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Lorenzo Romar on 2-16 league record: ‘No way I thought that would happen’
DerekJohnson
Administrator, Swaye's Wigwam Posts: 60,109
DerekJohnson
Administrator, Swaye's Wigwam Posts: 60,109
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I just read headlines though
If enough apologists say the buyout is the rate limiting factor, everyone just assumes that's what will keep him here, despite them never seeing the books or know what UW has available to it.
If enough people say the recruits will leave, then everyone just assumes they will and THAT is the reason to keep him, despite them not knowing that for sure.
TL:DR = No one knows if either of the major excuses are true, but they have no allegiance to UW so they just want to see Porter
The person Romar is, has become more important than what the coach Romar has done, and since there is no legitimate x's and o's reason's they can possibly give to save him, it's come down to the crutch of the budget doesn't allow it, and the loss of MPJ, who will be gone by the last week of March next year as a one and done.
Both of which are FS for reasons that you keep him
It's as simple as this: Six years is six years
Pull the plug. It's fucking over. Time to start from scratch. The best recruits in the nation can't save Romar and won't save the program. Both are dead men walking.
It was Roy and IT (plus Nate/Will/Bobby and Brockman/Pondexter/MBA) that elevated those first teams. Not two coaches who have sucked total ass since leaving.
I used to watch the Huskies back in the day, and those were fairly disciplined teams who played tenacious defense. The games I've seen in the last five years have been atrocities. Every year a very poorly coached team with no concept of defense. Your explanation doesn't hold water.
It's pretty simple honestly. It's not about just having talent, it's about having experienced talent. Other than the very first tourney team the other 5 all had multiple all conference caliber upperclassmen or a senior who was the best player in the conference.
05: jr Roy, jr Robinson, sr Conroy, jr Jones (plus sr Tre Murder)
06: Roy (best player in the country), Jones (plus sr Jamaal Williams)
09: sr Dentmon, sr Brockman
10: sr Pondexter (best player in the conference)
11: jr Thomas, sr MBA, sr Holiday
Look at the upperclassmen on the teams since then. The best upperclassmen, arguably the only one worth anything, was Andrew Andrews as a senior. And Andrews wasn't close to the caliber of best player on any of those tourney teams.
The other "superstars" you reference never made it to their junior year. Highest year they were here for:
Ross - sophomore
Wroten - frosh
NWG - soph
Murray - frosh
Chriss - frosh
Fultz - frosh
Romar lucked out early on with a fucking superstar in Roy who couldn't leave early because he was too unselfish early on then jacked his knee up right when he was blowing up as a junior. Then he lucked out with Brockman who couldn't go early because he was too short, then Pondexter who couldn't go early because he underachieved his first two and a half years, then with IT who was 5'8" but finally said fuck it I'm not getting any taller I'll skip my senior year and get this started.
All of those guys went on to play in the NBA (as did Justin Holiday, plus Jones and Conroy who got NBA cups of coffee, I think Dentmon did too). And Nate had a long NBA career and made it til his junior year.
That's ten guys who played in the NBA who made it to at least their junior year at UW in Romar's first 8 years. None in the last 6 years.
It had shit to do with assistant coach x's and o's.
The earlier Romar teams had far superior (and seasoned) talent than the teams the past five years. They were stacked.
Other teams miss with a single superstar surrounded by dreck (similar to fultz), but two superstars? And twice?
That's stunning.
Friday afternoon. Always.
Look at the murderers row of "other coaches" Romar had.
05: jr Roy, jr Robinson, sr Conroy, jr Jones (plus sr Tre Murder)
06: Roy (best player in the country), Jones (plus sr Jamaal Williams)
09: sr Dentmon, sr Brockman
10: sr Pondexter (best player in the conference)
11: jr Thomas, sr MBA, sr Holiday
These guys were better assistants than dollar ever could be as they were having to make decisions on the fly, change plays, manage players and get all the guys on the floor the ball in a good position to score. Romar is a horrid in game coach, but in most cases even the best coaches say they can effect very little in game other than right out of timeouts(a romar specialty).
Romar should be blamed for all the practice time, along with his assistants, that is obviously lost on fundamentals. I will give Romar/staff some credit that it's hard to get mainly freshman to improve dramatically where the teams mentioned above were all older and experienced. But that's just as much on him for how he manages a roster and keeps players in the fold.
His teams used to be good b/c he recruited players who were a certain type to stretch the floor and ran aggressive man to man. As they were older teams they also were going to have a higher defensive IQ than what we see out there today.
Bone and dollar are just dime a dozen assistants who can handle some shit, but at the end of the day you need quality upper classmen to mix with elites like fultz. Not the regular roster shitfest UW has had all decade.
Dollar filled the role that Conroy is currently filling ... just that Dollar is 1000x more seasoned as a coach than Conroy is ... and Dollar isn't anything THAT special as a coach
But even going back to those early teams, they weren't particularly well coached. The above 2 players really made the offense look a lot better than it was from a system standpoint ... which you can get away with when you have those caliber of players pulling the strings. The defensive system was never a strong one against GOOD teams because the over extended defense eventually gets exposed and compromised. It's one of the reasons why I'm bearish on West Virginia in the NCAAs this year because by the time they get to the 2nd weekend and start playing teams that can handle the pressure. But if you go back and watch the 3 that UConn made to put the game into OT ... our defense on the play was SOOOOOOO bad on so many levels ...
Perhaps the biggest issue that the program has had is basically in mindset. The players in the first half of the Romar era played in a way that was consistent with winning basketball. Nate's got plenty of dumbass in him (and I mean that in a good way) ... but he also grew up with a ton of fundamentals and I'll never forget talking to him one day where the discussion of why he shot the ball so high in the air came up and he responded by saying that his daddy told him that he was short so he would need to shoot the ball high in the air to get things done. The time to me where you could start to see the program going backwards in hindsight was when you had a guy like Elston Turner transfer ... Turner was a good but not great player ... but he was a kid that knew a bit about what he was doing and had a father that not only was a former NBA player but NBA assistant. I remember playing with him one day and setting a back pick for him that confused the hell out of him ... we talked about it and I explained what I was doing and it was like a light bulb went off for him because so much of Romar's offense basically just had him stand in a spot and then either catch and shoot or drive from there ... there's a place for that in an offensive system but it's not the basis or foundation for a good to great offense.
If you really want to sum everything up, everything about Romar and his program can best be described as lazy without accountability.