Paul Mills Not Hot Seat

[shock]

Saal was willing to make the buyout whatever Mills wanted because it doesn’t matter. He’s not firing Mills in the first three years anyway.

I 100% think Saal wanted a coach who would not draw negative attention to WSU so they could make it through 2026 paying $4 million in coaching salary and not risk something else negative happening. Mills seems to be a very low risk option. He is going to keep WSU in the top half but isn’t going to push it.

Surely I’m not the only one who see’s this. Does it suck? Yes. Is there anything short of fans buying players that’s going to make it any better? Nope. If you’re wondering where the “big money” is, they are still writing checks to a coach who lost his cool with a player who is currently sucking Cheeto dust off his fingers.

BTW, we are paying Isaac more per year than Marshall. Let that sink in. AD Retard.

[shock]

If we let coaches continue to run our program farther into the ground, we wont get a decent coach either whether its 2 years or 5 years.

Though in reality in the current environment 3-4 years is really the deciding timeframe for most coaches. You can fire quicker if results are bad AND you have the money to back it up ... we unfortunately have the first part of that, but not the 2nd part.

Mills isn’t running the program further into the ground. Isaac destroyed it. We would be worse than Tulane with Isaac. He surrounded himself with some pretty high level staff and the program was still in free fall. Mills leveled it off until we can get out of this mess.

do you remember what it was like pre-2005?

[Stickboy46]

Mills isn’t running the program further into the ground. Isaac destroyed it. We would be worse than Tulane with Isaac. He surrounded himself with some pretty high level staff and the program was still in free fall. Mills leveled it off until we can get out of this mess.

do you remember what it was like pre-2005?

Factually we are worse with Mills than Brown. I'm not going to debate it with you again. We know you hate Brown, fine. We know you will ignore all stats that say it, but things are worse under Mills than they were Brown. Neither are acceptable though which is what we can agree on. Mills is continuing the downward trend started with Brown.

[asiseeit]

Just trying to apply some common sense here but I think I would structure a contract based more on performance. For example. First year $750K with the following performance incentives. $250K for an NIT invite and another $100K if they make it to the finals. $500K for dancing and another $250K for a S16. Renegotiate after each season. Might need to lower or increase the base and incentives based on yearly performance. Bonus' considered after a really good season.

[Veritas]

I guess I don’t understand the question of Mills ability. He is facing competition from the power conferences money and recruiting. The players WSU can get are just not the level of the major conferences and to have to repeat this process every year this is what it has become. We have post players who are good against mid major programs but when competing against a Florida and even DePaul fail to match the athleticism and speed at which they play. Our scoring seems to only exist when we drive, no outside threat and our best rebounder has a broken wrist. Hill has played poorly against good guards our guard/forwards are too small for the position they are asked to play. Mills tried to recruit better players but just couldn’t get them here! This is college basketball from now on, teams like WSU are going to do the best the can with the resources they have no matter who the coach is!

Red Herring argument imo.
Must be nice for a coach to blame NIL for not competing.

Your post though does beg the question as to if schools should be required to share their NIL expenditures.

https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/candid-coaches-which-programs-do-you-believe-have-the-best-nil-situations/amp/

[ShockTalk]

player who is currently sucking Cheeto dust off his fingers.

LMAO

[Ted Lasso's Neighbor]

FYI - all of the contracts for current head coaches and Saal can be found on the Wichita State web site. Here's the link - https://www.wichita.edu/about/public..._contracts.php

A couple things some may find interesting -

Maybe this has been discussed on the forum already, but when I was looking at Saal's contract, I noticed he had a new contract (https://www.wichita.edu/about/public...d-contract.pdf). The original contract was to end in June 2027 (https://www.kansas.com/sports/colleg...262802718.html), but in June 2024, he signed a new one with a 3 year extension. So now he's signed through June 2030 and gets a 8.38% bump in pay every year.

I didn't remember reading about Saal's extension anywhere, so I was looking at the WSU Sunflower to see if they had mention of it. Didn't see anything, but they had an interesting article a couple months ago on coaches salaries and how much WSU is paying former coaches vs current coaches - https://thesunflower.com/89334/sport...ies-last-year/

[Atxshoxfan]

Factually we are worse with Mills than Brown. I'm not going to debate it with you again. We know you hate Brown, fine. We know you will ignore all stats that say it, but things are worse under Mills than they were Brown. Neither are acceptable though which is what we can agree on. Mills is continuing the downward trend started with Brown.

I see it as pretty equal at this point. If you like gunners to gun, you liked brown better, if you like drivers to drive, you probably like mills better.
I like neither style but will hope for real college basketball ball in the future over this pro style with less talent than real pros. Never cared for pro ball anyway

[Stickboy46]

I see it as pretty equal at this point. If you like gunners to gun, you liked brown better, if you like drivers to drive, you probably like mills better.
I like neither style but will hope for real college basketball ball in the future over this pro style with less talent than real pros. Never cared for pro ball anyway

Also i think our defense is without a doubt worse.

[RoyalShock]

I see it as pretty equal at this point. If you like gunners to gun, you liked brown better, if you like drivers to drive, you probably like mills better.
I like neither style but will hope for real college basketball ball in the future over this pro style with less talent than real pros. Never cared for pro ball anyway

I only got to watch (or, only had to watch) the first half of the DePaul game. But I have to say, I quite enjoyed seeing an offense that was designed to get the ball to open shooters. Of course, it helps to have makers. Their guards knew when to get into the lane, and once they did, knew where the shooters would be once our help defense reacted to the drive. That's an effective offense in the current state of college basketball.

[rjl]

Who the **** is structuring these contracts, specifically the buyouts? We thought Boatright was the dumb ignoranus but Saal seems to have not fallen far from the tree. Was he just so confident in his pick that there was no way he wouldn’t make it to the end of his contract?

We might be the dumbest athletic department in regards to finance management in the NCAA.

Like I said yesterday, Mills' buyout clause is actually worse for WSU than Brown's was. Amazing.

I think a buyout is a guaranteed thing for coach contracts, though. In terms of getting a guy to coach for your school, the buyout clause is probably only second to the amount of money paid per year. Our big problem is that we are now paying two extended buyouts and us here on shockernet are currently looking at a third.

But man. I really wish we would have stuck with Brown one more year, then saw what a few more dollars could have gotten us for a coach. It was just a case of eating sh*t for just one more year for the betterment of the long-term outlook.

[ShockHat]

Just realized, you know what kills me? The near silence from Mills and co.

It’s one thing to communicate often and candidly and effectively if you’re still not where you want to be and are culture building, and just generally trending positive.

it’s another to be quiet, losing the only games that matter, and seeing no real improvement.

You think it’s bad now? Wait til the off season after a dismal end to this season, and see what people think when it’s dead quiet again.

Id say I’d have some hope of getting a better team together but ill be real - im tired of having hope and being let down.

[Stickboy46]

Like I said yesterday, Mills' buyout clause is actually worse for WSU than Brown's was. Amazing.

I think a buyout is a guaranteed thing for coach contracts, though. In terms of getting a guy to coach for your school, the buyout clause is probably only second to the amount of money paid per year. Our big problem is that we are now paying two extended buyouts and us here on shockernet are currently looking at a third.

But man. I really wish we would have stuck with Brown one more year, then saw what a few more dollars could have gotten us for a coach. It was just a case of eating sh*t for just one more year for the betterment of the long-term outlook.

But we would have given up that sweet sweet 15-19 season

[shock]

But we would have given up that sweet sweet 15-19 season

Woulda been better than the 6 win season we were cruising for.

[BostonWu]

I'm not sure the program is in a better place than it was in the 90s when MT took over. Financially we're probably in a worse spot. I'm pretty sure the Roundhouse Renessaince would be a nonstarter.