[NU Sports] hoops post mortem

[SjT (Stephen J. Truog)]

I haven't commented on this BBall debate here because
I honestly don't have any easy answers - Carmody is a
good guy and seemed to be a good fit for the program
when hired, but it hasn't worked out for one reason or
another. 

I will, however, say that blaming the arena seems to
be a purely cosmetic one that I don't buy. Nevermind
that we can't fill our present arena ... but an old
barn isn't that big of a negative as Duke, Vandy,
Stanford, Minnesota, Kansas, Oregon and others have
shown. It's not like we need the big arena to attract
other non-sports things to the college town for fun
like other schools (Penn State, Wisconsin, etc.) - we
have Chicago an el ride away.

Upgrades could be done (say if they wanted to raze the
upper deck on the north side to add some kind of boxes
facing the court and better locker room facilities
underneath) ... but Welsh-Ryan is a great place to
watch a game and can be a huge plus to the program.

My freshman year, I didn't have the seniority to get
into the pep band, so I sat in the student section and
could literally reach out and touch the players - the
fans are close and that's a great part of environment.
And when filled with purple - as in the '94 NIT run
during my sophomore season, Welsh-Ryan gets noisy in a
hurry and can be a great home-court edge. I've been to
the Palestra, Hinkle Fieldhouse, old UW Fieldhouse and
some other old arenas and Welsh-Ryan could have that
kind of folklore ... if we had a more storied team.:)

I wish I had solutions to the problem on the court ...
but I'm pretty sure the court itself isn't part of it.
We can't really build one closer to campus, it's a
loud box that rocks when full and gets fans close to
the action. Add suites and facilities if you want to
the upper-level north side, but leave the lower bowl
alone.

As for the team, I'm honestly stumped. The Princeton
offense works at other places - why not here? And
Carmody's a big step up from Kevin O'Neill in class
and committment. So I guess I'm wondering "if not
Bill, then who?" If we fire Carmody, who do we get? Is
there someone out there who will take the time and
task to build a program in Purple? Do we just need to
hire an assistant coach who recruits like mad
stateside? Bring in big alum bucks to find someone in
the assistant ranks nationally? Or try and find our
bball Fitz and see if any alums want to chance at a
big-time job in return for loyalty to NU (is Kip
Kirkpatrick coaching somewhere? Todd Leslie?:) ).

Answers won't be easy - but I do think we need to look
elsewhere than Welsh-Ryan.

GO CATS!!!
-SjT

* * * * * * * * *
STEPHEN J. TRUOG
sjtruog at yahoo.com
GO CATS!!!


 
____________________________________________________________________________________
8:00? 8:25? 8:40? Find a flick in no time 
with the Yahoo! Search movie showtime shortcut.
http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/#news