
As for using Taylor as an example, that falls flat. She was a great kid, and would have been a contributor on any Purdue team. Frankly, she was one of my favorite players when she was here. She had nerve and skills that were good for a freshman. We are bringing in kids now that are better than Taylor was. You can check the stats on that.
However, Taylor did not do the academic work needed to stay in school. Leaving Purdue was not all her decision, once she let the academics slide. It is nice she is having some success at Ol' Miss. I will leave any further criticism out, since there is no need to take bites out of a kid that has moved on.
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Purdue does very well in developing talent? In the past 10 years, name me FIVE players that were better as seniors than they were as freshmen. I can think of three or four, but not 5.
Morrissette is ten times the players she was as a freshman. April Wilson developed into one of the best point guards we had in years. Courtney Moses set records shooting 3's if I'm not mistaken and Sam Ostarello averaged a double-double as a senior. LWH and Katie Gearlds had their best seasons for the one year the played under Versyp. Probably forgetting some others
Morrissette and Wilson both had tremendous improvement, I agree. Moses and Sam O had great careers, but not sure they were much better overall players when they left as compared to when they came in. I did not give CSV credit for LWH or Katie Gearlds, but maybe she deserves some.
Maybe Coach Painter sets the bar a bit high as I believe he does a tremendous job of developing players and it seems rare a player on his team doesn't improve year to year. I just have a hard time hearing CSV develops players when I don't get that vibe watching them play year to year. Maybe that is due to the sloppy play and turnovers that have become a trademark of her teams?
You've gotta be kidding on Sam O, right?
She averaged like four and four a freshman, maybe, and had 20/20 games during her senior year.
She's the best example of development.
Agree. Here is the list I came up with off the top of my head: You could argue some of them depending on how you are judging but for Dan'l Boone to say only "three or four" in the last 10 years... ridiculous.
Ashley Morrissette, Bridget Perry, Sam Ostarello, KK Houser, Courtney Moses, April Wilson, Torrie Thornton, Liza Clemons, Drey Mingo, Brittany Rayburn, Natasha Bogdanova and Lindsay Wisdom-Hylton.
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