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Message: [QUOTE="HoustonCuse, post: 2132532, member: 87"] The bigger problem is the tendency to want to boil everything down to simple black and white answers. Running a program is a complex and messy business. That includes recruiting, roster management, long term strategy, resource allocation, player development, community relations, etc. Nobody is perfect at all that, hell probably nobody is even good at all that. JB used to be a stud recruiter back in the day, maybe not so much anymore. He's preposterously bad at image management and projecting the brand message of SU basketball. He's also pretty good at personnel management (low turnover in assistants as an example). He has been amazingly consistent as a high performing coach in an extremely unforgiving competitive environment (BE then ACC), but he's rarely if ever been at the top of the heap of his profession. Seems the most vocal among us wants to peg the meter to full scale panic about the program's future. Recruiting is horrible. On-court performance is terrible and getting worse. Coaches are lazy, have lost their skill for XO's, are being left behind by trends in the game, are incapable of dealing with the new broader context of college BB and so all is doomed. Anyone who points out incontrovertible facts opposing that viewpoint is labelled a rube, apologist, or Pollyanna. It stifles real discussion. There is a very large gray area between perfect and disaster. We exist in that gray area, just as all other programs do. Jay Wright just got bounced in the 2nd round with the overall #1 seed, K got his behind handed to him by a lower seeded team smoking him for 65 points in the second half of a 2nd round flameout as a 2 seed, another early upset that has become somewhat frequent for him of late. Pitino, bounced before the Sweet 16 with a 2 seed. Does anyone think those programs are in decline? I don't. They are in a wide gray area between great and terrible. Should K be forced out of his job? I don't think so either. [/QUOTE]

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