The morning after.

[ShockerPrez]

If he wins, I will like him. I don't think I'm informed enough to say whether it was a good hire or not. We won't know for 3+ years. So best to just watch and hope for the best.

[Shocker_Power]

I'll wait till after his first coach's show to judge!

[WstateU]

I'll wait till after his first coach's show to judge!

I’ve listened to over two hours of interviews the past 24 hours; he will likely ‘nail’ the coaches shows…

[ShockerExpress]

Look, I will support Coach Mills because I am a WSU fan. I also hope I am wrong in my judgement of the hire (#3 on the list above). I will not mind eating crow.

However, I'm not going to ignore how his season this year with ORU came about.

1) The Summit was a very weak conference this year and ORU won by 5 games. No other team played in the post season this year.

2) 2nd place SDST was 6-8 non-con losing to teams like Akron (3rd in the MAC), SF Austin (6th in the WAC), and Montana (4th in the Big Sky).

3) All of ORU's non-con losses were against descent teams and ORU's best win was at home against Liberty. However, their other 8 non-con wins were not that impressive. Four were non-DI teams (John Brown, Oklahoma Baptist, Rogers St, and Ozark Christian). The other four were @ Tulsa (5-25), Central Arkansas (9-22), @ Texas Southern (14-21), and home against Missouri State (17-15) by 3 points.

4) His success in the 20-21 post season only came about due to winning over South Dakota St by 2, and then North Dakota St by 3 in their tourney after finishing 4th in the league.

It is what it is. Maybe we couldn't afford the others. That's not our AD's fault. I hope we have hit lighting in a bottle, and it will be well worth the added money spent.

The Summit was weaker this season, no doubt.

However, I will point out that in general, including 5 of the 6 year's of Mill's tenure there, the Summit is quite a bit better than the Big South, where Marshall (Winthrop) came from.

Aware that when 3G was with Winthrop he dominated the league for longer. However, the Summit is generally a top-20ish league, whereas the Big South is one of the worst conferences in the country every year.

Marshall's last year at Winthrop when they went undefeated (14-0) and they had a -10 conference SOS on KenPom, ORU's conference SOS this past season (18-0) was -8.

This year's ORU team dominating the Summit was harder than 3G's teams dominating the Big South.

[CBB_Fan]

My opinion is roughly the same. He wasn't the top tier among the options we heard discussed. We likely had a limited budget, or this wouldn't make sense given how professionally everything else was handled. I expect a bump in fan engagement and more butts in seats at the start of next year just from changing coaches, but we need to get back to winning very quickly to maintain that. If the contract we offered goes even a second past the moment we stop paying Marshall and Brown, Saal should be fired.

Basically, he doesn't inspire me but going for him does should that we made a national search and found a candidate that fit a budget mostly going to ex-coaches. Given the biggest issue at hand is the dropping attendance, and the fact that we will have massively more money by 2026 I expect a short contract with high expectations. I don't think we can afford to give him a standard 4 years to rebuild and grow. If we don't get instant impact recruits, attendance will be down next year and the temptation will be to cut our losses and play this game again in a few short years with more money to throw at a bigger name.

It's still not a great place to be, but it is an understandable one. We hopefully pay for what needs to be a cheap contract just from a few thousand extra seats sold compared to expectations under Brown. Mills will not get a particularly fair shake: he needs to win 20 games pretty much from day 1 to keep attendance up, and probably needs a tournament appearance by the end of his contract to get another. He gets a slightly abbreviated recruiting cycle to bring in players and implement a new system. If he succeeds, we made a smart hire and can potentially double-down and offer him real WSU money. If he fails, we blame the budget and go for a bigger name even if it isn't particularly the fair to Mills that he didn't get to actually build a program.

[ShockTalk]

The Summit was weaker this season, no doubt.

However, I will point out that in general, including 5 of the 6 year's of Mill's tenure there, the Summit is quite a bit better than the Big South, where Marshall (Winthrop) came from.

Aware that when 3G was with Winthrop he dominated the league for longer. However, the Summit is generally a top-20ish league, whereas the Big South is one of the worst conferences in the country every year.

Marshall's last year at Winthrop when they went undefeated (14-0) and they had a -10 conference SOS on KenPom, ORU's conference SOS this past season (18-0) was -8.

This year's ORU team dominating the Summit was harder than 3G's teams dominating the Big South.

Different time, different era in Shocker basketball. I also remember where Turgeon came from.

[shock]

Look, I will support Coach Mills because I am a WSU fan. I also hope I am wrong in my judgement of the hire (#3 on the list above). I will not mind eating crow.

However, I'm not going to ignore how his season this year with ORU came about.

1) The Summit was a very weak conference this year and ORU won by 5 games. No other team played in the post season this year.

2) 2nd place SDST was 6-8 non-con losing to teams like Akron (3rd in the MAC), SF Austin (6th in the WAC), and Montana (4th in the Big Sky).

3) All of ORU's non-con losses were against descent teams and ORU's best win was at home against Liberty. However, their other 8 non-con wins were not that impressive. Four were non-DI teams (John Brown, Oklahoma Baptist, Rogers St, and Ozark Christian). The other four were @ Tulsa (5-25), Central Arkansas (9-22), @ Texas Southern (14-21), and home against Missouri State (17-15) by 3 points.

4) His success in the 20-21 post season only came about due to winning over South Dakota St by 2, and then North Dakota St by 3 in their tourney after finishing 4th in the league.

It is what it is. Maybe we couldn't afford the others. That's not our AD's fault. I hope we have hit lighting in a bottle, and it will be well worth the added money spent.

Sounds like everything that was being said about WSU after the undefeated season.

[newshock1234]

Speaking of coaches shows, i think i listened to 1 IB coaches show and never listened to another one, it about put me to sleep lol

[MikeKennedyRulZ]

Speaking of coaches shows, i think i listened to 1 IB coaches show and never listened to another one, it about put me to sleep lol

If you heard one you heard them all...

[Kel Varnsen]

Meh, Marshall wasn’t exactly offering crazy insights in his coaches shows. He won, which made the radio shows better, but his quotes were pretty milquetoast overall.

FWIW, I think that applies to a lot of coaches’ shows. They give you some tropes that people can recite to their friends to make it look like they really pay attention to the Xs and Os, but at the end of the day, it’s a way to pay the piper. Worth it if you’re a coach? Yes. But does it provide a bunch of value to the listener? Not really.

And to be clear, I wouldn’t want to offer Xs and Os insight a ton after coaching college players week after week. It’s a grind. But it’s an outreach mechanism that must be performed.

[shoxlax]

ShockRef is normally a realist who hears unfiltered opinions from colleagues so what he says means something of value.

I brought him up very early on (yay for f’ing me) before IB got canned then backed off because I just didn’t think he would be able to do what the fans seem to demand-win 25 games and go to the tournament right away. You would have to either cheat directly or buy a team through NIL money to do that and it takes a flash and cash guy. But he really has had some success with the portal recently so I tend to think we may win sooner than originally expected. I still want to know who is writing checks for all of this.

A lot of the suggested candidates were just too expensive to afford so there are so many things to decide when moving on to the next candidates such as where they mesh well geographically. I think that is a big plus for Mills in dealing with fans and boosters, especially since he is a good public speaker.

[choida]

He has a Sweet 16 on his resume...@ Oral Roberts... What do you guys want? We gave Isaac Brown millions with no previous head coaching experience... It's a new era and for me, a refreshing start. GoShox

[C0|dB|00ded]

An intuitive sponsorship angle?

[shock]

An intuitive sponsorship angle?

You wish he was your coach.

[MikeKennedyRulZ]

An intuitive sponsorship angle?

Give Bill our best. Sorry to hear about his heart issue.