3 Illinois State players leaving

[Snaggletooth]

Stats are not the only way to scout a player.

You are right - it looks like ISUR looks at the police blotter report to recruit their thugs.

[mathewson10]

Stats are not the only way to scout a player.

You are right - it looks like ISUR looks at the police blotter report to recruit their thugs.

ooooooooooooooo bazinga!

[uniftw]

Stats are not the only way to scout a player.

You are right - it looks like ISUR looks at the police blotter report to recruit their thugs.

[mathewson10]

Stats are not the only way to scout a player.

You are right - it looks like ISUR looks at the police blotter report to recruit their thugs.

So if one player gets in trouble, the whole team is a bunch of, in your words, "thugs?"

[Cdizzle]

I don't really support the previous comment, but the issues at IlSU have not been limited to 1 player either.

[mathewson10]

I don't really support the previous comment, but the issues at IlSU have not been limited to 1 player either.

What other Mueller recruited player has been in trouble with the law?

[tribecalledquest]

Why can't ISU people get his name right...it's Muller.

[mathewson10]

I'll take the production & attitudes from the other players on the team over Keane & Lofton any day of the week.

Why are Keane and Lofton bad, but Knight is not? To me, it seems like a bit of a double standard.

I don't recall saying Knight is not bad...but he is definitely better than Keane

[Bmarq04]

I'll try my hand at this....hopefully from a more realistic ISUr point of view.

Lofton - has a lot of talent, but really struggled to fit in. Had issues at practice and games with his attitude and despite benchings and suspension, couldn't get it right. He was known as a head case and was a gamble. ISU got in on him late and didn't get him fully vetted. The mass exit last year left the staff scrambling (before someone says it - all those players left on their own because they didn't feel they fit Muller's system - they were not told to leave). Should the staff have been more prepared, absolutely and it's still their fault for not vetting those guys. 2 are now gone. Knight and Hunter remain. Dan tried to get Zach on board and it didn't work.

Zeisloft - great kid. Struggled this year playing out of position. Knows he won't play ball as a pro so has the opportunity to go to a top notch MBA program and play right away too. The kid graduated in 3 years and is putting his academic future ahead of his ball future. No one can blame Muller for that and if Nick were my kid, I'd be ecstatic at the level of mental maturity he's showing.

Keane - lots of Redbird fans thought he would be a suitable Nic Moore replacement. There was a little video on him and UCONN was recruiting him. I think more weight was put into that as far as the expectations we put on him. Not his fault. I think his downside was his ankle injury early last year. Prior to that game, he had averaged around 5 asst with few TO and had a couple 9 asst games. Losing a couple games seemed to kill his confidence and the more he pressed to get it back, the further he slipped. I really wish he would have stayed as I think he could have been saved.

Bottom line, Zeisloft leaving is right for him. Zach not wanting to be here is right for everyone. Kaza is up in the air still. I'm disappointed he left more from a "could have been" than what he actually produced.

This is the way most ISU fans actually feel.

As far as the character attacks, here's my 2 cents. There is zero course anyone can say about academics. Middlebrooks refused to go to class, even when coaches escorted him. This ISU team had the highest GPA in the history of the program. Muller was a 4.0 national scholar athlete award recipient. Academics was and is pushed hard. Coach yanked the best rebounder on the team before he was even declared ineligible to send a message. So no complaints are warranted in academics. If a player refuses, it's on the player.

For players in trouble, Bryant Allen had priors. He was Jank's recruit. Geoffrey Allen and Knight didn't. They got in trouble even though it wasn't in their background. So coach isn't recruiting bad guys. Unfortunately, it doesn't look promising that some are having their first issues once they get here. That is unacceptable. I don't post a ton, but you'll see that from the beginning, myself - and many ISU fans were not satisfied with how Knights situation was handled.

I think it's not accurate to say Dan recruits thugs. He's has taken risks with attitudes for sure. I do hope the risks start becoming less frequent.

Oh, and it's MULLER. Hard to put faith in a poster that can't spell their team's coach's name.

[Cdizzle]

Coach yanked the best rebounder on the team before he was even declared ineligible to send a message.

What a guy!

But seriously. I don't really disagree with what you're saying. I do think it's reasonable that people start scratching their heads a little when there are consistently so many issues. You can defend this one, and defend that one, and defend this other one, and defend that other one, but most people would start wondering why they were having to defend 10 different scenarios in just a couple of years.

I don't really subscribe to the "thug" angle and whatnot. I do think Muller is taking a lot of risks, and the fanbase is doing a lot of defending when a fair number of those risks don't pan out. When the program heads very far down that road, from the outside you start looking like a "win-at-any-cost" program.

Hopefully Muller can get things settled down. I think he's brought in some talent, and I thought his game management was pretty solid this year with the size limitations his team had (somewhat due to the aforementioned risks, but also due to injury). IlSU definitely has the fanbase and resources to build and support a solid program, which would definitely be a plus for the Valley.