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Post by ptctitan on Sept 12, 2023 5:10:03 GMT -5
There was a reunion on August 12th, the day after the golf outing, at which former players like Tom "Cookie" Marsh, Wilbert McCormick, Wilbur Ross, Kevin Kaseta, and many others came together with current coaches and players on campus for a picnic and other socializing. I disagree with your sam's opinion that the university has totally failed to take advantage of LCA. What advantage does LCA give us? Last year, EMU was the Emoni Bates game. Without him, LCA would not have been interested. Together with Oakland, we got the HL tournament at LCA for 3 or 4 years and it was a dud. LCA also has to be interested in us. We will be co-host with Oakland of an NCAA tournament regional at LCA this Spring. On one hand, many complain here about so few non-conference home games, then you want to move one of them to LCA? If we play at LCA, it should be against UM or MSU. Or some other power team willing to come to Detroit. This year, December 16th is a bad date given our game at LMU on the 18th. I'm glad that a few former Titans were in attendance at the golf outing, but that in no way accomplishes, even on a small scale, what the goals of a dedicated Titan basketball reunion would be. Events like that at MSU and UNC are tied in with recruiting visits, team practices/scrimmages, and other on-campus events. It's a celebration of the program's history. A few former players as part of the attendees at a golf event that is off campus, not attended by recruits, and barely covered by the local media, is not comparable. I might have missed it, but did we even have an article on the website about the current and former players interacting? Or was it like a tree falling in the forest with no one around? As far as playing at the LCA, I'll say this with all due respect: your objections are right in line with the lack of forward thinking that the school has shown regarding the basketball program since the 1970s. If you don't think that playing some games at the premiere basketball facility in the state and the home of the local NBA team would be something on which the program could capitalize, I don't know what to tell you. I can tell you with certainty that the opportunity to play a few games at the home of the Detroit Pistons would resonate more with recruits that the chance to play on a floor named after Dick Vitale. It would at least be SOMETHING that we could sell to our recruits, something we could use to differentiate ourselves from the competition. We didn't lose HL tournament games because they were played at the LCA, we lost them because we had a bad team. If it was a dud, it was because we didn't field a good enough team to take advantage of playing conference games in our home town. And since you're asking about advantages, what advantage do we get from "co-hosting" an NCAA regional with the team from Oakland County? Maybe we'll get a block of tickets that the University can sell to Titan fans. Beyond that, what's our real benefit? I get that you are very protective of the program and that's fine. But there is nothing wrong with recognizing that there are things that we should be doing better. There was a dedicated on-campus reunion of former players the day after the golf outing. Now, your complaint is that the university didn't publicize it like MSU publicizes its Grind Week. OK. But that's a different issue than the one about which you first complained. Did you also know that we publicized the fact that Draymond Green came to Calihan, worked out, and met with both the men's and women's BB teams? That was publicized by the university. You said that my objections were in line with the lack of forward thinking here since the 1970s. Do you not recall the weak attendance at our games at JLA from 1979-81? Do you not recall that we played our home games at Cobo Arena when Ricky Byrdsong was the coach? If you want your criticism to be more than just one more hot take on a message board, then get your facts straight. You misunderstood my point about the HL tournament. The entire HL tournament at LCA was a dud. At best, they sold about 7,000 tickets in a 20,000+ seat arena. Do you think that us vs any school but UM or MSU would do any better at LCA? I didn't say we get much out of being co-sponsor of the NCAA regionals next March. No more or no less than what we got about 35 years ago by being the sponsor at the Silverdome. But there has to be a win-win for both us and LCA. Once it got the Pistons, LCA really doesn't need lots of college basketball to fill open dates unless it is a big event. We may benefit from them, but their benefit from us would be negligible at best. However, the NCAA regional does show that we remain involved with LCA. I disagreed with your opinion not to defend the program but to add reality to this discussion.
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Post by motorcitysam on Sept 12, 2023 10:49:36 GMT -5
PTC, reality is that this "dedicated players reunion" that you mention was so unpublicized it wasn't even talked about on this message board. I didn't even see a mention of it on the Titan social media pages or on the actual Titan website. Did the University itself even call it a reunion? But, please tell me all about it. What former players were in attendance? How was it organized? Who was invited? What recruits were in attendance? Where are the pics and video? Any t-shirts or other commemorative items from the event? How did everyone look in the practice and scrimmage?
What you're describing isn't anyting like Grind Week, in spirit or in impact. It isn't even a reunion. The best you can do as a rebuttal to my point is a couple of pictures of a non-Titan player spending some time with the Titan teams in a completely separate event. That's the reality.
Yes, I do recall 35-40 years ago when the Titans played home games at JLA and Cobo. I've never said that we should move home games to LCA, and you know that.
Announced attendance at last season's EMU vs UM game was over 14,000. MSU's game against Oakland at LCA was announced at 16,000. Why would we not want to play in front of a big crowd like that in our hometown's NBA arena? Even if we were an undercard game on a night when the main event was MSU vs Baylor, I expect that the number of fans in LCA by the time our game ended would be more than we've gotten at Calihan for a long time.
I wonder if EMU would have preferred to "co-host a regional" at LCA rather than play a ranked team there in front of 14,000 fans in an exciting game that was all over ESPN and sports social media. I think I know the answer to that.
Yes, the old thinking that the administration has been guilty of for decades is echoed in your comments. "We tried something decades ago and it didn't work, so we'll just keep doing the things in the small time way we've been doing them since the 80s, with our division 3 sounding name and covert marketing campaigns."
But hey, Dick Vitale coached here when Disco was king, so we've got that going for us. Just look at our floor!
You're not adding reality. You're adding spin.
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Post by motorcitysam on Oct 16, 2023 11:05:28 GMT -5
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Post by motorcitysam on Nov 2, 2023 9:22:40 GMT -5
Thoughts on the Spartans upcoming season.
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Post by motorcitysam on Nov 7, 2023 12:27:10 GMT -5
There were several interesting tidbits to the Spartan loss to James Madison last night. Per this article: Izzo's nephew is on the James Madison coaching staff. The Spartans had not lost a season opener in East Lansing since 1970. The Spartans missed 14 free throws in this overtime loss. I can't remember seeing a team that is generally a good shooting team shoot as poorly from the three point line as Michigan State did last night. I doubt the game plan was for MSU to neglect their talent and size advantages and chuck up threes, but here we are. And the fact that a team with so many upperclassmen was embarrassed at home by a 16 point underdog is stunning. I imagine that the Spartans practice will be brutal today. They have Southern Indiana on Thursday, as an opportunity to get their heads right before taking on Duke a week from today. www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/38838353/michigan-st-drops-opener-jmu-tom-izzo-loses-nephew
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Post by udmperry on Nov 7, 2023 16:11:07 GMT -5
My personal view is that Izzo is not a coach for these times. He is just not the guy players listen to. Too much ranting and dumping on his players. From Freep: “ I don't need guys taking shots that are not shooters. I don't need guys dribbling when they're not ball-handlers. And we gotta pay attention more to what we're saying a huddle — if we're going to switch (on defense), we gotta switch. I mean, I say all that and if we make a quarter of the free throws we missed, we win the game by six or eight (points). …”. Coaching must have something to do with the 1-20 from 3 and horrible free throw shooting. His comments don’t suggest he sees coaching as a problem, but when your ranked team face plants methinks maybe the coach is the issue as much as player attitude. How come his guys don’t switch, don't pay attentions, and shoot when they shouldn’t? Nothing a coach can do about any of that? They tune him out because he’s out of touch and the era of bully coaches is coming to a close. I doubt a brutal practice spent berating they players he recruited himself will be effective near term or long term. I predict with regret that MSU ends up about .500. The program seems to read its press clippings and think that’s all they need to do and Izzo’s red faced ranting on the sidelines is passé in this era. Just my medium lukewarm take.
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Post by upbasketballfan on Nov 8, 2023 4:00:49 GMT -5
My personal view is that Izzo is not a coach for these times. He is just not the guy players listen to. Too much ranting and dumping on his players. From Freep: “ I don't need guys taking shots that are not shooters. I don't need guys dribbling when they're not ball-handlers. And we gotta pay attention more to what we're saying a huddle — if we're going to switch (on defense), we gotta switch. I mean, I say all that and if we make a quarter of the free throws we missed, we win the game by six or eight (points). …”. Coaching must have something to do with the 1-20 from 3 and horrible free throw shooting. His comments don’t suggest he sees coaching as a problem, but when your ranked team face plants methinks maybe the coach is the issue as much as player attitude. How come his guys don’t switch, don't pay attentions, and shoot when they shouldn’t? Nothing a coach can do about any of that? They tune him out because he’s out of touch and the era of bully coaches is coming to a close. I doubt a brutal practice spent berating they players he recruited himself will be effective near term or long term. I predict with regret that MSU ends up about .500. The program seems to read its press clippings and think that’s all they need to do and Izzo’s red faced ranting on the sidelines is passé in this era. Just my medium lukewarm take. I predict they have a good season and the Talented Freshmen he recruited get a lot more playing time. His veterans are who he was referring to I think a couple of 5 year guys. Izzo is strong and if they do not adjust they will be on the pine. He has enough depth to be able to walk the walk.
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Post by motorcitysam on Dec 14, 2023 23:42:17 GMT -5
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Post by motorcitysam on Dec 18, 2023 14:43:06 GMT -5
Michigan State gave us one of the most surprising outcomes of the young college basketball season on Saturday, by dismantling #6 Baylor at Little Caesar's Arena 88-64. The Spartans used a 24-4 run early to take command and cruised from there. Tyson Walker outscored the Baylor team in the first half, 18-17. We'll get an idea of whether this was part of a turnaround, or just a bright spot in a disappointing season tonight when Michigan State meets Oakland at Breslin. The Spartans struggles this year have been puzzling. Their five and five record is what results when your team plays worse than expected during a typically brutal Tom Izzo non-conference schedule. No one gets mad at losing to Duke and Arizona, but dropping games to James Madison, Nebraska, and Wisconsin at home throws the whole season out of wack. www.freep.com/story/sports/college/michigan-state/spartans/2023/12/16/michigan-state-basketball-game-baylor-bears-tyson-walker/71944184007/
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Post by motorcitysam on Jan 30, 2024 23:29:04 GMT -5
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Post by motorcitysam on Mar 20, 2024 23:25:17 GMT -5
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