tribecalledquest wrote:SalukiWorld wrote:Mullins was not a good head coach. Maybe he will be one day but he wasn’t currently. It takes a lot to take Marcus Domask, who had a triple double in an NCAA Tournament game the other day, and Lance Jones and miss the NIT by a mile. And next year was not going to go much better.
Right. The next hire may be underwhelming but that’s a different decision from moving on from Mullins.
I was super excited about the Mullins hire and advocated for it. I thought after year 1 we had our guy for awhile. Year 2 went poorly but Domask got hurt, I was still on board. They struggled in year 3, especially against the top teams but I went into year 4 as excited as I’ve been for SIU Basketball since the 2000’s. They beat Oklahoma State and I thought we were headed for something. And then they went to Southern Indiana and got blown out with two Big Ten Seniors on their roster. And then they were lucky to beat Alcorn State at home. And they struggled with Chicago State at home. And by the time MVC play started, they had no shot at even an NIT. Bryan probably won’t have as talented of a roster as he did last year and they were a borderline top 33% team in CBB by KenPom.
I follow a lot of college basketball and tend to have a good eye for coaching and Bryan is just really poor at all areas but player retention and getting his guys to play hard. His in-game coaching was embarrassing at times and he struggled with the portal, something you can’t do in 2024. I like Bryan and wish him well. I think eventually he might be a good head coach but SIU isn’t giving him 10 years to figure things out. Expectations should be higher after 17 years of nothing.