I understand your point, but it's not all about the money (even though making $150k is a lot better than spending $20k). What would you rather have: 2 games where we go to a hostile environment, play a better team, lose but have it be beneficial for our player development or 2 easy home wins that don't help our guys improve at all and do it in front of 500 fans tops? When you include the $170,000 swing, it seems like a no-brainer.

Plus, if our guys actually develop, we could start to lose those games in a competitive fashion like the game against MSU 2 years ago or against Ohio St. in the last decade.

Like I've said before, if any one of the four departing frontcourt players (Osborne, O'Leary, Johnson, King) had stayed for this season, this would be a much better looking team with a plausible chance to compete against all but the top three or four teams in the league. Even just having O'Leary, who had the least physical presence among the four, would have provided a lot of cover for Thomas and James. Even just keeping King, the least skilled and experienced of the four, would have offered some fig leaf of defense and a little hesitency on the part of opposing players taking shots near the basket.

I don't care what the internal dynamics were, when you've got four players tasked to perform a similar role all leaving at once, it can't be merely a personality clash or a coincidence. One? Sure... it's understandable. Some people don't get along, and there's probably a bad match that just didn't work out. Two, maybe... but it's starting to seem fishy. Three? Highly improbable, and there's probably something very wrong. Four? Seems impossible for it to be the result of anything but egregious mismanagement. And remember, this is on top of a freshman point guard also bailing out, all the players who were driven out when Moser got here (resulting our worst conference record in the history of the program), and all three assistants leaving at the same time the year before. The list of people asked to leave and who voluntarily left (most of them at great cost to their careers and education) is stunning.

We all knew it was going to be a rough year because of the frontcourt, and Michigan State is a great team, a tough place to play. But MSU's main frontcourt players (Costello, Dawson, and Schilling) going a combined 17 for 25 from the field with 21 rebounds and four blocks, and a 26-2 margin on points in the paint was much worse than imagined from a team that is usually, and in particular this year, led by guards. And Michigan State, at least according to AP polls, is not even the best team we're going to play this year.

I don't believe the real story of the mass exodus of players this spring has been told.

I still don't know what happened. I flip flop from thinking they all left voluntarily to they all were run off by Moser. Whatever the case, it doesn't reflect well on Moser. Either he recruited badly and decided to liquidate his mistakes, or he couldn't get along with a substantial part of his roster.

I would love for Matt O'Leary's brother (BreakthroughPM) to return to Ramblermania with the inside scoop, but I understand why he would be reticent to do so.

2 asked to leave, 2 on their own, 1 injury and 1 (Pickett) that I don't know.

Who were the ones that were asked to leave?

Asked to leave were probably Cody Johnson and Jeremy King.

I would like to know what the sequence of events was.

If Jeremy and Cody were asked to leave first, then Matt and Nick decided to transfer later, that makes some sense. But the question arises whether Moser's decision to run off Jeremy and Cody prompted Matt and Nick to transfer.

If the sequence was first for Matt and Nick to decide to transfer , then asking Cody and Jeremy to leave afterwards makes NO sense.

I am pretty sure Jeremy left the team on his own but I am not 100 sure. That is what I have heard on campus. My guess was Osbourne and Johnson were asked to leave if there were 2

You could be right. I hope 08 clears it up.

That's a problem with Moser's recruiting. I think a big thing he and a lot of coaches preach in their recruiting visits is playing time. Moser had more than usual to offer given he ran off 3/4 of Whitesell's guys and the team wasn't very good in his first year. When players don't get that playing time, that's when they up and leave. If one or two leave, then it's the depth chart, but you're totally right: 4 is too many. Even giving up on King, who would've been a redshirt sophomore this year, so soon is troubling. If Moser wants to run a Villanova, 4 guard offense, then the exodus isn't as bad. We still need exceptional guard play to offset that. That's the bed that Porter made with this roster, so he better find a way to elevate Doyle, White, Turk and Crisman to an outstanding level.