I think Milton was less likely to transfer than other mid major underclass phenoms because he had already used up a year of eligibility sitting out after he transferred from Kansas.

If he transferred again he would have cut his college playing career a year short.

To the Milton point: that and his window to transfer is in 2 seasons as a 5th year senior if he graduates. If that loophole doesn't close, every big time program would be lining up to recruit him. Some coaches might even disregard the rules and throw him some shady booster money under the table to separate themselves from the pack (not to name any of those coaches by name, but I bet they rhyme with Pruce Bearl and Cohn Jalipari)*

As for King, he is probably not as developed as you have liked considering he's been in the program for 2 years. But I don't think he would be that overmatched in the MVC. From the limited times I saw him play, he hustles, rebounds, and is a bitch to shoot over. I always thought if he had better coaching, he would've developed more on the offensive side than he has. And who knows what happens if he turns a corner; in 2 months, CT went from nice role player to our go-to/only option to score in the post.

But I think size and depth is so key to bringing back King right now. Depth, especially with the "new rules", is where we are sorely lacking (Rajala 6'9, James 6'7, Thomas 6'5, Knuth and Ingram both 6'6 but probably recruited more as swingmen/wing forwards than pure 4s). On top of all that, only Thomas has experience in the NCAA, and none of them have been heralded as the next best thing since sliced bread. This act flew in Year 1 & 2 (Let's play a whole bunch of freshmen and develop them!) but Year 4 and we have 1 GDed forward on the GD roster with NCAA experience?!?! Given where the roster stands now, it's pretty obvious that PM has brutally downgraded the front court from the combo of Averkamp/Gibler/Hicks that he inherited from Whitesell.


*Rome might be on fire but it's always a good time to throw a Bruce Pearl joke around

6-7 Polka played 26 minutes a game and out rebounded both Osborne and O'Leary combined who played a combined 3om7 minutes a game. James pulled down 311 rebounds as a freshman.

While 311 rebounds in a season as a freshman is impressive, James still has none against MVC level competition. For every Cleanthony Early, there are plenty who don't translate their numbers fully.

Plus, you could reasonably assume that (although they might not put up say the rebounding numbers that a 23 year old, 5th year senior would put up), Osborne, O'Leary, Johnson, and King could still improve* their play with more experience.

I also think the big picture of PM's 4th rebuilding season with young players and the fact that we are becoming IUPUI's farm team is more detrimental to the team than our depth forwards.

Right now, I would say our depth chart looks like this:
PG White / Dokubo / Porter
SG Crisman / Turk / Peterson / Richardson
SF Doyle / Ingram / Kennedy
PF Thomas / Knuth
C James / Rajala

We need 80 minutes from those 4 players. Thomas picked up 33 last year. That's 47 minutes left for James and Rajala. That also doesn't take foul trouble into consideration. If somebody gets in foul trouble, you're stuck with 2 regardless of how well they're playing. If one of them gets hurt, you're stuck with 2. If 2 of them are in foul trouble or get hurt, you have to move Knuth (a swing forward listed generously at 6'6, though some services were listing him at 6'4) to the post, which is not ideal. If you lose 3 to either injury or foul trouble, you are forced to go with 4 guards or it's Cal Kennedy time. $&^! hits the fan for many teams even if they have plenty of depth on paper at the beginning of the year; however, the whole point of recruiting in the off season is to try to make sure your team is ready with as many contingency plans as possible.

*If we had a good coach, this wouldn't be a problem.

Per the last remark, what is so bad about coach PM? It's always about the players -- the fact is, this team would be very good in the Horizon league - you get switched into the MVC and your recruited talent level is light. That is what we all saw last year - no coach can survive that - in my opinion. Talent level is up - Jones loss is big - but they will be better. Of course the problem is, so will the rest of the league.

In my opinion - he walked into a tough position - low talent roster in a bad league. Pulled some solid wins -- DePaul and Valpo -- then Payne goes AWOL and the talent level was just too thin to survive.

No doubt the heat is on PM, but I don't think there are many better solutions.

Ramblerwolf1 - You've stated that the Horizon is a bad league and that this LU team would be very good in the Horizon. I disagree with both. The Valley is a markedly better league, yes, on multiple fronts. But the Horizon isn't bottom of the barrel (although it's substantially worse the past couple yrs without Butler). At best, LU is middle of the pack in that league right now.

Any of us can nitpick at Porter about style, rotation, player development etc. My personal biggest disappointment is the roster churn. There are people out there who follow the national statistics more than I do, but with recruits not coming and voluntary/involuntary transfers, hard to build consistency.

Certainly a valid point. In the immortal words of Mike Ditka, "Coaches coach and Players play."

That said, PM is responsible for 2 shortcomings with players.

One is recruiting, which always starts and ends with the coaching staff. The jump from the HL to the MVC, although there, is not exactly a massive leap. It's not like we went to the Big 10. A very good Horizon League team should still be able to compete in the MVC. Green Bay might not have finished first in the MVC last year, but they'd still be pretty close to the top of the league. Finishing last like we did means we were totally out-classed. Add in the fact that we were also coming off 2 consecutive seasons where we were dead last & 7th of 9 in the HL, and it seems that PM's "culture-change" has resulted in us getting continuously out-classed.

Secondly, PM's development of players has been OK to poor. CT has blossomed, Doyle hopefully continues to grow, and Keke needs to have a huge year. However, that's been all he's done at Loyola. As a college coach, developing players is the name of the game. Unless you're getting studs straight out of the McD's All-American Game, they're going to need a coach to help them make the next step in their game. PM has zero track record proving he can develop players.

I'd argue that it has been straight up poor. Sure, certain players have succeeded (CT, Doyle, Keke) but those guys most likely would have succeeded regardless of the coach. They all have the talent and enough drive to make it work.

But then you consider Osborne, O'Leary, King, Pickett, Cody. Osborne had the talent but limited drive. That's where a coach needs to get in there and provide the motivation. The only thing PM got out of Osborne was the motivation to transfer. O'Leary didn't really have the talent, but he had the drive. How about teaching him more and getting more out of him? Clearly that didn't happen. Pickett is the exception. He dealt with injuries and couldn't recover. But I fear that PM never gave him a chance. He sat him at the end of the bench and didn't let him bounce back. Then you have King and Cody. These are two guys that should have played BIG minutes last year. Let's be real...while we were all optimistic about what COULD have happened last year, we were looking at a bad year either way. That is precisely the time when you play your developing players. Instead, King and Cody got limited minutes. When they DID get playing time (not in garbage time), PM was quick with the hook. He didn't sit them down and teach them how to correct their mistakes. No, he sat them down and never looked their way again. That is NOT how you teach and develop players. That is one of my biggest problems with PM. The other is how he simply can't coach in game. He was out-coached by EVERY opposing coach.

All of that said, PM is, by all accounts, a nice guy. Hell, he's a good recruiter! You have to give credit where credit is due for him getting guys like Doyle, Keke, Ingram, Richardson, et al. Don't forget, we had a guy that knew how to recruit...Larry Farmer. He brought in guys like Bailey, Schilb, Kou, McMillian, Minnifield, Demetrius Williams. What happened with all that talent? If you remember the Farmer era, you remember what happened during a timeout. The players would gather together and discuss while the coaches would gather in an area away from the players and discuss. There was no coaching going on! At least with Whitesell, there was coaching going on! He seemed to get the most out of limited talent but even he had shortfalls. He was bad with in-game adjustments as well which is part of the reason that 2006-2007 team didn't win the Horizon and get to the NCAAs.

This constant rebuilding is getting tiresome. There are a lot of Rambler fans that have been waiting a LONG time for a winning team. When will we get a dynamic coach? Unfortunately, this circles back the AD. I'd rather our coach be of the mold of Swoops...someone who maybe doesn't have the coaching experience but works really hard and does the best with what is available. Sadly, we haven't see that kind of coach at Loyola since the 80's.

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Cigarboy sucks!

Well - I for one don't think you can have it both ways. On the one hand you can't give positive examples and say they would have succeeded anyway, then put negative examples in there and blame him.
In my opinion, King and Cody are not MVC D1 players, Cody had an attitude and King is low level. Team had zero athletes with the exception of Osborne and MD. Clearly Osborne did not get on with Porter -- O'leary is not a D1 player, totally over recruited ( but so is Crisman and he has gotten better).

Bottom line for me - he had to turn the roster over, he took a couple of shots that did not work out on the player development front.

Coaching adjustments in game etc...I for one have a hard time hammering him. I do think he gets too conservative with a lead, particularly when you only have 1 creator to get a shot. But, how can you argue that he did not out coach Geno ford? The talent level on BU roster was better everywhere other than Doyle.

I don't think Porter has had anything to do with the success of Doyle and Keke, so it's not having it both ways. Plain and simple, I don't think Porter can develop players.



It's irrelevant if they are "MVC" players. It only matters if they are D1 players and they absolutely are. Whitesell was notorious for recruiting players that didn't belong in D1. Yet, he got them to overachieve. Some of those teams should have been lucky to escape with 5 wins.

I'm sure you're familiar with the old adage..."You can't teach height." I'm not sure what you expected out of King but i'll tell you what I expected. I expected him to be a tree in the lane that disrupted the offense of the opposition. If he could throw in a few points a game...great. I know it's extreme, but take a look at New Mexico State. I'd hardly say that the WAC is on par with the MVC. They had a guy named Sim Bhullar (and now his brother, Tanveer). Not the most talented guy, but he is 7'5". But what did he do? He clogged up the middle on defense and opened up the floor on offense. Now he is 6" taller than King and a bit better on offense, but he was (and is) VERY raw. From day 1, he was playing about 15 minutes a game. Here are the stat lines from his first year:

1 pt, 2 blks, 2 rebs
13 pts, 1 blk, 7 rebs
4 pts, 3 blks, 5 rebs
7 pts, 1 blk, 4 rebs
2 pts, 6 rebs
3 pts, 2 blks, 4 rebs
2 pts, 4 rebs
17 pts, 2 blks, 4 rebs
12 pts, 1 blk, 2 rebs
9 pts, 2 blk, 2 rebs
6 pts, 1 blk, 2 rebs

It goes on and on. He had some BIG games in there (see: Missouri State) but he also reverted back to minimal impact, stat-sheet wise. Keep in mind, this is a team that went to the tournament. Not necessarily because of Bhullar, but he played his role. Having that big body in the middle to disrupt is quite helpful. And big men don't magically become game ready. They need game time experience to develop...something King was NEVER afforded.




And Turk. And Keke.



Talk about someone with an attitude.



He did? I beg to differ. I understand wanting to bring in HIS players, but the roster turnover under Porter has been less strategy and more slash and burn.




Oh, you mean hammering his coaching against BU when, in the first game, he couldn't BUY an adjustment that would work. We went up 48-45 and then went scoreless for 4:10. Then, when we finally did score, we managed to put up all of 4 points in the remaining 2:14. Killer coaching.

Or what about the second game? 38 points. That's how many we scored. Not in the first half. IN THE ENTIRE GAME.

Well, finally we broke through in the third game. Partially because it is VERY difficult to beat a team 3 times in one season. But keep in mind...we had an 8 point halftime lead and stretched it to 11 out of the gate in the 2nd half. Then what happened? We, generally, maintained a 9 point lead for most of the 2nd half. Then, with 7 minutes to go, they figured things out and came at us. Chip, chip, chip, chip. Until, with 37 seconds left, they took the lead. If not for one HELL of a shot by Doyle (a shot that, let's be honest, he shouldn't have made), they would have beaten us 3 times in one year.

True, Geno has all that talent and has underachieved/undercoached. That says nothing about Porter. I have been completely underwhelmed with him. I gave him the benefit of the doubt in year 1. I was in his corner in year 2. Hell, I started the year in his corner in year 3. But the more I watched, the less I liked. He lost me last year. I am squarely in the "Prove It" corner. Nothing I've seen shows me that he will prove it. We're looking at another miserable year (we can debate about whether it will be due to self-inflicted wounds), but Porter gets the benefit of the doubt because of all the players that have left!! This is getting pathetic and it falls on the head of the former AD and current coach.

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Cigarboy sucks!