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63,

Interesting commentary. With Whitesell, we made jumps in his 1st, 2nd, and 3rd seasons from where the program had been. Reverted in year 4 and until he was done, never was able to make another jump.

Porter's first year took steps backward in year one and forward in year two, say maybe to where it was in Whitesell's last year. This is a telling year - they really need to showed marked progress with the team being now all his guys, save Crisman. Problem is it'll be difficult to measure progress in an overall tougher league. If LU finishes 7th or 8th in the MVC this year, is it movement forward? I'm not sure.

I guess we can watch for individual player improvement. Will Jeff be able to guard his position, will Turk add a second means of scoring, will O'leary become a consistent stretch 4, etc.

08rambler wrote:63,

Interesting commentary. With Whitesell, we made jumps in his 1st, 2nd, and 3rd seasons from where the program had been. Reverted in year 4 and until he was done, never was able to make another jump.

Porter's first year took steps backward in year one and forward in year two, say maybe to where it was in Whitesell's last year. This is a telling year - they really need to showed marked progress with the team being now all his guys, save Crisman. Problem is it'll be difficult to measure progress in an overall tougher league. If LU finishes 7th or 8th in the MVC this year, is it movement forward? I'm not sure.

I guess we can watch for individual player improvement. Will Jeff be able to guard his position, will Turk add a second means of scoring, will O'leary become a consistent stretch 4, etc.

Totally agree with this.

63 - About the 11-12 team (Moser's first): You're forgetting that we had no point guard. There were games in which we literally could not bring the ball across half court, and if we did we were running our offense barely on the other side of the line.

Also, the guys you mentioned all dealt with injuries. Gibler missed five games, Averkamp missed two, Hicks missed the first ten. And Thomas was nowhere near the player that year that he became last year. As I recall, he played out of position at guard quite a bit.

The Thomas example is really my biggest hope for the coming season. If a couple of our promising freshmen from last year can improve in the off season like Thomas did, we will be in good shape.

Well, it now does not matter what PM and his teams did the past two years. This is A NEW DEAL. He must win in the MVC--I feel he and Ramblers will not disappoint--No, I do not expex=ct a championship--BUT a respectable mid league finish. After this season , all bets are off--We must copete or he may be toast. My gut feeling is that he will succeed--The RAMBLERS will be FORCE.