Tuesday's games: MSU and UE

[Ricardo del Rio]

I don't know, if dancing on the Bear's grave is a good idea.

I just don't know.

Does anyone remember the Coach Alford days? I am trying to remember the circumstances of his leaving. I seem to recall it was by mutual agreement.

[DoubleJayAlum]

Alabama A & M's RPI actually went down from 328 to 329 with this win. MSU is now at 327. Must be the better SoS.

Don't laugh. That is exactly what will happen when all of us play when we play MSU.

[MoValley John]

In all seriousness, I had the Bears winning this game. I was pulling for them until the 15 min mark of the second half, then they disgusted me. I almost got back on the bandwagom when they hit two treys and brought the game back to eight. But there was no fire, no emotion, no confidence and no plan. At this point, I am serious when I say I don't want the Bears to win a single D-1 game. They only have two non-cons left, not enough to help their RPI and if they win any Valley games, they will simply drag the conference down. I hope they lose them all.

I have now taken great sport in reading Bear-Nation. Once you get past how pathetic it is, you get in a Jersey Shore type of mood and can't turn away from the trainwreck. Very entertaining.

[ihsi]

MSU couldn't buy out Lusk if they wanted to could they? Seeing Hinson bring an overachieving SIU team to JQH won't help matters either.

[troutangler]

I haven't posted anywhere about Bears basketball in quite some time. I knew we would be bad this year (I was not one of these people saying we would sniff the top 5 in the Valley), but I didn't think we would be THIS bad. I figured we would be in the play-in round and struggle to stay in the top 150 of the RPI, but this is absolutely embarrassing. To top it all off, and for poetic justice, Barry is going to come in to JQH and beat us like a drum. It couldn't set up any better for him.

Lusk definitely needs to be fired ASAP. It would be best to let one of the assistants finish the season and spend the time finding a replacement. At the very least fire him after we lose in the play-in round on Thursday. You know what will happen though? Absolutely nothing. The people in charge at MSU are not going to do anything because A) It will be "too soon", and B) They aren't paying his buyout. Someone (Or several someones) would have to come up with the money, and I don't know if that will happen. Has any other Valley team gone from a conference championship one year to being one of the worst D1 teams just two years later? People can complain about Cuonzo's recruiting all they want, but he won games and his teams always competed. Even in his first year you could see we were improving. We beat Arkansas to open JQH. Lusk inherited a team last year with Weems, Patterson, Downing, Gulley, etc and we got worse as the season progressed. Cuonzo would have won 20-21 games with those guys and probably made the NIT.

These are the things that take YEARS to recover from. Just this season will hurt our recruiting for several years. It is already taking a toll on attendance. I haven't been to a game this year and I watched half of the Tulsa game on TV, that's it. I could make time for Bears basketball like I have in the past, but I just choose not to anymore, and that won't change until Lusk and Moats are gone.

[DoubleJayAlum]

How much would they owe Lusk if they canned him?

[Haha]

Roughly 750K is my understanding...

Considering their entire BB budget of 2011 was 1.6 million thats a lot of bucks for the bears. What does it matter with what they pay they will have to take a chance on another unproven coach more than likely. My opinion is can that football program and start investing in the things you can actually win at, such as basketball.

In fact if your not ISUr or UNI can your football program or do like Drake and make it non scholarship. Or I suppose go join the OVC.

[Ricardo del Rio]

Roughly 750K is my understanding...

Considering their entire BB budget of 2011 was 1.6 million thats a lot of bucks for the bears. What does it matter with what they pay they will have to take a chance on another unproven coach more than likely. My opinion is can that football program and start investing in the things you can actually win at, such as basketball.

In fact if your not ISUr or UNI can your football program or do like Drake and make it non scholarship. Or I suppose go join the OVC.

For certain schools and conferences, football is like a manhole cover, which is hanging around its neck.

I imagine MSU is one of them.

[bleach]

There is nothing anyone could say about this team that would be unfair.
I just don't know how much of it goes on the players. After last year and now THIS, Lusk should resign in disgrace but Salukis don't get disgraced easily.

[troutangler]

Roughly 750K is my understanding...

Considering their entire BB budget of 2011 was 1.6 million thats a lot of bucks for the bears. What does it matter with what they pay they will have to take a chance on another unproven coach more than likely. My opinion is can that football program and start investing in the things you can actually win at, such as basketball.

In fact if your not ISUr or UNI can your football program or do like Drake and make it non scholarship. Or I suppose go join the OVC.

For certain schools and conferences, football is like a manhole cover, which is hanging around its neck.

I imagine MSU is one of them.

You imagine correctly, but the powers-that-be at MSU and a certain number of fans won't give up on the dumpster fire that is MSU football. We could be spending the couple million we spend on football each year on paying a basketball coach more than $200k. We could find someone with D1 success as a head coach (Like Gregg Marshall, as much as I detest him and Wichita).

By the way, just for perspective, Lusk was the only person interviewed for the HC job here after Cuonzo left.