Summit League Postseason Awards

[Jacks#1Fan]

Re: Summit League Postseason Awards

And here are NDSU's SOS ratings for the two year period:

2006-07...SOS 328
2007-08...SOS 292

[JackFan96]

Re: Summit League Postseason Awards

Just a couple of things kind of inspired by this post. First, I don't think our schedule has been much if any more ambitious than what NDSU's has been. We did start from a worse place, though. Second, I think it's fair to say that for the most part NDSU has had considerably more success in men's basketball than we have during the transition. I (and I think most of us) would have loved to be .500 this year. The last thing has to do with Coach Nagy, whom I like. But I think some of the ... impatience, I guess, comes from his not being happy with where we showed up (last) in the preseason polls. My memory could be bad, it seems like maybe it came across like he felt we were disrespected. That set expections higher than maybe they should have been. And, although I know what he means, he always talks about there being no "moral victories." Well, without them, we have had very few men's baseketball victories to count. His words kind of get turned against him in the situation.

That's all I've got.

When we entered the D-I ranks, we had just lost key starters to graduation, and and another remaining experienced player (Andy Moeller) decided to stay in D-II for his senior year, and transferred. I don't know that Coach Nagy would admit in hindsight, but I think the difference in NDSU's relatively better success, was in how both schools began the transition. The Bison recruited five good freshmen and redshirted them. They also had more returning players, which enabled them to do that, and they beat us that first year down in Florida. In addtion, they put together relatively mild seasons in who they played the first couple of years.

Coach Nagy put together some very ambitious seasons for a newcomer to D-I in our first two years, based, I think on the idea that we needed to play the best to learn how to be the best. I believe, in retrospect, that we got hurt in the process, as the grind on the team was horrendous and losing big began to form a culture of losing.

NDSU had four fourth-year juniors leading this year's team, while we were starting two freshmen and two sophomores. I don't believe we are very far behind the Bison, and won't be behind at all after next year, but I do believe this scenario contributed to our current situation.