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Coach Marshall seems to top himself one way or another every year. Hard to imagine someone saying a few years ago that "Marshall is in over his head in this conference."

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ShoxNAwe wrote:Coach Marshall seems to top himself one way or another every year. Hard to imagine someone saying a few years ago that "Marshall is in over his head in this conference."

The funny thing about that is how critical WSU fans have been towards Muller and yet his 1st two years in the Valley were better than Marshalls were. I'm not saying Muller will ever have success of Marshall's level, and Marshall had established his credentials before at Winthrop; just saying it seems a bit disingenuous to be so quick to dismiss Muller. And please don't play that card about Muller inheriting a much better situation; Marshall still had 2 starters from the sweet 16 team left, a future NBA guy in Meckel, a top 10 prep school recruit in Ellis, an experienced D-1 transfer in Thomson, Durley, Hatch etc. etc. What it shows is that until a coach gets his guys and his system in place, it's really hard to evaluate the job they're doing. Again I'm not knocking Marshall, just pointing out he struggled those first two years just like a lot of coaches do when they have to mold a program to their vision of what they want, until they get a majority of their guys with enough experience in their system. I have no clue what Muller's success will be; hell I have no idea what Lusk's will be, but I know it should start to show this year or you then begin to have doubts.

BEARZ77 wrote:

ShoxNAwe wrote:Coach Marshall seems to top himself one way or another every year. Hard to imagine someone saying a few years ago that "Marshall is in over his head in this conference."

The funny thing about that is how critical WSU fans have been towards Muller and yet his 1st two years in the Valley were better than Marshalls were. I'm not saying Muller will ever have success of Marshall's level, and Marshall had established his credentials before at Winthrop; just saying it seems a bit disingenuous to be so quick to dismiss Muller. And please don't play that card about Muller inheriting a much better situation; Marshall still had 2 starters from the sweet 16 team left, a future NBA guy in Meckel, a top 10 prep school recruit in Ellis, an experienced D-1 transfer in Thomson, Durley, Hatch etc. etc. What it shows is that until a coach gets his guys and his system in place, it's really hard to evaluate the job they're doing. Again I'm not knocking Marshall, just pointing out he struggled those first two years just like a lot of coaches do when they have to mold a program to their vision of what they want, until they get a majority of their guys with enough experience in their system. I have no clue what Muller's success will be; hell I have no idea what Lusk's will be, but I know it should start to show this year or you then begin to have doubts.

Can I play the "Marshall had to play against a legitimate conference instead of the trash Muller is up against now" card?

That's a reasonable argument, obviously the league is down compared to then. But the point isn't about Marshall, it's the fact that most coaches [Muller in this case] take a few years to get "their guys" and "their system" in place before you really can assess the job they're doing. That's like Lusk; I really don't care for his system, but he's recruited to it and if he wins from here forward then I'll have to accept he can win doing it his way, and I'll be a happy camper even though I prefer a different style of play. Guys Like Marshall, Mc Demott[ when at UNI] Martin etc' all showed great progress by year three even after some pretty ugly basketball in year 1or 2 . Lusk second year was as bad as I've seen at MSU, but last year was improved and would have been better w/o the MM injury, so I wait to see this year. Muller had a bad 1st year in some ways but showed some ability last year with a huge turnover and some real head cases on board. It'll be interesting to watch him this year.

BEARZ77 wrote:

ShoxNAwe wrote:Coach Marshall seems to top himself one way or another every year. Hard to imagine someone saying a few years ago that "Marshall is in over his head in this conference."

The funny thing about that is how critical WSU fans have been towards Muller and yet his 1st two years in the Valley were better than Marshalls were. I'm not saying Muller will ever have success of Marshall's level, and Marshall had established his credentials before at Winthrop; just saying it seems a bit disingenuous to be so quick to dismiss Muller. And please don't play that card about Muller inheriting a much better situation; Marshall still had 2 starters from the sweet 16 team left, a future NBA guy in Meckel, a top 10 prep school recruit in Ellis, an experienced D-1 transfer in Thomson, Durley, Hatch etc. etc. What it shows is that until a coach gets his guys and his system in place, it's really hard to evaluate the job they're doing. Again I'm not knocking Marshall, just pointing out he struggled those first two years just like a lot of coaches do when they have to mold a program to their vision of what they want, until they get a majority of their guys with enough experience in their system. I have no clue what Muller's success will be; hell I have no idea what Lusk's will be, but I know it should start to show this year or you then begin to have doubts.

The interesting thing about this is that I think a large percentage of WSU's fanbase actually disagrees with this, and are somewhat high on Muller. Obviously that's not seen as much on here, but I've defended Muller here, as have others, and a lot of people have expressed a lot of good expectations for him moving forward on ShockerNet.

I thought his first year was embarrassing from what preseason expectations for that team were, but his second year was undoubtedly a success.

As for the comments about WSU, seems a bit "disingenuous" to draw a correlation between an Illinois State team predicted to finish second in the conference which suffered no major injuries, to a team predicted to finish sixth in the conference which lost its starting PG for most of the conference season, leaving the team with, if I remember right, two upper classmen. Not to mention the vast difference in conference strength between those two periods.

But I do understand your point.

Muller is already not living up to his own expectations by dropping games at home against Mountain West bottom dwellers.

That's his own undoing, not anybody else's. Nobody else was predicting Illinois State to win the Valley and be a Top 10 team.

ShoxNAwe wrote:Coach Marshall seems to top himself one way or another every year. Hard to imagine someone saying a few years ago that "Marshall is in over his head in this conference."

This is where the thread took a wring turn.

I may have to keep posting AA lists, which actually got boring and redundant, if this trend to go off subject continues.

Baker moves up to #3 on ESPN's Wooden watch.

http://espn.go.com/ncb/notebook/_/page/woodenwatch141126/patterns-forming

Championz wrote:Muller is already not living up to his own expectations by dropping games at home against Mountain West bottom dwellers.

That's his own undoing, not anybody else's. Nobody else was predicting Illinois State to win the Valley and be a Top 10 team.

I still have no clue how a coach making a preseason prediction has anything to do with coaching ability.