Fake Gold, Frankenfooters & Meh
Kentucky basketball needs a strong Southeastern Conference. A stronger conference means Kentucky plays challenging teams which improve their statistics for national tournament seeding. To the credit of the other schools, they have been taking basketball more seriously this decade in many ways.
One way of improvement is hiring well-known successful coaches. This season three schools have found that big coaching hires aren’t the end-all, be-all solution.
Three years ago, South Carolina hired Frank Martin, who left Kansas State after several years near the top of the Big 12. Frank Martin’s struggles in the SEC are well known. The Gamecocks have lost at least 14 games in each of Martin’s three seasons in Columbia. Martin’s teams have lacked consistency — upsetting Kentucky but losing to Manhattan and South Carolina Upstate last year.
The Internet reacts every time Martin gets crazy-mad at one of his players, however his and his staff’s inability to develop their talent is more disturbing. This season’s roster with 2 full classes recruited by his staff, the offensive production has been too woeful to support a decent defense.
Because of Bruce Pearl’s success at Tennessee, Auburn hired him after his show-cause exile. His solution to a depleted Auburn roster was to pull in several talented transfers. With Antoine Mason joining Kareem Canty, K.C. Ross-Miller and Cinmeon Bowers, some pundits projected that Auburn could make noise in the middle of the SEC.
While Mason and Bowers have played well, Auburn’s obvious lack of depth limited Pearl’s helter-skelter play style. The Tigers have lost 6 of their last 7 games. Assembling some good players was easy; getting them to play effective basketball team is much harder.
Donnie Tyndall joined a basketball program that is still chilly under the shadow of Bruce Pearl. Tyndall and his staff were able to stamp their identity on the team, pulling out early victories against Kansas State and Butler. They even rallied posted a solid win over Pearl’s Tigers. However Tyndall’s team depth is shallow, and conference play has worn them down, losing 6 of their last 7 games.
Even more scandalous than losing games, another shadow stretches over the Tennessee program over possible violations from Tyndall’s time at Southern Mississippi. If Tyndall is penalized by the NCAA, it would negatively effect Tennessee’s recruiting efforts for a year or more. In the worse case of a show-cause penalty, Tennessee might be looking at hiring their third coach in 5 years.
It may not be time to dethrone these kings already. Tyndall (if he is cleared of NCAA violations) and Pearl need more time to recruit the players needed to play their style. Frank Martin adapted his recruiting techniques, and has two 4-star recruits lined up for 2015. Perhaps all they need is just a little more time to improve themselves and the Southeastern Conference as a whole.
