Its time to say what needs to be said; Oregon needs a new men's basketball coach

Comparing where we are now to where we were when Ernie was hired is like night and day.

Congrats and thanks for helping us take a step. Now we need a new coach to help us take the next step since Ernie has proven that he isn’t that coach.

Just because we used to be terrible doesn’t mean there is a ceiling to how good we COULD be.

The Beavers had a football program that had 28 losing seasons in a row that have been mostly wiped from memory because they have been in the top of the conference for almost a decade now. They didn’t settle with improving to being .500 every year simply because they had been so bad in the past. They set (and have attained) much higher goals instead. Which is what we should do with our basketball program.

Why are so many Ducks fans willing to accept mediocrity?

Yes he built this program, yes its a huge improvement, yes he is a good guy. But this is big time, money making, D1 college basketball and Ernie Kent is a grown man. You have to do a lot more than go to the elite eight a few times to earn the free passes he has gotten. College Athletics at this level is a big time business (See BCS) and we can not afford to keep someone who can not do their job. If he wants to coach in the new arena he needs to have a good basketball team that will fill the seats, that is his job. If he can not do that then it is too bad.

I disagree about TP. He’s a shooting machine, but he never had a future. He can’t play defense, even if he learned how to play he’d still be giving up six inches to Jerome Randle. He could have improved as a passer, but his shot is priority number one, and that’s just his personality type. He’s a spot-up AI.

I think our goal should be the NCAAs every year and the sweet sixteen every three or four years. But to not even make the tourney, or come close, he has to go.

Ahhh… wrong topic, damnit!

Michael Jordan.

To fill the arena, I think they’ll simply need to get a coach that has energy, coaches fundamentals, and works hard. I’d much rather have the Ducks get some coach that unknown than some retread.

if you dont believe me go here. Look around a bit. This might attract a few coaches

look, we’re not UNC or UCLA. We’re not going to pry a big name guy from a big name program. But for a good young coach looking for a place that he can move up and win? How about a place with a national profile, sparkling new arena, and untold $. Its not Duke, but its a very attractive job.

I resemble that remark—about Mexico, i mean.

ray shafer spent his senior season as the dreaded “fan favorite.” that equates to terrible player development. Or how about Mitch Platt, yikes he went downhill fast.

A few people have said that we should be making the tournament every single year. I’m sorry, but our program is not at that level yet.

The single biggest reason that we haven’t arrived at that level yet, in my opinion, has been Ernie Kent. Gonzaga is recruiting to a worse location. They can’t offer their players major-conference play. They don’t have anybody who can even sniff at Uncle Phil’s largess. Yet they went from a perennially mediocre WCC team to a national powerhouse that’s made the NCAA tourney ten straight years because they have a preternaturally gifted coach who has built their program.

What program-building has Ernie done? I don’t see a trend of steady improvement during his time here; a line graph of his results season by season would jump all over the place. Either his teams are laden with talent and thus really good or they’re mediocre and can’t contend. I don’t see — and don’t believe in the existence of — an Oregon system that gets solid results even in down years.

Oregon football, Oregon State football, Oregon State baseball, Gonzaga basketball — ALL of these programs have blown up in the past decade. There’s no immutable law that says perennially mediocre programs are doomed to mediocrity if you inject the right combination of vision, planning and leadership. I’ve never met Ernie Kent. By all accounts on this board he’s a great guy and I have absolutely nothing against him personally. But he is SO CLEARLY not the individual who is ever going to make Oregon a consistent, national-level threat, and I want to see Oregon make a change for that season.

And I am totally apathetic about Ducks basketball and will be until the athletic department does something about it…but I’m just one guy. Gotta get more people on the bandwagon!

But you know Jared and I aren’t trolls. I think you make many fair points, but that the underlying issues still stand. Its not about making the tournament every single year. Its about providing a somewhat consistent product. You can’t keep having one great season and following it up with three or four years of less than mediocrity.

Yes, there are a ton of idiots out there. To think that we’re UCLA or Duke or Kentucky and should have those expectations is asinine. Those folks have no idea what they’re talking about. Its an unfair expectation to expect Pac-10 titles and top three seeds every year. We’re not there as a program, and, the simple truth is that we likely never will be.

That said, with the resources that we have, there is ZERO reason that we shouldn’t be an above average major conference team. We should never finish a conference season with only two wins. We should never lose three years in a row to St. Mary’s, Oakland, etc. I don’t think an NCAA tournament berth about half the time is too much to ask (and, to be fair to Ernie, he does have four appearances this decade), but the down seasons can’t be quite so terrible. You should be at least making the NIT to make those down seasons palatable.

As for the offense, I think only a basketball novice would claim that we don’t run an offense (though what you point out, the early open, is really an extended fast break and not so much an offense, though that’s getting somewhat technical). But its that the offense is often ineffective when you’re not hitting jump shots. You have to remember, a lot of guys watch basketball just by following the ball, and it looks like the players just pass around until someone jacks up a three. In all actuality, its not too far off. There are some opportunites for dribble drives and cutters, but we don’t make use of the post as a weapon. Never have. And to be a good team consistently, you have to be a multidimensional offensive team. We have completely ignored one dimension of our offense. Maybe I am just a little sick of the system. Its an inherent problem with the wide open running system that we employ. When you do it well, it looks unbelievalbe and you blow people out. When you do it poorly, it is horrible beyond belief to watch and you get demolished. And despite popular belief, its a tough system to run because there is much less structure. Its also easy to get caught up in the running aspect and ignore the defensive end, which we’ve also been guilty of, especially when you run a zone, which we do on a regular basis.

Maybe its just even a difference in general basketball philosophy, as I believe that a interior oriented defensive approach is more conducive to consistent basketball because you can grind out and win games when your offense is playing relatively poorly. But I coach a high shcool JV2 team and not a Division 1 college team, so what do I know

I’m not giving up on the season. The NIT is a very real possibility. Hell, with the conference being as down as it is, a run for the auto bid in the Pac-10 tourney isn’t unfathomable. But I see us get crushed every year in these games where it just shouldn’t happen. I see us go three years at a time without playing in a meaningful game. We’ll never be USC or Duke. But I think about similar schools to us in both tradition and money- and facilities-teams like Wisconsin or Pittsburgh or even Gonzaga. None of those are tradition rich schools. Yet, they have built good, consistent programs despite (in the cases of Pitt and Gonzaga), longer odds than us.

If we kept Ernie around indefinitely, we’d have more great seasons for sure. But this same cycle would continue. Good, mediocre, bad, bad, bad. I’d like to see more Goods and meciocres and less bads. Ernie has done a lot for us. He doesn’t deserve the treatment that a lot of people give him. He has built the bridge halfway to a good program—God knows we are miles from what we once were. But the project has stalled, and its time to see if someone else can finish it.

          You got this part right, Dunigan was not ready for D 1 play. Dunigan was tall, fairly tall. And that was his skill. He couldn’t make a lay-up. He was/is a joke. Is he better? Hell yes, at least he quit shooting ducks. He does not look like he’s having any fun; he acts more like a sullen, spoiled child, pouting when he doesn’t get his way, or like he’s ‘got’ something on Ernie. He does not seem very teachable to me.
    If you were coming out of HS with recruiters in your driveway, would YOU come to a school with a coach and player relationship situation like what is being displayed on court?

I just think most of the criticisms one hears out there are valid.

I was saying Ernie was not a good coach in the Lukes+Jones days, there are valid points about his leadership of the team and his schemes.

In my opinion, the link you posted is exactly the reason why people are critical of Ernie’s “offense”. It has 8 graphics calling out “plays”, 2 of which are full court sets that show how the half court set is approached if the full court doesn’t finish the job, followed by 4 reads that are “pop out for 3 pointer”, and then 2 slip/backdoor reads. Not one involving the post in any significant way, or a sequence of movement beyond the basics. Just reads: 3’s, and backdoors. So yes, “no offensive set” is of course hyperbole, there is some semblance of an organized offense and a concept, I think many people just think it’s the wrong one. Personally, I believe it doesn’t work unless you have NBA talent running the point and shooting the 3, and we know that’s not every year at UO. With Brooks or Ridenour, great, do what you need to do, those guys are gonna hit 87% of their 3’s and assists and win anyway.

Some might have an explanation why this is a good offense, but I don’t see it. In fact, not getting NBA personnel on a regular basis (ie, our expectations should be more realistic recruiting), is actually an argument for a more fundamental offense. If you can’t hit 40% of your 3’s, set it up, work it through. Screen low, free up the big men. Triangle and two. Pick and roll. Set guard screens and work through options 1,2,3 with their sub options. Set badass screens. Block out. Work for closer rather than longer shots. This is the stuff any hard working, fundamental team can do to even up the score a little bit, and the North Carolina’s of the world do in ADDITION to running and gunning. I’m not arguing for eliminating the run and gun or the 3, completely, just that they don’t work as the basis of an offense without extreme talent, and even then you have to have something else when they don’t work. I don’t think a good half court set is complicated, we just fear anything beyond “pop out for 3”.

Then, there’s the lack of defense and blocking out, which has no explanation or purpose, it’s just on Ernie. If you don’t hold your players accountable for working hard on defense, you are coaching half the game. Maybe he does and the guys he’s got just don’t care, I don’t know, but year in and year out we play undisciplined D and rebound poorly. Even in the Ridenour era he was the only guy that played D.

So I’m not sure I’d ever call for a coach’s head, but I’m just saying it has looked all along to me that he doesn’t have the appropriate system to take us further, on offense or defense.

He had/has great recruiting and maybe that’s the gamble, if he’s good enough to reach the next level in recruiting, maybe his offense works with consistent NBA talent.

Ernie Kent does everything that isn’t in-game coaching really well. He recruits well nationwide, he graduated his players, and he’s a good person. But is that enough to keep him around?