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I think the proverbial saying “never lose twice with the same team” applies here. New life that will fight for each other and HCRS is a must! Coach Musick unloaded 10 players last year and it worked out well for her because she handpicked players that would play for her!

I have 2 problems with today's complete embarrassment. The first is that that this team quit on their coach, watching the effort and the body language today HCRS; for whatever reason, has lost this team. The second problem I have and to me is completely unacceptable is that they quit on each other, the fact that the team played with no desire, no heart and no pride in the last home game of the year and on senior night to me is inexcusable.

This has been such a difficult season to understand as a fan. Without being with the coaches and players day in and day out it feels like being lost in the dark, not being able to pinpoint where we are and what is causing the problems. The only thing that is obvious is major changes will have to be made to get back to being competitive and playing for a conference championship. And it’s not like the winner of the Summit League this year has much of a chance of making noise in the Big Dance. This has been a down year for our conference with ORU being on the bottom of the pile.

Mills came in to a much worse situation. The only reason there is a hole to dig out of now is due to the way this season was mismanaged.

It’s hard to see where things turn, as neither players or coaching staff have given us much to be hopeful about for next year. Sometimes great players can cover mediocre coaching, and great coaches can build up average players. We haven't seen either this year. If I’m an athlete in the portal I’m looking elsewhere(unless God tells me to lol). I agree Springmann should get a few years to prove himself, this may be the biggest summer of his career! Only time will tell .

Today was the fewest points (54) scored by an ORU men's team in the Mabee Center since a 61-50 Southland Conference setback to Stephen F. Austin on January 12, 2013. And, the last time ORU finished the regular season on a 7-game losing streak? Try thirty years ago, in Bill Self's first season at the helm (and in Bill's defense, ORU was an independent coming back from the NAIA, and had to play the likes of Baylor, Western Kentucky, Texas A&M, Southern Illinois, Texas Tech, TCU, Texas, and SMU to close the year). Doubt we'll see those nuggets and other marks of futility on social media any time soon...

There seems to be no game plan. Just playground basketball. Terribly disappointing.

88 makes a wonderful point...look at the ORU womens team and the amazing turnaround in just one year with a new coach who apparently just needed her own players....it often works that way in the business world as well....Springmann may just need to bring in some of his own guys and coach them up.....TheEagleman is hoping he can do it just like Coach Musick did....

At this point it is hard to know what kind of players Coach Springman is looking for? He seems to be looking harder at Juco players then ORU has in the past. I think it is a good call. Juco players are hit and miss like any level but usually they have a chip on their shoulder because they were often overlooked. He needs guys that will play hard and not worry about their own personal stats. At the end of the day, I think Coach will look for guys that are dogs: play tough defense, rebound and make the ugly/winning plays. I do not think he will just try and out shoot or out talent teams as Mills often did. ORU won so much and had a lot of success the last few years but this year lost its edge. The coach will need to find guys who are desperate to win and get that edge back.

This was a sobering weekend....but the Good news is that we have Central Michigan and UMass-Lowell on the horizon....

Been like that ALL year. The regression the players on this squad have seen is incredible. I doubt opposing teams even needed watch film on ORU. This year was an opportunity wasted with this roster.

Welp…wheels falling of in Waco and Tulsa today.

They did it!!! ....crushing KC by 94-56. Now let's see if ORU can do some damage in Sioux Falls....

Absolutely correct Doc, Mills inherited a train wreck when he came to ORU whereas HCRS did not come into a new place/team, he only had to step up. He knew the players, their talents and their personalities when he stepped into the HC position. Further, I think over the course of this year we did not get better but instead it looked more like a disaster happening in slow motion. IMHO we regressed if anything and we got worse as the season progressed.

Here's a Tulsa World article about the impact of the transfer portal--on ORU & its former players, and on TU's former players. Transfer portal tales blend success with potential woe BARRY LEWIS A year after finishing with a perfect record in the Summit League and going 30-5 overall, Oral Roberts finished the 2023-24 regular season at 11-18 and with a seven-game losing streak after Sunday's dreary 71-54 setback to Kansas City at Mabee Center. It would have been interesting to see what this season's Golden Eagles could have done if Max Abmas and Connor Vanover had returned for them, but they never recovered from their departures. Abmas' move to Texas after graduating from ORU has worked out great for him. Two weeks ago, he became the 12th player in NCAA Division I history to reach 3,000 career points. He is showing to everyone nationally what those who watched him at ORU already knew — he can be an elite player game in and game out against Power-Five competition. Abmas has delivered two winning buzzer-beaters this season and is averaging 16.5 points as the Longhorns are 19-10 after Saturday's win over Oklahoma State. But for every transfer success story, there is a portal move that turns out to be a bust on the court. The 7-foot-3 Vanover was ORU's leading rebounder and second-leading scorer in his first season with the Golden Eagles last year, and also was second nationally in blocking shots, but moved to Missouri for his sixth and final collegiate year. Vanover had previous stints at California and Arkansas, but those programs didn't use his skill set as well as ORU did and as a result he enjoyed his best year. Vanover has a chance to have a rare experience — going from being a premier player on a team that had a perfect conference record to being sparingly used on a team that is about to go winless in conference — from 18-0 to 0-18 if Missouri loses its last two. He only averages four points, 2.7 rebounds and 0.8 blocks in 12 minutes per game. There also have been mixed results from those who left ORU's crosstown rival, Tulsa, after last season. Sam Griffin, who was TU's top scorer last season, is averaging a career-high 17 points for Wyoming, which is 13-16. He should reach 2,000 career points in his next game. Webster graduate Anthony Pritchard is averaging a career-high 13.6 points for Central Michigan (16-13). Brandon Betson (Sacramento State) is posting similar numbers as he did last year and Tim Dalger left Saint Louis' program in January due to a family matter. Bryant Selebangue, who averaged 12 points and 9.2 rebounds last season for TU, isn't doing as well at Arizona State (14-15), where he averages only 4.9 points and four rebounds in 15.9 minutes per game.

I admit that I'm not always great at staying on top of details, so I may have missed the anouncement, but was anyone on here aware that the seniors would be recognized before the game rather than after, as has been the case in the past? One of my sons arrived early enough to see the seniors honored, but arriving at our usual ten minutes or so before the game we missed it completely. We always enjoy having the opportunity to honor the seniors individually, and were really disappointed not to have that chance yesterday. BTW, printed tickets had the game time as Sunday at 5:00 pm. Hopefully there weren't any folks misled by that. if I weren't on this board I could really imagine myself showing up at 4:45 and wondering why the parking lot was so empty!! Because it's a Sunday game, no doubt!

TheEagleman is fine with most all of those players going.....hard to believe that Russ Springmann could be THAT bad as a HC with all his experience...guess it's possible but surely didn't see much heart/talent from the main players this year and they failed to show up yesterday.....they flat out quit.....perhaps HCRS is a problem but TheEagleman is not astute enough to know.....big changes are needed....hopefully someone can figure it out or as pointed out ORU men's basketball will have darker days ahead....after 30-6 last season this is just incredible...maybe Mills made a deal with the devil before he left....can't say but I am greatly saddened over the past couple months..........

The thing that is so frustating is I hear Coach in pregame talking about how they have been working on rebounding and passing the ball instead of one on one drives all the time. Then in the game we see very little of this happening. Where is the disconnect? I do not think Coach is just telling us lies but somehow the guys are not getting it. I still care a lot about ORU basketball and even at the bottom hope for the best. It may take a while to dig out of this hole. It is hard to be patient and it may take 2 more years before Coach figures things out. Mills took about 3 years to figure things out. No one likes to be patient (including me) but trying to weather the storm It looked like this season that the Summit League teams wanted revenge on the Eagles after the last few years. They often punched ORU in the face and then the good guys just rolled over and played dead. This seemed to surprise them game after game this year. They were hunted this year and ORU could not handle it.

This is where I’m at as well: it’s hard to find a silver lining in the current situation when we’re: Uncertain about the current level of talent. Uncertain about the current quality of coaching. Uncertain about which players are staying or going. Uncertain about whether we want them to stay or go. Uncertain about any new players entering the fold. Basically, this is going to be a dreadfully long spring and summer trying to figure things out, and my patience level with the sunshine-pumping “Oh, we’ll be just fine” crowd is going to be touchier than ever. Which I’m sure everybody is looking forward to...I know I’m not.

We were so clean in the field to start the season. What happened? It is a beautiful day for baseball and a great day for the Golden Eagles to avoid the sweep. Light crowd at this point. The team just came onto the field wearing all gray with the blue cap. 75 degrees with a light breeze blowing out straight to center field.

I too watched the game last night on ESPN+ and OT is spot on in his analysis of the broadcast. Very professional and the broadcast team was both extremely knowledgeable and very complimentary. The graphics and number of camera angles/shots were also impressive. Finally, it was nice to be able to tune into and watch a game which was easily accessible to the entire nation/world instead of having to pay a bush league local company in the Dakotas for the privilege of watching.

Several have posted that BIG changes are needed this off season, the only big change options are coach and players. It appears most still have confidence in coach, so he'll be back. We may change an asst coach, but players don't come to a school, or leave because of an asst coach, they develop the initial relationship, but the head guy is who makes or breaks the deal. That leaves player changes; we know DJ and Kareem are out of eligibility, that leaves 2 starter positions to fill. Isaac and Bedford are the big question marks, if we lose one or both the task of replacing 3-4 starters is a BIG problem. This year's team lost a lot of the previous season, but still had 3 veterans we knew could play and Bedford was a very pleasant surprise. If we lose Bedford and Isaac next year could be very challenging as its reasonable to get a good player in the portal, or to get a guy that is surprise and plays better than expected like Bedford but getting 4 is unlikely. Most first-year guys in a program need a year or 2 like Herron or Jones. It seems to me coach's first and most important job is getting a fence up around the guys he wants back, he has to keep Isaac and Bedford and then work the portal and jucos. It's going to be a lot tougher to recruit after an 11-win year as opposed to 2 NCAA tourneys in 3 years. Coach has a crucial off season that could determine the future direction of the program for some time ahead of him. HCRS has waited a long time to be a head coach, now is his opportunity to make the team his own. Go get'em coach!