MBB...Game Over....

"Not good enough [defensively]. No intensity. It's almost as if we didn't want to play the game. It's so frustrating and disappointing at the same time. Just difficult right now. A difficult moment for me."

That's Coach Huger after the game.  They don't have the audio posted, but there's another part where Todd Walker gets him to talk about the future, and Huger sets off on a little rant about the state of college basketball and if players don't feel "catered" to they leave.

It's all very sad.  Coach Huger is one of us, and it makes watching this happen all the more difficult.  At one point, he had us doing as well as we had done in decades...one run to the conference final and another year where we could have been a canceled tournament away from finally reaching the Big Dance.

Look, I even thought it was reasonable to extend his contract after the tourney run.  

I understand how that decision looks now, but I thought it made sense at the time.

BG finished out of the money for the second straight year.  Also, we lost a disgraceful final game for the second straight year.

And this time, we had something to play for.  In fact, everything happened the way we needed it to, except for us showing up and playing against Ohio.  Losing like that...looking like you don't want to play when you had to have a win...it's just terrible.

BG finished at #284 last year.  And this year it was #281. (Out of 363).  

That's 50 spots worse than the year Huger took over after the Jans debacle.

That's 72 spots worse than Orr's last year.

That's 75 spots worse than the 2006 Dakich team (his worst).

This is where we are.  We can't hide from it.  

And now we wait.

I expect that we will buy Coach Huger out.  I can't imagine him being back again.  It's a serious decision because Huger has two years left on his deal...he is under contract until 2025. 

As for the buy-out, those are generally less serious than you might think.  For example, we don't pay a lump sum.  We pay every month.  And he has a duty to try and mitigate damages by finding work in basketball.  So, whatever the amount is now will eventually be less.  (Note, the NCAA is adding a 4th assistant to basketball next season, creating 350+ immediate job vacancies.)

We went through this with Jinks...it ended up being way less than we feared.

I don't take any pleasure in this.  Huger is a great guy and I was rooting for him really hard.  But you can't hide from the results, which have gone in the wrong direction and show no signs of turning around