A day in the life of a mid-major coach

[tmh8286]

Turgeon in the hot seat at Wichita State.

Hinson in the hot seat at Missouri State (but he's opened a barbecue joint - mmmmm ).

Wojcik in the hot seat at Tulsa (how quickly they turn!).

Sutton is the only mid-major coach in a three state region where the natives aren't  getting restless!  Either he's a really great coach, or we're failing at our duty as fans to be disgruntled.

Which is it???

[ORUJason]

The expectations are obviously not as high for a Mid-Con team as they are for a C-USA or MVC team who has had a lot of success in the recent past.

The pressure gets higher when coaches salaries get higher (Turgeon making $750,000 as an example). 

I think overall fans are pleased with what Wojcik has accomplished over the last 2 years with only 1 full recruiting class.  They have just been lulled into a false reality that their team is better than it really is. 

TU's schedule was set up so that a monkey could coach them to 20 wins this year.  Like the Tulsa World said a few days ago, the highest RPI team that TU has beat this year is ORU (102 RPI last time I checked).

Because Wojcik coaches good defense, TU will win a lot of games, and I would guess that the odds are better that Wojcik will leave TU to take a better offer, rather than because he was fired.

Barry has been on the hot seat ever since he was hired, but honestly he has had more success there than I ever thought he would have.  He must have good assistants, because at ORU I never considered him to be a very good Xs and Os type of coach.  He was more of a rah-rah guy.

[tmh8286]

I think overall fans are pleased with what Wojcik has accomplished over the last 2 years with only 1 full recruiting class.  They have just been lulled into a false reality that their team is better than it really is. 

Have you read their message board today???

[tmh8286]

TU's schedule was set up so that a monkey could coach them to 20 wins this year. 

It doesn't look like the monkey's going to make it.

[Mike Minyard]

Those are the same people that were saying OSU should fire Sean after getting beat last night. People amaze me!  I had a good time at the OSU game, but I really think we do some things much better at the Mabee Center. 

[valporun]

Well, the schools have set up their non-conference schedules however they wanted, but I think many fans forget that some of these teams are much more youthful than they were the previous few years. I mean Wichita St. had an older lineup the last two years, then they lose a couple of guys and don't use a very big bench, so the experience for the next year isn't as big. I'm not totally familiar with TU, but I'm guessing that's just playing in the overly-saturated Conference USA? Missouri St. plays well, it just seems that Barry Hinson needs to show more emotion and evoke some fight in their play so that they will win the games their fans want them to win. I don't know, I guess Hinson seems like a Dusty Baker type. He just sits back and glorifies in the money and doesn't do much to get any kind of fight into his team.

I know from a Valpo perspective, we're young and inexperienced, but we're starting to pull it all together and play together much better than we did in non-conference. It also helps that Homer started to instill and evoke some fight in the guys to get them playing the way he wants them to play.

[Gold*]

I haven't seen where Wojcik was in the hot seat at all, in the media or on the TU board.  A lot of fans are upset, but that's also because they want a top 25 team today -- that's not realistic. Most of the fans who have complaints also recognize the team's youth and limitations.  There are four freshman starting, for crying out loud.