I know there’s been a lot of discussion on replacement coaches lately. I went to look at how other coaches were doing in the SEC compared to Anderson. We’ll leave Calapari off the list, because we already know his accomplishments.
Andy Kennedy (OM) - 10 years - 2 NCAA Appearances - 52 win percentage in conference
Mark Fox (Georgia) - 7 years - 2 NCAA Appearances - 50.8 win percentage in conference
Frank Martin (USCe) - 5 years - 0 NCAA Appearances - 42.7 win percentage in conference
Billy Kennedy (TAM) - 5 years - 1 NCAA Appearance - 47 win percentage in conference
Mike Anderson (Ark) - 5 years - 1 NCAA Appearance - 54.5 win percentage in conference
Johnny Jones (LSU) 4 years - 1 NCAA Appearance - 49.4 win percentage in conference
Bruce Pearl (Auburn) - 2 years - 0 NCAA Appearances - 29.8 win percentage in conference
Kim Anderson (Mizz) - 2 years - 0 NCAA Appearances - 15.2 win percentage in conference
Ben Howland (Miss St.) 1 year - 0 NCAA Appearances - 42.9 win percentage in conference
Mike White (Florida) 1 year - 0 NCAA Appearances - 62.1 win percentage in conference
Rick Barnes (Tenn) 1 year - 0 NCAA Appearances - 41.1 win percentage in conference
Avery Johnson (AL) 1 year - 0 NCAA Appearances - 51.7 win percentage in conference
Bryce Drew (Vandy) - Currently in 1st year - 45.4 win percentage in conference
Those that are saying, Mike isn’t a good coach, he has the 3rd highest win percentage in conference. I’m not saying not making the tournament is acceptable, but you also have to look at the conference and judge your coach by how he’s doing against his peers. I said this in another thread, if we were in another P5 conference we’d have a better shot at making the tournament. When you’re in the SEC you have to win 23-25 games and win 11-12 conference games, just to have a shot. In other P5 conferences you can win 19 to 20 games, and be around .500 in conference play and your in. And the competition in those conferences aren’t that much better than the SEC. We proved that in the Big 12/SEC challenge, we split with them. If we were 17-7 and 6-5 in the Big 12 right now we’d be a lock in the tournament. In the SEC you’re on the wrong side of the bubble.
after reading that, and looking at all the statistics, my very first reaction was i don’t care about other coaches, and other schools. other than kentucky and florida, arkansas is the only school i think to win a championship. comparing us to those schools leads me to believe that some think mediocrity or worse is ok. doesn’t make me feel any better about our situation. i guess gone are the days where we are looking to win the sec, get a high seed in the tournament, top 25 etc.
i will go back to the bill ingram interview i heard yesterday. he puts it better than i could, but i think our program could be relevant again, a powerhouse again, yet fans have lowered their expectations and we cannot even meet those right now.
now the sec has a ton of new coaches. how are they trending:
kentucky sideways to down
florida up
tennessee up
mississippi state up
lsu down
missouri down
texas a and m down
arkansas down
alabama sideways to up
vanderbilt up
south carolina up
ole miss sideways
auburn sideways to up
georgia sideways to down
this league is pitiful, and to compare arkansas to a bunch of pitiful teams just doesn’t comfort me much. good research and i see the point you are trying to make, just like saying all these teams lost one night, well doesn’t comfort me at all, nor does it make me feel better. i understand teams lose at times, but missouri, come on, they don’t have one players that would start for us. and why do we have to be the team that breaks their losing streak. i realize and am glad you are an anderson supporter, but most fans, just look at actual attendance in the seats at games, are not thrilled with where we are in year 6. comparing me to those teams in basketball just doesn’t give me any consolation at all. go hogs
I see the point went completely over your head. My whole point it that it’s hard to make the tournament from the SEC. You can say what you want about not caring about the other teams, but Arkansas making the tournament is LARGELY dependent on how well the other SEC teams do. And for years, SEC teams have been blowing it in non-conference, then when they get to conference teams beat each other up and knock each other out of the tournament. We came into SEC play with our RPI in the 20s, if other teams in the SEC did that, then we’d be a lock in the tournament right now with our record. As it is in the SEC right now, outside of 3 teams, you’re playing teams that hurt your chances greatly to make the tournament if you lose to them, that’s not the same case in other leagues.
And people keep saying how bad Missouri is. They are a bad team record wise that is very true, but they have 3 and 4 star players on their roster the same us. Their roster isn’t bad, they are young and just don’t know how to finish games. And you say nobody on their team could start for us. I guess Jordan Barnett, who’s a former 4-star top 100 player, averaging 12 PPG would be behind Cook and Thomas who average a combined 5 PPG combined right? That makes sense. Both the starting forwards for Mizzou Barnett and Puryear are both better than Cook and Thomas. If you going to comment on a teams players, actually know who’s on their team and what they can do, rather than just coat tailing what Bill Ingram said just because what he said fits your agenda.
And if you don’t think comparisons to sec programs is fair, I say then let’s not set expectations based on anything outside fayetteville!
Let’s just look at our track record “upgrading” the head coach. If Mike is a failure in your eyes, that makes four head coaches in a row… what, fifth time’s a charm! Give me a break!
The NIT is by no means the definition of success, but it is not a total failure either if you objectively consider the past twenty years and the apocalyptic wasteland of our basketball program when Mike arrived. He had to recruit kids based on their academic abilities just to get our apr up to get all our scholarship privilidges back. He had to run a full on political campaign to get a practice gym. He had to makeover our entire reputation to even get recruits to look at us. When Nolan took over it wasn’t a dumpster fire program for the past twenty years.
Let’s not make the same mistake again firing a proven winner because we think his style is out dated just to get another twenty years of embarrassment. And what has Jeff Long ever done for us to make you believe he’s the guy to swoop in and save the day with a brilliant hire? Let’s give CMA and CBB one more year to show us if Jeff Long deserves to make another decision for our razorback program.
So the SEC is a sorry basketball conference other than Florida or Kentucky compared to other leagues, and this makes it harder to get in the tourney? If you’re playing inferior competition night after night, shouldn’t you win a very high percentage of those games to put your team in the tournament? If we traded Auburn and Missouri for Duke and Kansas, do you think the Hogs would have a couple more tournament appearances under MA? I have a lot more understanding for CBB’s uphill struggle to build a competitive team being in the SEC from a football standpoint, but have a hard time giving MA more than six years to be a regular tourney participant with a lower tiered basketball league looking him in the face. Shouldn’t MA be shinning in this league and standing out at this point in time?
That’s the thing. The competition level isn’t’ that much difference than the Big 12. The SEC split this year in the SEC Big 12 challenge, and 2 of the top 4 teams in the SEC didn’t even play. What happens is the SEC doesn’t perform/schedule well in the non-conference, so our overall conference RPI isn’t that good, so when we beat up on each other, like other conferences do it actually hurts us rather than help.
Let’s use Miss State for example. They had a top 5 recruiting class, and have great head coach in Ben Howland. I think everyone in SEC agrees that Mississippi State is a not a push over team, and a tough team to beat, they took Kentucky down to the wire and almost upset them. Their RPI is 113, so just by playing them win or lose it hurts your RPI. Why do they have a bad RPI? Because they blew it in the non-conference and had 3 really bad losses. So, when a school like Arkansas loses to them, it drops our RPI down dramatically and hurts our NCAA chances. It’s easy to say “You should beat these teams” but when a team has top 5 talent, that’s a lot easier said than done. And until the SEC schedules better in non-conference and teams in our conference perform better in the non-conference, we’ll continue to be a 14 team league that only puts 3 teams in the tournament.
The differences in conferences is overestimated. The Big 12 hasn’t been nearly as good the last few years as the computer rankings would have you believe. It’s also generally more difficult to win in conference than is appreciated. Mid-majors get screwed every year because of it. It’s the hyper case of the SEC.
UT-Arlington is without a doubt a quality team. They won at Texas by 11. The Horns’ biggest loss at home in the Big 12 is 3 points. Texas lost by 12 at Kansas and by 15 at TCU. Otherwise, UTA would be their third worst loss in the Big 12 (and worst at home) if UTA were a member. UTA won by 14 at Saint Mary’s, whose only other loss is at Gonzaga by 23. Yet, UTA has three road losses in the Sun Belt to RPIs #231, #200 (by 22!), and #167.
I think it’s fairly obvious that a lot of the middle of the pack P5 teams that will get at-large bids would be dropping multiple games in these mid-major conferences if they had to play home-and-home series, whereas mid-majors have to virtually run the table to get an at-large bid. Indiana is still on the bubble even though they couldn’t win at Fort Wayne where #320 Western Illinois and #224 IUPI have won.
Mississippi State’s RPI is poor also because it had six terrible teams on its nonconference schedule. And it’s only 5-6 in SEC play. Not like they set the world on fire since coming to BWA and exposing our bad defense.
If MA is playing in a league of mostly weak teams (totally agree with you on this point), why is his record in the SEC Tournament so dismal? With one exception in five years, he’s been bounced out long before he has to play Florida or Kentucky and rarely gets by the first round of pillow fights (keeping up with the theme). Why would you respect a lack of production (advancing to the NCAA) by MA in a weak SEC compared with him playing in the ACC for instance? A down basketball league does not justify a lack of tournament appearances.
That’s exactly our point. SEC teams don’t schedule and perform well in the non-conference, then they come to conference play with a bad RPI, then beat some teams and lower their RPI and hurt their NCAA chances.
The SEC has hired a bunch of new coaches in recent years, but the style of play remains
Huge numbers of fouls and free throws.
Poor shooting.
Heavily dependent on offensive rebounding.
Low degree of offensive structure.
Low basketball skills.
Low level of competition (league is 26th among 32 conferences in the number of league games that are decided by less than 4 pts or in overtime; fourth in the number of blowouts).
I see SEC recruiting too focused on bigs and not focused enough on skilled guards and wings.
Thank you for providing a very relevant statistic. That demonstrates to me than MA in not only a good coach but well above average in the SEC.
It is so easy for we fans with very little knowledge to get overly emotionally over a couple of bad loses and not even consider the overall performance of the coach and team.