Welcome - Paul Mills

[AZ Shocker]

The "data" will ALWAYS look good or bad subjectively and objectively. It has its value and place absolutely...but will always be in the eyes of the beholder. Through the lens of human bias and opinions an outcome will prevail. How true the outcome is depends on you.

Roll the ball out kids! That's why we play the games...

[ShockTalk]

Turg’s cupboard : Terrell Benton, OJ Robinson, Troy Mack, Willie Davis, Michael Phillips

GGG’S cupboard : Gal, Cooz, Matty B, Thomason, redshirt Fr JT Dudley

or HCPM’s cupboard?

deliberate…

Turg's cupboard: Previous year / first year 9-19 record -- Benton 12 ppg bench SO/ 12.8 ppg JR (considered off the bench as SR), Robinson 4.6 ppg JR/ 8.9 ppg as SR, Mack 3.6 ppg JR/ 6.6 ppg as SR, Davis 3.6 ppp bench SO/ 4.0 ppp JR off the bench, Phillips 3.8 ppg bench JR/ 4.3 ppp starter SR. No Stars here with Benton the best.

GGG's cupboard: Previous year / first year 11-20 record -- Gal 4.0 ppg FR / 9.3 ppg SO, Cooz 11.8 ppg JR / 13.4 ppg SR, Matty B 6.1 ppg Jr / 12.0 ppg SR, Thomason 6.1 ppg JR / 9.3 ppg SR, Durley red-shirt / FR 7.0 ppg

HCPM cupboard: Previous year / first year (so far) 8-3 -- Rogers 14.1 ppg 3rd year SO / 17.3 ppg 4th JR, Bell 11.0 ppg 2nd year FR / 4.0 ppg 3rd year SO / 14.9 ppg 4th year JR, Pohto 8.7 ppg SO / 12.3 ppg JR, Ballard 2.1 ppg 2.1 rpg 3rd year SO / 6.5 ppg 6.9 rpg 4th year JR, Abidde 2.4 ppg FR / 6.2 ppg SO.

Turg's 5 returning players prior year ppg avg total 27.6, 1st year ppg avg total 36.6. Years of prior playing and red-shirt experience: 13 years. Lost 3 of 5 as seniors for the following year.

GGG's 5 returning players prior ppg avg total 28.0, 1st year ppg avg total 51.0. Years of prior playing and red-shirt experience: 11 years.. Lost 3 of 5 as seniors the following year.

HCPM 5 returning players prior ppg avg total 31.3, 1st year ppg avg total 57.2 (so far). Years of prior playing and red-shirt experience: 12 years (counting extra covid year if any). None of these players are lost as seniors.

There is no dis-advantage that Mills has to Turg or 3G in number of experienced players and Mills has the highest returning ppg. Their number of years of experience is also very comparable. Mills does not have to lose anyone in his 2nd year like the other two coaches.

[Stickboy46]

Cortes was still eligible when he committed. Mills honored his offer when grades from OU came out and it was learned that Cortes wasn't eligible.

Did you hear that somewhere or is that your guess at what happened

[Aargh]

Mills getting Rogers was a blessing. Getting Ballard, Abidde, and Bell and what they've done this year compared to last year is getting lemons and making lemonade.

Germany was a swing and a miss. Cortes was still eligible when he committed. Mills honored his offer when grades from OU came out and it was learned that Cortes wasn't eligible. I think the situation with Abmas possibly following Mills was a factor in not getting a commit from another PG when there were still some quality PG's in the portal.

With the late start on contacting players in the portal Mills ended up going after a couple of Fr prospects.

Pipkin and Williams look like rock stars compared to last year's recruiting class. A new coach hired in April isn't going to find players like that still available.

[ShockerFever]

stickboy has no sense of situational awareness at all. He was probably in diapers when Marshall took over and has never experienced the downs of the program. So for him, he expects anybody who takes over the coaching position to perform miracles and turn IB's garbage mess into a top 25 team in 8 months.

He's constantly running into circles and even his own circles as he admits that the team is better than he thought they'd be right now but is not satisfied with the coach. Does that make any sort of rational sense? Guy has no sense of patience and time at all.

[ShockerFever]

You're reading what you want to because you have an agenda against him.

lol. If I had an agenda against him, I'd put him on ignore like a puss.

[SB Shock]

Marshall's first team was 1-3 in OT games. He lost another six games by a combined 16 points, and Matty B went down with a concussion for a third of the season.

[RoyalShock]

From a guard standpoint, Marshall was gifted two Shocker favorites and a guy who saw some NBA minutes. I would take them then over Bell and Rogers now. But when it comes to post players, Mills got the better gift. And he is likely going to finish better than Marshall's first season.

[shocktown]

Turg’s cupboard : Terrell Benton, OJ Robinson, Troy Mack, Willie Davis, Michael Phillips

GGG’S cupboard : Gal, Cooz, Matty B, Thomason, redshirt Fr JT Dudley

or HCPM’s cupboard?

deliberate…

[Stickboy46]

There were dishes in the cupboard but they were paper plates for the most part.

One piece of fine china, a cereal bowl, then a stack of clearance thanksgiving paper plates that fell behind the corner spinner

[Onegreatracer]

Whoa, whoa. Are some of you saying Mills adopted a bare cupboard? He adopted Rogers, the best player on this year's team who had he been able to play last year, would probably been #1 in minutes and scoring. He adopted Pohto, who started and was 4th in minutes last year. He also has turned Ballard and Abidde into very serviceable players. While I may have had questions about Mills (mostly because I probably had too lofty a hope of who we could hire), he is miles and miles better than Brown.

There were dishes in the cupboard but they were paper plates for the most part.

[ShockTalk]

Whoa, whoa. Are some of you saying Mills adopted a bare cupboard? He adopted Rogers, the best player on this year's team who had he been able to play last year, would probably been #1 in minutes and scoring. He adopted Pohto, who started and was 4th in minutes last year. He also has turned Ballard and Abidde into very serviceable players. While I may have had questions about Mills (mostly because I probably had too lofty a hope of who we could hire), he is miles and miles better than Brown.

[Stickboy46]

You've basically said your data analysis is pointless. And as others have pointed out, there are a multitude of reasons to come to that conclusion. IB had three seasons as the head coach. HCPM has been at WSU less than a year and you want to blame him for not having a stock pile of PG's in the stable. That is a joke.

Ironically we are saying the same thing.

Let me ask this a different way.

We've already seen the output is nearly the same as last year. If you had to state 2-3 reasons why it's not better than last year what would it be.

Then if you had to state 2-3 positive reasons that despite those reasons mentioned above are why we are still at the same output.

I'd bet mine and yours answers would be very close

[MikeKennedyRulZ]

Guaranteed I've been through a few more of them than you.

With that said, you've literally said the same thing I've been saying this whole time. I agreed with Kung Wu and said that losing CPj was definitely a reason why you would have expected the numbers to be WORSE than last year. I also called out that coaching and chemistry offset that. So yes it's not a bad thing numbers are close to the same (said that multiple times). I'm not sure why everyone has their pitchforks out besides just hating me.

Where you and I differ is where you consider the scope of HCPMs job. His job is to not only coach who is here, but to find talented players to play here. He's showing he has promise in the coaching part but it's still TBD on the finding talent part. Ultimately he's not graded on just one of the categories. He's graded on the ultimate output. Which is exactly what I was comparing.

No one including myself is calling for his job. It's just analyzing the data that we have available at this time.

You've basically said your data analysis is pointless. And as others have pointed out, there are a multitude of reasons to come to that conclusion. IB had three seasons as the head coach. HCPM has been at WSU less than a year and you want to blame him for not having a stock pile of PG's in the stable. That is a joke.

[Stickboy46]

The bias came into play when you chose to compare the first year season of a coach with a bare cupboard and limited recruiting time to a coach that had some years to recruit and develop.

For an unbiased comparison, compare Mills' first year with Marshall's (who adopted a bare cupboard). And Turgeon's (who adopted a bare cupboard). And Smithson's (also a bare cupboard). IB did not adopt a bare cupboard, so his first year wouldn't be valid.

I'll pull all of those up later (or what's available). None of those including comparing last year have any bias (unless there was a change in how something was calculated between now and then). There are plenty of factors to use when analyzing why the data landed the way it did. Including exactly what you called out. Those teams were left cupboard bare. Other things like say rule changes since then, transfer portal, NIL, the fact that the valley was a pretty Strong conference back then are all reasons why you might expect one year to be better than the other.

Just comparing two years isn't biased as long as you are open to all the variables that could have affected them