I visit the Boneyard fairly often to how things are going for UCONN. There is this narrative that basketball lapsed because of their being in the AAC. It seemed like a coaching fail after the Calhoun era. I thought they were going to be the bell cow for the AAC in basketball and make the conference legit.
I have literally no doubt this is true, nor am I surprised.
It was a combination of things. There was definitely a decrease in the amount of effort Ollie put in after the championship season. He thought the program would sell itself and bring in top talent which for a couple of years it did. But once they were fully entrenched in the island of misfit toys past success and tradition meant nothing and talent dried up. Had we still been in the Big East I suspect Ollie would have eked out a few more decent recruiting classes and winning seasons before a change was made. Looking back, one positive of the AAC was that it accelerated exposing the significant weaknesses of the coach and program.
Tough to say but I doubt it with the football program being so bad until this year. I’m also not convinced we could have resurrected the basketball program in the B12. We’d be on an island without any traditional rivals to drum up interest. However far fetched it may be, the goal is ride out realignment and get into the ACC if offered.
Worked for UCF
When fans here connect Cuse’s decline to not being in the Big East and not playing many of our old traditional rivals anymore, I always point to West Virginia’s situation. Huggy has managed to keep the Mountaineers relevant and contending for regular tourney bids and top 25 finishes, despite them playing in a conference outside their geographic base and being thousands of miles from all of their conference foes. And WVU is a much lesser basketball program than Cuse with fewer resources and not much of a recruiting base. It really shouldn’t have been hard for Syracuse to continue winning like we always did once we joined the ACC. JB had a lot of excuses but he’s largely to blame for the decline. He stopped putting in the work and stubbornly refused to change the way he did anything.
Sanctions still hurt considerably. It’s not the only reason, but their impact shouldn’t be written off
When does the expiration date on using sanctions as an excuse occur? 2030? 2040?
It takes decades for damage to the pipeline to resolve. It is known.
“Still hurt considerably” meaning they hurt the team at the time and contributed to the down turn (still being an adverb to mean: nevertheless) I did not intend for “still” to be read as an adverb meaning: up to and including today.
