Trendline for Men's Basketball at BG

As the season ends, I wanted to just take a quick second and look at where the program stands today, both in terms of our conference peers and our own historical record.

Despite this year's January and February, the program is, in a larger context, in the midst of a pretty serious downswing.  There has been chatter here and there that we need to make a change in the leadership of the program, which I do not subscribe to, though I do understand.

I understand it because this is the 4th year of Coach Orr's tenure at BG, and, with the exception of a regular season MAC title won mostly with players from the Dakich regime, it has been more of the same.  In fact, BG was 13-17/7-9 in Orr's first year, and 14-19/8-8 this year.  I think everyone thought there would be some adjustment from Dakich to Orr, and things were pretty weak when Dakich left, but in basketball, you'd like to think in four years you'd see more progress than this.  I do understand those sentiments.

Let's understand what we have....post-West Virginia, BG has had losing seasons 7 out of last 9 years.  BG has made only one trip to semi finals since 2001-2, and none to final.  Other than Coach Orr's second season, BG has not been seeded about #7 for the tourney during that period, and has not a winning record on the road in any of those season.

So, it also isn't entirely about Coach Orr.  It is about a general lack of success over nearly a decade's worth of time.  People are impatient for success, and I can understand that.  We went from a program good enough to vault Dakich into the Big East to a program with 7 losing seasons in 9 years.

College Basketball Stats by StatSheet.com

I do think, however, that there is talent coming up in our program.  I like our young players, I like our incoming recruits, and I like our new facility.  Even with all that, it will be far from easy.  Kent and Akron are consistently good.  Akron adds transfers in next year who were sitting out this year.  Kent only loses Rod Sherman off this year's team.  In fact, BG talked about its youth, but there were 4 teams in the MAC less experienced than we were--UT, WMU, OU and Ball State--and three of those teams finished ahead of us in the standings.  We have to be better than those teams are and just getting a year's more experience isn't going to do it.

I think Coach Orr is a good coach with a proven track record, and I believe he can succeed here and I believe that the pieces are in place.  Whether it happens or not remains to be seen--but, in a way, so does everything in life.

Being a BG Men's Basketball fan continues to bring me a lot of pleasure, and I'll be at the Stroh Center in the Fall, one way or the other.