PowderBlue wrote:Sorry, didn't have time to reply last night with this...had some job commitments to finish up.
I don't disagree at all that the best coaches, in general, are Marshall and Jacobsen. I guess what I meant is that there are always statistics to use when discussing players. Comparing a PG to a C to a swingman is difficult, and quite honestly fun in my opinion, but there are tangible things to hold onto when having that discussion. While the coach and system have a lot to do with how those players perform, great players generally find a way to be great within a system.
On the coaching side, you can look at recruiting classes and you can look at rotations/player groupings as tangible discussion points; but I'm not sure that I would ever use record in the conversation, though I can see the reasoning for it. I always like to compare player usage/performance from the year before to the current year when I think about COY candidates.
This year in the MVC to this point, I don't think anyone can argue that the conversation should be Marshall, Jacobsen, Lansing. It so happens that they are 1-3 in the standings as of the time I'm typing this, but that's not my reasoning. Marshall has had his team playing at a high level with a target on their back all year. Jacobsen has his team overachieving in my opinion, and may well be deserving of the nod over Marshall, but that won't happen if WSU goes undefeated in conference again. Lansing has taken a team with which I had modest hopes for that came out of the gate horribly and turned them into a team that looks like it can compete with and possibly beat any team in the conference on a nightly basis. Truthfully, I think this has been Lansing's best coaching job to date with the Sycamores, and it is incredible that anyone is having that conversation based on the train wreck that was our non-con. I had high hopes for Porter Moser to be in that conversation this year, and he may well still be, but they've fallen off a bit of late.
My problem with Lansing is that I believe he lost this award before the conference season began. The 4-8 record simply has to be on him as well -- we're not resetting expectations at the beginning of the conference season. Indiana State was expected to be 6th in the Valley -- third would be a tremendous performance, and possibly worthy of the Coach of the Year award given what he lost, but the nonconference performance was SO bad that he's out of the running unless they win the conference.
Regardless, for Lansing, any discussion right now is too early. ISUb just entered the stretch that is going to decide their season. While winning @IlSt was big, ISUb hasn't proven any ability to win on the road yet, and they benefited from a fairly easy start the conference season. Now they're in a seven game stretch that included @UNI, and still has vsUNI, @UE, @Loyola (likely with Doyle back), and @WSU.
I, personally, expect ISUb to be 7-6 in conference by the end of this stretch, and finish around 10-8. It'll also be interesting to see if Lansing can avoid his typical late-season collapse in conference that has ruined so many previous promising seasons.
Moser has no shot. Even if Loyola finishes in the top 3. Loyola's season isn't on Moser, it's on Doyle, which is BLATANTLY obvious right now with how much Loyola is struggling without him. If your team can't handle losing one player, then the success of the team is on that one player, not on the coach. Same thing with Greg McDermott ... if Creighton lost Doug in any year, that team goes from being #1/2 in the Valley to struggling to stay out of Thursday night, because Greg McD isn't a very good coach.
I would support a coach winning COY without winning the conference, but it would have to be a very impressive job. For instance, Marshall in 2012-13: he lost all five starters/top five scorers off the team that won the Valley 16-2. The next season he had three seniors, two of which were transfers. He lost two starters 11 games into the season, and then lost Carl Hall for a seven game stretch at the exact same time, going into conference play. And despite all of that, WSU finished one game back at second in the conference, had the opportunity to win the conference outright on the final day of the season, and made the finals of Arch Madness.
Compare that to what Lansing is doing right now, which is a good coaching job but by no means a terrific one: Marshall's WSU lost five starters and started 9-1 the next year. Then, now down THREE starters, WSU went 6-1, including 4-1 in conference. In comparison, Lansing's ISUb lost three of their top five scorers (less, although only two seniors on this team), and started 4-8 (far worse), and then turned it around in time to start 5-2 in conference (still worse). And yet I still likely would not have supported Marshall for COY that year if WSU had finished third.
If Lansing had gone 8-4 out of conference and finished second in the Valley, he would be my pick for COY. That didn't happen and won't happen, though. As it is, I'm not overly impressed with their likely finish being ahead of their predicted finish, because the predicted finish was based on teams like SIU and MoSt being significantly better than they've ended up being.
