Tell me about the dark days

[Rosewood]

Mark Turgeon and I started WSU at the same time. I finished before he did though. But as someone who only knows of good times I am curiously drawn to know more about the bad times. Maybe it is a Jungian thing I dunno. But I want to know how WSU went from X to high school classmates of mine asking if WSU played D1 ball when I told them I was going to WSU.

I know that for those of you who remember it and lived through it you may not want to relive the pain whilst in the best year ever. But remember the sweet is never as sweet without the sour. So tell me how sour it was.

[kcshocker11]

The key was John Cooper breaking his leg in a game.

[WheatShocker2]

An excessive amount of people would show up for our games against Tulsa....and then the arena would be half-empty before halftime because we would be down by 20-30. And you had to pee in a trough.

[ShockerPrez]

Eddie Fogler stopped recruiting and we were dumb enough to hire his recommendation and assistant who had no business being a head coach.

2 whiffs on coaches later and you have a lost decade.

[Rosewood]

The key was John Cooper breaking his leg in a game.

I need more then this. I want someone to spin a yarn.

Take me back and walk me through it.

[WheatShocker2]

Luke Utting, James Bunch, Darrin Miller, Reggie Smithson, Mahnord Martina, Willie "Security Guard" Davis, Ty Rhodes, and the list goes on and on... I am from there, and you DO NOT want to go there.

[jdmee]

The hire of Fogler was a good hire, however he had his eyes on the North Carolina job and looked at the WSU job as a short time, get my feet in the door job. He left after 3 years and left no one in the program.

He recommended Mike Cohan as the head coach, BAD BAD hire. After 3 years of him we was let go and the rumors were that WSU was trying to hire Jimmy V. I'm not sure what happened, couldn't agree to terms?, but WSU couldn't get that done. They instead went the route of an upcoming coach from Rice, Scott Thompson. The program was so bare at the time that he had to have open tryouts just to have enough players to practice. Even so I don't think the boosters were ever really behind him. In no time you heard the grumbling of wanting Randy to be the head coach.

I think at that time the AD said you want him you got him and hired Randy as the coach, he got some good players, but was tough as nails, couldn't get along with the players and had other issues.

[Speak2me]

An excessive amount of people would show up for our games against Tulsa....and then the arena would be half-empty before halftime because we would be down by 20-30. And you had to pee in a trough.

You had to walk down two flights of stairs into a cold, stanky, crowded bathroom to get in line to pee in a trough......7k showing up for a home game was considered a good turnout......The highlight of the game would be when officiating got poor WU would come out in dark glasses, a ref uniform and a cane to pretend to be a blind ref. I remember he got a technical foul one time for that outfit and I think that was the end of that tradition........Our main in game band chant was "We're gonna beat the hell out of you" but we rarely did during the dark years......One thing that is leftover from the dark years is the popcorn. I am pretty sure the stuff they served this year at $5 a tub was from the same batch made in the late 80's when Cohen was still our coach.

[shock]

if I didn't have class in 15 minutes I would. But basically, in the 80's WSU was a powerhouse. Then right before their best season, they got in trouble for "recruiting violations" or something of the sort. A few key players transferred to KU, and thus began the descent. Randy Smithson was hired to help bring some MTXE back, Maurice Evans came, Randy was a head case, Maurice transferred to Texas. Then before things could regress too far, Jim Schaus hired Mark Turgeon and Rosewood enrolled at WSU.

[Play Angry]

Our athletic department was also beyond flat broke back then. We paid Cohen less than a hundred grand (base salary of $70,000), which was about $70,000 too much in hindsight.

Also I know this goes against groupthink but Eddie didn't really leave the cupboard that bare. We were picked 2nd in the MVC in Cohen's first two years, and we lost a ton of transfers during that time (including future NBA player Gaylon Nickerson). Coop broke his leg in Cohen's second year in a W over Tennessee in Hawaii when he got undercut on a dirty play and things went from gradually unraveling to Wile E Coyote freefall off a cliff.

[shock]

An excessive amount of people would show up for our games against Tulsa....and then the arena would be half-empty before halftime because we would be down by 20-30. And you had to pee in a trough.

I remember being a wee little lad and watching streams turn to rivers as they headed for the drain as I wee'd into the magnificent trough of justice. Don't judge me, I was around 4-5 at the time.

[ShoxFan45]

I was a child during this time, so I won't be the best source. But I can give you my glimpses into what I remember.. I was in Middle School when we played at the Kansas Coliseum if this gives you a reference of how young I was then..

I can remember going to games at Henry Levitt with my parents. The bathrooms were about 60-feet below ground. I remember long lines for everything. I remember the cramped corridors and the wooden chair back seats. I remember bonfires for games against Kansas State (that may have been Turgeon's first year though). I remember watch parties in the basement of the alumni center. Most of what I remember from back then was from Smithson, however....

I remember Jason Perez shooting in threes from 24-feet, but no one else doing much of anything. I can remember my parents complaining about how rough the Coaches Shows were, and the big issues then were "who is going to take the blame?" Should Smithson have taken more of it on himself? Was he blaming the players?

I remember Maurice Evans coming and going and then finally going again, and his entirely shaved head. Didn't Carl Lemon also have a shaved head? I remember ESPN2 games against Illinois State and thinking how big of a deal it was that we had the possibility to be on TV.

I remember being astonished at the fact that you could just win a few games in St. Louis and go to the tournament, only to lose in the first round pretty much every year. I also remember Craig Snow for Evansville and those great sleeved jerseys.

I remember listening to games in the living room because many of them were not on TV, even locally. I remember that I was also always concerned about the crowd size. I loved when it was all the way full. And I would stare at the seats and ask my mom how close to a sell-out it would be. And it was rarely a sell-out, but it was always pretty full, and it was always fun. And as I got older, and Turgeon came we got better, and the rest is history.

[HockeyShock]

You have to frame this by realizing that, right before Fogler left, the football program was "suspended," so there was a general feeling of decline on campus already. Then Fogler left, and got Cohen in with the cupboard absolutely bare.

It was dark, man. Not only was the team bad (my brother still can't mention Cohen without spitting), but in the middle of this was the ONLY stretch in our history where KU was playing us every year, and we were getting blown out by 30+. Then they wanted to make the series a 3-for-1 and that was that.

Then we hired Scott Thompson, who came from Rice after five years of him not having a winning record there either, and he proceeded to do the exact same things here.

When we hired Randy Smithson, it was the first time in almost ten years when people were legitimately excited for the season. Randy had been a very successful JuCo coach and he was a WSU player so we thought it was a natural fit. Then he goes out and gets Maurice Evans and we start to think, "Holy cow, we may be out of this!" Then Royboy calls the NCAA on us for it (we were completely innocent, but we were investigated anyway), Randy found out that coaching D1 players was very different from coaching JuCo players (mostly, you can put up with anybody for two years. Four, not so much.) and the team stagnated again.

If I remember correctly, there was a non-trivial amount of disdain with the Turgeon hiring because he was a KU guy.

[ABC]

I'll state the obvious. The problem was three bad hires in a row. Scott Thompson didn't seem like a bad hire, but just couldn't put it together. The lack of a real/professional AD was a problem too.

The crowds were sparse enough sometimes that it was great to take young kids, b/c they could run around the upper sections without bothering anyone.

I know the conventional wisdom is that "Fogler left cupboard bare" but I disagree. Cooper, Guffrovich, Claudius Johnson etc.

I also agree with a comment above that University just wasn't focusing on athletics. If I remember, WSU to borrow the basketball floor from the Kansas Coliseum. So part of the problem were the Athletic Directors that were hired. I think Bill Belknap was basically a place holder. That left Stephenson to fend for himself and that set up the conflict with Schaus when he arrived. The baseball program should not be an island to itself but was forced too and Gene didn't want to go back to the old ways of being part of an athletic department.

Back to Scott Thompson, he was hired without WSU having an AD, so I don't know who hired him. Then Gary Hunter was hired as AD and left very quickly. Not sure why. He seemed like he was what WSU needed, but left.

I think that Smithson was a bad hire. I know many on here love him, but he was a terrible representative of the University and should never have been hired to be a head coach at a Div 1 University.

[WheatShocker2]

My highlight of the "Dark Era" came literally seconds before tip-off during our home game against Oklahoma State at Henry Levitt Arena. It was 12/06/00. There was a feisty, larger than usual crowd due to the name of our opponent. I happened to be a ball boy for that game, and was put at the same basket with a kid on my baseball team. Talk about a hell of a night for an 11 year old. Anyways, after both starting line-ups had been introduced, the 10 starters were at mid court awaiting tip off. With the crowd on their feet and everyone ready for the game to start, one of the officials motioned for me to come to the jump circle and wipe up some water that had been leaking from the ceiling/scoreboard. As I moseyed on out to half court, mortified, I look over at Randy Smithson and he immediately yells, "HURRY YOUR ASS UP!!!!" WSU 61 Pokes 59