Disclaimer: I rarely watch any basketball, college or professional.
How is LK still Utah’s HC? It has been forever since Utah basketball has even been semi-relevant. There has been constant turnover and transfers. The team is always “young and building” but never arrives.
At what point can we try something new? Especially considering that LK is one of the highest paid coaches in the country. Return on investment seems very very low at this point.
Apparently you haven’t heard about the very expensive buyout clause in his contract. I’d say that is reason 1, 2, and 3 why he is still the coach.
Short answer: if not for a big buyout and covid, we might be having a different conversation at this point in time.
Longer answer:
There is a lot you can point to. Yeah, we have needed roster continuity and we haven’t gotten it. But at the same time, we really haven’t had anyone transfer out and go on to become something where I look at him and go “dang, he could have really helped us over what we replaced him with” outside of Dev Daniels and that situation was not salvageable.
My favorite thing to point to is recruiting. We just didn’t capitalize enough on our Sweet 16/Round of 32 runs in 2015 and 2016 respectively. We swung for the fences at times and missed. Im not saying it was wrong to take the swings, but at the end of the day, we really got nothing out of the freshman classes of 2015, 2016, and 2017.
I still don’t think so. We’ll see.
I have a different opinion on this. I did 5 minutes of research and turned up 13 players who would have helped the team if they stayed, but they chose to transfer. Almost all of these guys became starters (not stars) at other D1 schools. Most were replaced by ‘panic pickup’ JUCO’s who didn’t last long.
13 contributors in 10 years is significant.
I probably missed a few more.
Daniels
Tillman
I Wright
O’Brien
Clyburn
Mawien
Johnson
Lohner (decommitted)
Hendrix
Gach
Zamora
Jacobs (decommitted)
Glover
I couldn’t agree more. That is my biggest frustration with K. Constant player turnover and constant “rebuilding”.
Edit to add: You could add Ogbe, Caldwell, Seeley, and Gaskin to that list IMHO
That list of 13 is really a list of 5 with filler. Still, those five would have been nice, if not really difference makers.
Taken individually, there is only one true difference maker on your list (Lohner). But, of course, you have to take the group collectively. Just by having experience and a more natural demographic, we’d be in a better spot.
Well, lets take a closer look at your list.
Daniels - we agree on
Tillman - Only in an alternate universe where Donnie uses his head and focuses on basketball
I Wright - we replaced him with Sed Barefield. Next!
O’Brien - You cant seriously hold this or Clyburn against Larry.
Clyburn - see O’Brien
Mawien - compare him to Jayce Johnson. I dont see him as being better.
Johnson - As a senior, he would have been better than freshman BC. But he aint moving the needle on us getting to the NCAA’s plus BC now has more experience and has a higher ceiling.
Lohner - I mean, I am as against Larry coming back next year as anyone, but…really?
Hendrix - next!
Gach - hes put up 3.8 points per game on 27/20/75 shooting splits in 18 big 10 games. Next!
Zamora - he left and we replaced him with Justin Bibbins
Jacobs - we got Delon Wright due to his decommitment.
Glover - throw him in with O’Brien and Clyburn. All 3 never played for Larry, weren’t recruited by Larry. I think its silly to hold him responsible.
So of your list of 13, I hold to Daniels being the only one who left that I think our program truly missed. I will concede that Wright, Mawien, Johnson, and Zamora would have been good depth pieces if they had stayed. While we have certainly had our share of panic pickups, I dont see that here. I dont see any guys outside of Daniels who move us toward the tournament at all. So again, we simply haven’t recruited the guys that will get us there. Now…granted, I wish a lot of these guys had stayed because of optics, but I think its a secondary issue.
I agree with these comments. But it is very possible Daniels was helping with his play but killing the locker-room at the same time. It is also possible if we had a job for Lohner’s dad, he would still be here. Last, any idea what almost every school has related to decommits and transfers? This is the new world with BB, we can’t compare the current world with the past. Get prepared for continued in and out with the next coach as well.
You nailed it re: daniels. You have to create an alternate universe in which Daniels didn’t punch a teammate in the face and have to be restrained from attacking a coach and where the majority of players didn’t Ray Budds him. Kudos to him though, I think the experience of being kicked off the team shook him enough that he has straightened himself out.
I have looked it up in the past and prior to last year, we are above average in losing players via the portal.
The portal is changing everything. We always lose players to the portal and if it weren’t for transfers, I don’t know that Pope would have enough players to field a team at byu. I’m curious to see if he can get a decent high school recruit or if he’s just going to live and die by the portal.
I ABSOLUTELY hold Larry responsible for the transfers of O’Brien, Clyburn, and Glover. They were the core of the team when he became coach, and the primary responsibility of a new coach is to re-recruit his own players. Larry failed miserably and the result was a disastrous season.
Barefield didn’t get Wright’s scholarship. IIRC it went to Zamora. I also remember Larry being quite upset when Wright left, and he talked about how Wright was going to be an important part of the team next year. He was also publicly upset when Hendrix left.
I recognize that Tillman had to go, and I had forgotten the tie between Jacobs and Delon, but I stand by the rest of my statement. The program would have been better off if the rest of these guys had stayed, and the talent drain from losing a rotation player by transfer every season has been an issue.
This is a little ridiculous.
I hope our new coach next season it able to keep all of our players, but it’s likely that he won’t. I’m not going to blame him if he doesn’t. That’s just an expected part of the deal when you decide to fire the coach.
Larry always talks players up. Also, he booted Hendrix off the team. At this point, its no secret that the kid has a genuine issue with keeping his emotions in check and I seriously wish him well and hope he gets the help he needs. If Wright stays and Zamora never comes, hes battling PVD for the third most minutes in the guard rotation.
Well, we are simply going to have to agree to disagree on the Boylen players. I personally don’t think virtually anyone could have kept those guys here. They were Boylen guys, not Utah guys.
I also don’t think the argument is that the program would have been better off had they stayed; i think we all agree on that. The argument to me is who of those guys gets us to the big dance more often and I don’t see anyone outside of alternate-universe Dev Daniels in 2018 and beyond.
Bottom line for me and then Ill happily move along: Larry has had a number of failures that all add up to the whole of a coach who hasn’t been able to get the job done and in either a month from now or a year and change, we will be on our way and he will be on his.
We can talk parts til the cows come home. At the end of the day, the program hasn’t contended for an NCAA tourney seed…for quite a while now, and this “wash-rinse-repeat” cycle has no answers to that most basic goal. Winning the PAC 12 would be nice, but playing well enough in the PAC 12 to get into the Big Dance has to happen too.
It is obvious the current coaching staff isn’t going to get us into the Tourney. It’s time to move on.
It is time to move on. Unfortunately, unless you have a lot of pictures of Benjamin Franklin, we have another year or two of milquetoast play sprinkled with moments of “Huh. Maybe we CAN do it.”
I just hope that Harlan can find someone to get us out of the Giacoletti - Boylen - Krystkowiak era when Krystko vamooses.
I’m in favor of moving on provided Harlan has a list of a couple of targets he’s confident in. If Harlan doesn’t have someone to target then I’m fine with grinning and bearing it another season.
Also we assume Larry wants to keep coaching on the hill, maybe Larry would welcome a change as well?