Who is gone?

[ytownchief22]

Came all the way here from Louisiana, broke the record for most 3 pointers as a freshman at YSU and now he's leaving... All of this after Marcus Keene left who would've been a stud point guard, Ryan Weber left after he was one of our better wing players and shooters. Just a complete joke this program has become.

[IAA Fan]

The only bigger joke is how many times you guys say it EVERY SINGLE DAY!!! Give it a rest. Your AD has an email address, use it, as he does not read this board ...so all you is chase away potential fans at a rate much greater than the men's basketball program.

[Dmorton]

He probably won't be the last one to leave.  We'll be starting from scratch again with all fresh faces.  I know every program loses players, but this is beyond ridiculous.

[Penguin Nation]

The only bigger joke is how many times you guys say it EVERY SINGLE DAY!!! Give it a rest. Your AD has an email address, use it, as he does not read this board ...so all you is chase away potential fans at a rate much greater than the men's basketball program.

Can he read?  Maybe I'll send him a drawing to be safe.

[ytownchief22]

The only bigger joke is how many times you guys say it EVERY SINGLE DAY!!! Give it a rest. Your AD has an email address, use it, as he does not read this board ...so all you is chase away potential fans at a rate much greater than the men's basketball program.

Jerry and Co. take care of chasing away potential fans enough for all of us with the product on the court. Somebody get the attendance records please.

[Penguin Nation]

A Vindy perspective sans the Slocum enabling and praise:

http://www.vindy.com/news/2016/mar/20/penguins-have-own-madness/

[ytownchief22]

I know the Slocum apologists wont like it but here is the list of players who have left just in the last 4 years....

Sheldon Brogdon

Shaun Stewart

Marcus Keene

Ronnye Beamon

Jalon Plummer

Ryan Weber

Osandi Vaughn

Kyle Steward

Larry Johnson Jr

Jordan Andrews


Mind boggling to me that this man still has a job.

[Penguin Nation]

FWIW, from a business perspective, recruiting talent costs way more than retaining talent through efforts directed at employee satisfaction.

This would be a great piece of investigative journalism.  Why does YSU willfully sabotage MBB?  How much $$ has that sabotage cost YSU?  Instead we get lapdog "journalism" in the local media.

[IAA Fan]

So what is a "Slocum Apologist"? I would think that two things are required:

1. You dislike Slocum
2. You feel compelled to be apologetic for something ...person, record, whatever.

So would that not make you the "Slocum Apologist"? I mean I am fully-aware of our program and I certainly apologize for nothing; including players/staff that have left.

What makes me laugh are the haters and complainers, as they will never enjoy anything that happens in any YSU sport; as that would mean they have nothing to complain about. If YSU basketball was coming off of a 24-2 season, you would still sit in your butts at home and complain that the opponent was only Geneva, or a lower-end HL member, or YSU lost to a nobody in last year's play-in game. If you don't believe me, look back at how empty our football stands were back in 1989 - 1999 ...yet here so many years later these same people talk with such fondness of those times when half of you (at least) were not even there. What were there 1,000 YSU fans at Huntington in any given national championship game? If you drove 35mph it would take 5 hours to get there. I saw more people at the first title game in Georgia. "Oh I am not going to drive all 2-3 hours to Columbus to see the team get their a$$es kicked" ...sound familiar? When we go tot the first game, we discovered that we could not afford all of the tickets that we needed (we were hoping to get cheap seats the days of the game). So a few of us went in the shoe and a few of us tailgated and watched it on TV ...IN COLUMBUS. I had plenty to complain about, as the scalpers had little under $100; we had our back sides handed to us and we clearly were told to play "vanilla", they even made our band perform after the game. However, this is what we do as fans. So if you do not like the price or the performance ...so what? Don't go.

Back to MBB. Well, we can dump $400k a year into another coach and we are not going to be much over .500, but you will still complain, then years from now, comment on how nice it was to once have a coach that got us over .500. BTW, has there ever been more 1,000 at a WBB game? I was at 3 this year and I did not see even that many. Put your $$$ where your mouth is.

[Penguin Nation]

1AA-

Are there ppl in the YSU community that are never pleased? Of course.  There are those ppl everywhere.  I'm not sure how that's relevant.

The issue here is why does the athletic department at YSU govern MBB in such a way as to guarantee its failure?  We know what 11 years of Slocum produced.  We know what any future with him will produce.  Wanting YSU MBB to thrive and achieve its potential is not being a "hater and complainer."

This year YSU MBB played an uncharacteristically challenging OOC schedule. Oakland (from memory, not looking it up) has for years played a brutal OOC schedule, raised a ton of $$, and although struggled at first has recently elevated itself to one of the top HL programs.  I always thought that was a great strategy that YSU could employ, and hopefully that is the direction we are headed, but those efforts are wasted if our HC can't retain talent, can't encourage community involvement, can't recruit, and can't mount winning campaigns.

[IAA Fan]

Again you bring up a school that has  MBB as their top men's sport, and women's sports dominate Oakland U, has for many years ...no relevance of ANY kind to YSU. "does the athletic department at YSU govern MBB in such a way as to guarantee its failure?" People hint to it, but still do not get it. Now your coach, your AD and your president are pretty smart guys ...is the answer to that question not obvious yet? Again, this is the most Slocum has ever had in the 11-years here. So they would be fools not to give him that year extension, as we are on the cusp of some changes. IS it going to be football? Conference changes, division changes, etc.? Who knows, but one thing is certain: our 2 primary goals have been facilities and women's athletics.

PS: Recently, some minor focus was made toward men's programs that were under-achieving (baseball, men's distance, Tennis and Golf). This in addition to very recent focus into MBB. Football will always be the major men's program focus, as it should be.

[jbags]

Complain after 24-2? How the heck would we know...We've never been in that situation...I just want us to be relevant in basketball...watching Middle Tennessee beat Michigan State made me think it's possible for us...am I nuts? Only 5 guys are on the floor at once...you can get good really quick if you can recruit one guy that's a stud or get lucky and find a gem...Add one decent inside player and a lightning quick pg and you can get a tourney bid in our conference ...just keep those players here for four years...The kid from Garfield Hts will replace Andrews...A banger inside and we can compete in this league in a year...it happens elsewhere

[IAA Fan]

This is MTSU of 2016, they are not an OVC team any more. They are a conference USA school and spend more in football that we do in the entire athletic department, what did that get them as CUSA champs ...a #12-seed?. So sure we can do it too ...why would we? Were is the $$ coming from?

[Wick250]

IAA Fan, several times in the past weeks you have thrown out the figure, 400k, and implied that it would take that much to revive the basketball program.  I do not accept that.  I also would certainly not take money from football or any other sport, but I submit that there are several dozen young, ambitious, and successful coaches at the lower levels of college basketball that would leap at the opportunity to be a head coach in the Horizon League.  For many of these guys, Slocum's current salary would be a pay raise.

What frustrates and angers so many of us is the way Slocum is judged differently from every other coach on our campus.  He is the only guy that does not need to win and the only guy that survives shockingly low attendance for his sport. 

[ytownchief22]

IAA Fan, several times in the past weeks you have thrown out the figure, 400k, and implied that it would take that much to revive the basketball program.  I do not accept that.  I also would certainly not take money from football or any other sport, but I submit that there are several dozen young, ambitious, and successful coaches at the lower levels of college basketball that would leap at the opportunity to be a head coach in the Horizon League.  For many of these guys, Slocum's current salary would be a pay raise.

What frustrates and angers so many of us is the way Slocum is judged differently from every other coach on our campus.  He is the only guy that does not need to win and the only guy that survives shockingly low attendance for his sport.

Great point. Wolford gets fired for not making the playoffs, even thought his teams had winning records and were trending upward.

Slocum hasn't been past the 2nd round in the conference tourney, has had 2 winnings seasons in 9 years, yet he stays. Hard for me to fathom that....