Gregg Marshall made $1,482,000.00 this year

[Wufan]

Were you people around in the days of Valley Talk? Cold is trolling you and hoping to to build up some quotes he can spin to use against you in the future.

We do what we can to retain a highly successful coach. He makes a very good wage, the team flies to most games, very good facilities and excellent fan support. He has use of a private jet to go on recruiting trips. We might lose Marshall if he were to walk into an opportunity like the one that fell into Turgeons lap, but short of that we are doing our best.

Just to clarify, I beieve we have use of chartered jets, not a school owned jet.

[BEARZ77]

DoubleJay, you aren't being honest with your argument. You know exactly what state Turgeon left the program in when he left... a losing MVC record and several core seniors graduating. Marshall then showed up and had one of his initial recruits die the summer before season 1.

Marshall has not had 5 amazing years, but the job he has done repairing the program would be cheered by fans of any MVC school if they found themselves where WSU was 5 years ago. I agree that Cold is overdoing it, but please don't go to the other extreme. I know that you know what you are saying is meant to "win a message board argument" more than it is meant to be "intellectually honest". You are better than that.

Exactly. Marshall came into a bad situation and won 11 games with a bad team his first year. No one expected anything out of him. No coach takes over a team that graduated pretty much the entire starting lineup, and whose departing coach took most of the incoming recruits, and does much of anything. They won 17 the second year ... a pretty significant improvement.

Since that point, 25 wins, 29 wins, and 27 wins. Those are three of the best records for WSU in a long, long time. Turgeon, in seven years, had two seasons with more than 22 wins, and he went on to big contracts in BCS conferences. Obviously Marshall hasn't gotten the Shockers back to the Sweet 16, or any NCAA tournament wins yet, but that NIT Championship isn't exactly something to sneeze at, either. WSU between '86 and when Marshall took over had two seasons with more than 22 wins. Marshall has lead WSU to three straight. Marshall's teams have had more success than WSU had in the 20 years prior, except for that Sweet 16.

Especially considering Creighton hasn't been to a Sweet 16 since the 70s, and just won their first NCAA game in ten years, and haven't won more than one NIT game since the early 40s (they won TWO that year!). In fact, WSU won just as many NIT games last year as Creighton has in all TEN of their NIT appearances. I'm not sure Creighton fans should be factoring postseason play into talking about the quality of a team or a coach.

Have your rivalry all you want, and Coldblooded is obviously just being a dick and trolling you. But Marshall's accomplishments are solid. Improvement every year. Three of the best seasons in WSU history. Regular season conference championship. NIT Championship. NCAA at-large bid, with the highest seed in school history.

It's easy as hell to win your first few years when you walk into a loaded program. It says a lot more about the quality of a coach to walk into an awful situation, take your beating like a man, rebuild, and win with the players he recruited and Turgeon's leftovers.

Don't mind giving WSU and GM their props, it's just that you all never seem much encumbered by the facts when trying to paint the picture a little brighter than it is for you and duller for everyone else. The above is a prime example; I accept that most coaches struggle with rosters their 1st year and great results aren't the norm, but last time I looked GM inherited 2 starters from the most recent sweet 16 team [Cousinard/Brauer] and also had Hatch/Durley/Ellis on that 1st team. Not quite the "sisters of the poor " situation you would have everyone accept, especially when you add it to the overall resources you all always talk about that are available at WSU. Just say it took him 3 years to get things going in his system, but now the Shox are going great guns, instead of trying to make him out Moses leading poor desolate WSU out of the wilderness. Not as dramatic, but rings a little truer.

[Wufan]

Braeur got multiple concunsions and played little more than half the season. Our back-up PG was Preadom, so again, remember we are dealing with facts. Also, freshman Durley and freshman Hatch were not like upper-classman Durley and upper-classman Hatch. Freshman Ellis was a lot like Senior Ellis.

So to recap, we had 1.5 returning starters, three freshman that turned out to be good to very good seniors, Gal Mekel and Phil Thomasson. HCGM won 11 games.

Turgeon, OTOH had Cous, Braeur, Ogirri, Wilson (4 starters from the sweet 16 team) and only won 17 or 18 games. HCGM had only the 4th leading scorer from that team two years prior. The sweet 16 team disappeared with Miller unfortunately.

[DoubleJayAlum]

Wasn't Cousinard an all conference performer though? Sounds like a pretty good player to inherit to me. How many other recent MVC hires have inherited an all conference player? Not McDermott. Not Hinson. Not Indiana St. Lusk inherited POY, but that was all as everyone else graduated.

I think it is a stretch to say that Marshal didn't inherit any talent. If you want to say it wasn't the best talent for his offensive sustem, that is one thing (but it is pretty much true for any new hire).

[Khan4Cats]

Wasn't Cousinard an all conference performer though? Sounds like a pretty good player to inherit to me. How many other recent MVC hires have inherited an all conference player? Not McDermott. Not Hinson. Not Indiana St. Lusk inherited POY, but that was all as everyone else graduated.

I think it is a stretch to say that Marshal didn't inherit any talent. If you want to say it wasn't the best talent for his offensive sustem, that is one thing (but it is pretty much true for any new hire).

Not at UNI, well maybe Sieverding was, but at Creighton didn't he inherit Player of the Year favorite Kenny Lawson? Was he not on the all-conference 2nd team the year before?

[Aargh]

Wasn't Cousinard an all conference performer though? Sounds like a pretty good player to inherit to me. How many other recent MVC hires have inherited an all conference player? Not McDermott. Not Hinson. Not Indiana St. Lusk inherited POY, but that was all as everyone else graduated.

I think it is a stretch to say that Marshal didn't inherit any talent. If you want to say it wasn't the best talent for his offensive sustem, that is one thing (but it is pretty much true for any new hire).

Some seniors have lot of trouble adapting to a new coach. Couisnard seemed to have that situation. Or maybe it was just that there was no one to get the ball to him.

Hatch hadn't played a game of basketball in two years and desperately needed a RS year to get back to anything resembling a basketball player.

Durley hadn't decided it was necessary to learn or attempt to play defense. He averaged 7, but he consistently gave up 30+. Turgeon almost cut Durley loose because Durley didn't like to practice or do conditioning work. Marshall had to be convinced not to cut him loose until Durley finally admitted he was lazy and didn't like to work hard. Those were Durley's words.

Ellis was a 2.5 ppg guy. The SG was Gal Mekel (28.7% from 3). A walkon started 5 games. Clemente was decent on the boards, and a 7 ppg guy. Phil Thomasson had no business being on an MVC team (he got cut t Colorado State before Turgeon recruited him as a transfer), but he was the starting Center. Mantas Griskenas was a 1st team JuCo AA that Marshall, but he blew out a knee.

Guards 6'2" or taller just shot over Braeuer at 5'11". Mekel was too slow to defend any but the slowest guards in the league. Wendell Preadom got 12.5 minutes with his 28.3% and 18.8% shooting numbers. WSU shot 30.8 % from 3 while giving up 38.9%.

Durley was huge liability. Thomasson, Preadom, and Mekel were not D1 players at the "mid-major" level. Hatch needed a RS year. Braeuer missed a lot of the season. Griskenas blew out a knee. That's 7 (of 11) guys who averaged double-digit minutes. After Braeuer got hurt, there wasn't another player on the team who could actually play PG. Braeuer played some late in the season, but after he got hurt and started missing games, WSU went 4-15.

[rlh04d]

Don't mind giving WSU and GM their props, it's just that you all never seem much encumbered by the facts when trying to paint the picture a little brighter than it is for you and duller for everyone else. The above is a prime example; I accept that most coaches struggle with rosters their 1st year and great results aren't the norm, but last time I looked GM inherited 2 starters from the most recent sweet 16 team [Cousinard/Brauer] and also had Hatch/Durley/Ellis on that 1st team. Not quite the "sisters of the poor " situation you would have everyone accept, especially when you add it to the overall resources you all always talk about that are available at WSU. Just say it took him 3 years to get things going in his system, but now the Shox are going great guns, instead of trying to make him out Moses leading poor desolate WSU out of the wilderness. Not as dramatic, but rings a little truer.

You Bears fans sure do like to make blanket generalizations about fanbases when responding to one person.

[rlh04d]

Wasn't Cousinard an all conference performer though? Sounds like a pretty good player to inherit to me. How many other recent MVC hires have inherited an all conference player? Not McDermott. Not Hinson. Not Indiana St. Lusk inherited POY, but that was all as everyone else graduated.

I think it is a stretch to say that Marshal didn't inherit any talent. If you want to say it wasn't the best talent for his offensive sustem, that is one thing (but it is pretty much true for any new hire).

McDermott had his son. And he turned a 16 win regular season team from the year before into an 18 win team with him.

Cous was an okay player. Braeuer can barely even be credited with playing that year, and in all honesty should not have played that year after the first concussion. The kid was literally putting the rest of his life in jeopardy to carry a shitty team. And then he had a couple of freshmen that eventually would be really good.

[rlh04d]

That's asinine. Anything in the NCAA's >>>> Anything in the NIT. Its no contest.

Nope, it's not a contest at all. Winning the NIT is far, far better than a one-and-done in the NCAA tournament.

WSU's 2010-11 postseason was better than their 2011-12 postseason. No question.

I wonder in the future when talking about WSU or Marshall's resume, how many sports writers will write "won the NIT in 2011" or "lost in the first round of the 2012 NCAA tournament" ?

[unipanther99]

I think the historical legacy of the 2011 Shockers will be that they should have been in the NCAA tournament, not that they won the NIT.