Do you want Ben back for a fourth year?

Do you want Ben back for a fourth year?

  • Yes, Ben deserves to return next season for Year 4.

    Votes: 129 59.4%

  • No, we need a new coach for next season.

    Votes: 88 40.6%
  • Total voters
    217
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EG#9 said:
These results are shocking to me. Hopefully it's some Badger and Hawkeye fans coming over and "Izzoing" the poll results.

In Selection Sunday's final field of 68, I count THIRTEEN coaches who started at their new job at the same time or after Ben Johnson. If you go through the next 8 teams considered there are 4 more in St John's, Seton Hall, Oklahoma, and Kansas State and a fifth with an interim coach who turned a bottom of the conference team around in season at Ohio State.

Ben Johnson is 15-44 in the Big Ten. I saw a post in this thread that compared his start to Pickell, Hoiberg and someone else as reason for more time. One, this is a new era and as demonstrated above things don't work that way anymore. Second, if people are going to use past results as a gauge for things (ex comparing a Minnesota coach to past failed Minnesota coaches as opposed to how they are doing competing with their peers- a line of thinking I vastly disagree with) then you cannot use programs like Nebraska (has never won an NCAA tournament game in the history of its program) and Rutgers (historically awful B1G program that was awful in smaller conferences before joining the B1G too) as examples as to why Ben should get more time. Shrewsberry at Penn State took over a worse job at the same time as Ben...and won 17 conference games in TWO years. The guy Penn State hired to replace him had a total rebuild and finished tied with Ben Johnson in the Big Ten and ahead of him in the NET and KenPom.

When Ben was hired he was supposed to be an excellent recruiter who would get most, if not all, the top Minnesota talent. That hasn't come close to happening. If you look at the composite rankings for the incoming 2024 class on 247, the Gophers are 16th in an 18 team league. We're ahead of UCLA because they only have 1 commit (rated higher than both of ours) and Indiana who had their only commitment decommit.

On the court, two of the things that were mentioned by tons of posters here during the end of the Pitino era and the coaching search were prioritizing defense and being a team that gets better as the season goes on. Defense was 128th on KenPom this year, 188 last year, and 153 in his first year. Then we've had a team that two of three years has absolutely cratered down the stretch just as a lot of Pitino's (and Tubby's to be fair) teams did before them. The one year this didn't happen was the worst year in program history so there really wasn't a new bottom to reach.

A simple way to look at this is who in the Big Ten would be willing to trade coaches with us tomorrow? Not Wisconsin, Iowa, Northwestern, Nebraska, Rutgers, or Penn State. Certainly not Michigan State, Illinois, or Purdue. Indiana fans are really angry at Woodson, but I highly doubt they would rather have Ben Johnson. Even the recently fired Juwan Howard has a conference championship, an Elite Eight, and a Sweet 16 to his name in 5 seasons. This is the same spot we were in the with Pitino, but the gulf between where Pitino was as 14/14 in the B1G has only gotten wider as guys like Hoiberg and Collins have added to their resumes. We are tyring to win (allegedly) with a guy who has no prior experience as a head coach, has no history of on court success in over a decade as an assistant coach, and has shown an inability to be the dynamic recruiter he was made out to be.
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Very well stated. Nice post
 

bga1 said:
Do you really believe that this administration is going to run out and get a high end coach who is ready to roll? We had a shot at Dutcher, at Musselman (twice) and others and have passed in favor of Pitino and then Ben.
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While I don't think that's impossible in the future, I don't see any evidence that they wanted to do that in the last 11 years or now. Perhaps they'll do that some day after riding lower cost options for as long as they can.
 

Some guy said:
We fired pitino for going 23-37 with 1 ncaa appearance in 3 years with years 2-3 during odd Covid disruption


Ben Johnson 15-44


It’s depressing being a gopher hoops fan any way you slice it.
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Pitino was here for 8 seasons

and he just won the Mountain West Tournament.
 


if we were to bring a new coach in, do you really expect them to compete in the B10 within 3 years?

and if you do, please share what your smoking.
 


RockChalk said:
Justin might want to dig a bit deeper when he states Ben had a good year. Did he really? When you play 8-10 "sisters of the poor" teams in your non conference, then end the season with a 1-5 record. I'm not sure he/they were any better with Ben running the show. IMO
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The poor nonconference schedule hurt us in the rating indexes. That's clear. But, I'm certainly not going to feel embarrassed because of appreciating an 18 win season after 4 straight losing seasons and 6 losing seasons in the last eight years.
 




TwistingMyMelon said:
The poor nonconference schedule hurt us in the rating indexes. That's clear. But, I'm certainly not going to feel embarrassed because of appreciating an 18 win season after 4 straight losing seasons and 6 losing seasons in the last eight years.
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I can agree with that. Let's just be a bit more transparent though when talking about a massive improvement.
 


RockChalk said:
I can agree with that. Let's just be a bit more transparent though when talking about a massive improvement.
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It was a massive improvement despite the weak nonconference schedule. Are you forgetting that we went from 2 regular season conference wins last season and four the year before to 9 this season? We also had only 6 in Pitino's last season.
 





Gopherbbdude said:
if we were to bring a new coach in, do you really expect them to compete in the B10 within 3 years?

and if you do, please share what your smoking.
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Compete for conference titles? No. Be an NCAA tournament contending team? Yes. Not be one of the worst coaches in the power 6? Certainly. The bar is not exactly high here.
 

USAF said:
New Mexico's coach won his conference tournament in his third year, I'm told.
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He wasn't a new coach. He was a coach with 8 years of head coaching experience at a Power 6 program and mid major head coaching experience before that.
 


Pitino had two years which dramatically fell apart after losing key players due to injuries. At the time he was fired, his overall record was repeatedly cited as the biggest reason for firing him. I don't believe he was given a pass for those years. However, many on this board want to pretend the first two years don't matter when evaluating the Ben Johnson regime and use improvement against his own ineptitude as the primary reason for retaining him. Can we at least be consistent in the evaluation?
 



golfing18now said:
Pitino had two years which dramatically fell apart after losing key players due to injuries. At the time he was fired, his overall record was repeatedly cited as the biggest reason for firing him. I don't believe he was given a pass for those years. However, many on this board want to pretend the first two years don't matter when evaluating the Ben Johnson regime and use improvement against his own ineptitude as the primary reason for retaining him. Can we at least be consistent in the evaluation?
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He was fired for the program getting worse year over year. If the program was consistently good or trending upwards no one would have brought up his overall record. He went from 9 to 8 to 6 wins.
 

Gopher Ally said:
Translate to English for us!
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Gladly

Ben surges to a double digit as things wrap up on my watch go Saturday evening.

The above means there were 10+ votes in favor of him staying last evening when I logged off, as I was going to bed and not monitoring the vote any longer. “Watch” is a term used by first responders instead of shift, to denote when they’re working (there are three shifts, based on 8 hours: 1st shift (8-4), 2nd (4-12), 3rd (12-8)




makes me wonder how many posters kept the Disaster Thread humming along into perpetuity🧐?

Since Ben was ahead by much more than I or likely most expected, it made me think there were a few malcontents (anti-Benites) that were the primary keepers of the thread’s flame
Gopher Ally said:
ok, let’s roll with losing for decades and having a crowd of 5000 in a 15000 seat stadium
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Gopher_In_NYC said:
Gladly

Ben surges to a double digit as things wrap up on my watch go Saturday evening.

The above means there were 10+ votes in favor of him staying last evening when I logged off, as I was going to bed and not monitoring the vote any longer. “Watch” is a term used by first responders instead of shift, to denote when they’re working (there are three shifts, based on 8 hours: 1st shift (8-4), 2nd (4-12), 3rd (12-8)




makes me wonder how many posters kept the Disaster Thread humming along into perpetuity🧐?

Since Ben was ahead by much more than I or likely most expected, it made me think there were a few malcontents (anti-Benites) that were the primary keepers of the thread’s flame
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Watch out James Patterson, Gopher_In_NYC coming for thriller $$$.
 

WindyCityGopher said:
Interestingly, I have as much head coaching experience in college basketball as Johnson did when he was hired, so I have a chance.
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bleedsmaroonandgold said:
"Good year 3"? We weren't even particularly close to the bubble for the NCAA.
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Going from bottom of the league to middle and from often non-competitive to usually competitive is a good year. It was a substantial jump.
 


howeda7 said:
He's 15-44 and you're afraid of the unknown option behind door #2?
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He's 9-11 and played Purdue, Illinois, and Wisconsin tough. Beat Nebraska and Michigan State once. Yes, I would prefer to continue with that rather than checking door #2.
 
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golfing18now said:
Pitino had two years which dramatically fell apart after losing key players due to injuries. At the time he was fired, his overall record was repeatedly cited as the biggest reason for firing him. I don't believe he was given a pass for those years. However, many on this board want to pretend the first two years don't matter when evaluating the Ben Johnson regime and use improvement against his own ineptitude as the primary reason for retaining him. Can we at least be consistent in the evaluation?
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The evaluation is Year 3 progress over Years 1 and 2. That evaluation has already been made (January and February) by the only person who matters in the decision of who coaches Gopher basketball.
 

MplsGopher said:
I didn’t get that at all.

He is just saying that it’s really hard to win here.


Other than Rutgers, every other Big Ten program has some kind of advantage over us.

“How do you figure that for Nebraska and Penn State??” Simply that, because of their football success and their location, they have a fairly large, rabidly loyal fan base that is captive. No pro teams. NIL support and fan support.


Now the one that should really baffle us is Iowa State. But it is also a bit similar in no pro competition. Of course they have competition from Iowa.
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Just because PSU is good at football doesn't mean they have fans that give a shit about basketball. Because they don't. Hell they care more about Wrestling than men's basketball.
 


Dakota2 said:
The evaluation is Year 3 progress over Years 1 and 2. That evaluation has already been made (January and February) by the only person who matters in the decision of who coaches Gopher basketball.
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So using that logic, Ben would be a worse coach if he had won a few more games in years one and two and then had the same year 3?
 

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