jdub27

The problem is you always seem to be the loudest voice and have continuously showed no regard for actual realities of the situation. You make a decision that a coach needs to go, start a thread (at least 3 different ones for 2 different coaches) and then seem to pop up almost every time that the team loses and say nothing when they are performing well. Yes, there are others, but as I've stated before, the squeakiest wheel gets the grease. The latter part of my statement is the part that probably bothers people the most. It is one thing to have an opinion that a coach needs to go or , its another to continue to rail on and on how a change needs to be made immediately when the financial and logistical realities of the situation don't allow for it and you seemingly absolutely refuse to acknowledge them. The perception is that it has almost become personal and you need the coach to be fired to be vindicated. While I highly doubt that is the case as I do believe you have the best interest of UND in mind with your criticism, there are a lot more factors and it is much more complicated than overall W-L records whether anyone likes it or not. Mistaking that for blindly supporting a coach is a line that fails to be grasped sometimes. The majority here want what is best for UND. Some posters on here have more knowledge of situations than you might think, which is something to consider when their opinions might not match yours. Take for example my comment about you refusing to acknowledge what ArtVandalay said being true about where Jones has finished in the conference the last 5 years and how it compares pretty well with almost any other team (along with me also acknowledging what you said was also true). Even after I specifically stated you did that, you still refused to acknowledge it. Before you try to go there, I'm not stating that he shouldn't be on the hot seat. My guess is that budget issues played into him still coaching here this year, the optics of having to buy out a coach's contract, regardless of size, while the rest of the University is cutting funds left and right aren't great. Him not having an extension would also make it pretty obvious he is coaching for his job, though I'm not sure where the bar has been set, but my guess is fairly high.

Whether you agree what he said or not, he wasn't wrong in what he stated, just like you weren't in what you stated. If there was a clear cut answer to this one way or another, this wouldn't be debated. As it stands, Jones has done just enough to not lose his job but clearly not enough to warrant any sort of substantial raise or contract extension.

If we're just speculating, I doubt he'd leave but it wouldn't hurt to see if Grey Giovanine finally has the itch to get back into D-1 basketball now that I believe his kids are out of high school. Would be an absolute home run hire but not sure if he'd be interested. Would guess Tom Billiter would also be an interesting candidate despite his history from 20 years ago. Not sure what either of them are currently making but guessing its pretty decent considering how long they've been at their current jobs.

Positives: -Held them under 100 (and within 9 of their scoring average!) -No end of game issues and allowed them to successfully run out the clock. Progress!! Negatives: -Everything -No, literally everything

After further review and a few more calls, turns out the Big Sky refs actually just continue to be horrible across the board.

LOL. Guy jumps on Brown's back for the putback and Brown gets called for the foul. Seems like the refs are making sure the score gets run up.

Well, there is one...

That thing they did the last few minutes (minus the last few seconds), do more of that. Nice to see Q hit a couple finally, much needed. Pleasantly surprised by the announcer, so that's nice I guess.

Complete lack of fundamentals by an experienced team. PSU is jumping every pass (which are lazy to begin with), the back cut is there all day. UND must be up to over a dozen passes that have been picked or tipped.

Glad to see the sloppy passing make the trip. That's incredibly frustrating because these guys can do much better and they've shown it.

Which was exactly one of my points I made earlier: You're saying that the rest of the country improved more than the Big Sky, meaning the conference improved less than average and moved backwards. Seems more like a pretty poor excuse for bad OOC play to me. Either way, not real acceptable. The conference needs to work to improve more so they can get a better seed in the tournament and have a chance to win a game.

No joke they are higher at this point in the season, you know how it's calculated right? They are only going to down from here on out because everyone was bad in OOC play. The conference RPI rank is also below last year.

I'm saying all coaches talk up their conference and team, it's what they do and I'd expect nothing less. And can you explain how exactly the coaches can evaluate the teams if they don't use non-conference games since that's all that's been played? Looking at record and lack of quality wins, how can you logically defend it? I'd guess that any unbiased opinion would state the Big Sky is down and the play this far in the year would back that up.

You keep bringing up what coaches are saying and ignoring on the court results that don't back it up. Talk is worth nothing. If the BSC isn't winning OOC games and has a worse showing and rating than it did in previous years, how can it be up? Did the rest of the country get incrementally better so the net effect is that the Big Sky moved backwards? Because that is the only actual explanation if you want to accept that the Big Sky is better than it has yet it did worse in OOC games than it has in the past.

Based on out of conference play, they were wrong. How often do you actually hear coaches say that their league is down? Not real often because if your team doesn't do well, you've basically incriminated yourself.

Cool, a bunch of coach speak. Did you think he was going to say the league was down? Because he'd sure look like an idiot if he said that and then doesn't win. OOC records show a different story. UNDHoops put together a nice recap of the OOC season and it isn't good. Not sure the Big Sky has a win over a top 100 team this year using any of the metrics (KenPom, RPI, WarrenNolan). And as already stated, all the metrics have the Big Sky towards to bottom this year, which isn't a UND only problem, but also means the Big Sky winner will be in a play-in game and then face a 1 seed. Regardless, it shouldn't matter where the league is, UND should always be one of the favorites. But with the talent UND has returning plus a coach who is likely coaching for his job, you'd expect to see a little more out of them in OOC play that gives something resembling confidence heading into conference play in a year when the league does appear to be down. Not sure why having big expectations for this team is a bad thing. On paper, this is should be the best team since Huff/Anderson/Webb's senior year if not better. Anything short of the dance would be a huge disappointment.

Maybe, but he fumbled 5 times this year, so why wouldn't Reyes have been able to cause one or two?

I'm confused on your angle. You continuously look to lower the bar for the program instead of raise it. You don't think UND is talented enough to win the Big Sky? If not, why? The Big Sky is clearly down this year and UND returns pretty much every key player from last year. However, the fact that they were disappointing in OOC play is even more disheartening knowing that they shouldn't have had to work on fitting new players into the rotation.

The article from earlier this year and the blog post from a few weeks ago. I didn't see anything I'd categorize as critical. I'd say it defended him more than anything.

I saw Schlossman's article but I would not characterize it anywhere near being critical of Tomek.

Have I missed some articles? I haven't seen any actual local journalists that have criticized him. I don't pay attention to much national stuff but I haven't seen much of that either. Message board fodder is about the only thing critical I've seen of him and most of it is more just curiousness of why he isn't playing or even second string at this point.

Per Tom Miller's article in the Herald, Solomon Rolls-Tyson has left the team and signed to play pro basketball in Norway. He was a transfer from Utah State Eastern College and had not played in any games this season.

Just to clarify further, FCS can have up to 85 players on scholarship, however they can only give out the equivalent of 63 scholarships among those players. FCS and FBS teams have similar amount of scholarship players, but every player on an FBS team is on a full scholarship (excluding walk-ons for both teams of course) while the amount of money an FCS player gets can vary.

Unfortunately he hasn't win the BSC tourney or came even close to winning all the OOC games (with no big upsets at all). So he is missing on both of your hypotheticals which is the reasonv for the serious discontent. And I stated he brings good kids here, the problem is the results have been below what they seem that they should be with the seemingly above average talent he has brought in

Within the Big Sky, relative to where his salary ranks and where his teams have finished, UND is probably coming out slightly ahead with Jones. But regular season finishes and making it to the semis or finals of the conference tournament don't matter because the ultimate goal of a low to mid-major is to win the conference tournament and make the dance. Jones has not done that. Being close only buys you so much time. And if he had been making twice as much the last 3-4 years, his teams would have performed exactly the same and he would then qualify as underperforming. He hasn't done anything to deserve much of a raise and more money to the same coach won't fix the problem. In regards to OOC pay, he has performed below his salary. I think the frustrating thing to most everyone is that he appears capable of bringing the horses to Grand Forks, but once they are here, they don't seem to be able to reach the ultimate goal. At some point, the excuses of the nickname, the transition, lack of conference, etc. are no longer valid and it seems we are at that point, which is likely that it seems he is coaching without a contract beyond this season. I'm normally not a fan of that kind of scenario but a line needed to be drawn in the sand somewhere and it appears it was. The only caveat I'll make on this is similar to what the football team faced under Mussman: the assistant salary pool is too low and certainly has led to the merry-go-round at the assistant coach positions. The lack of stability and need to continuously bring in younger guys that are still learning (some of which have been great hires), definitely does not help anything.