Happy to have Tubby as coach

[Year of the Gophs]

Am I discouraged and disappointed in today's revelations? Yes. Am I happy and confident Tubby Smith and the U administration are the ones making the decisions in regards to the university, program, and players' futures? Absolutely.

I, for one, am on board and will support Tubby. I just got around to watching his 5-minute press briefing from this morning (on startribune.com) and also saw the brief interview Mike Max had with Joel Maturi. Consistent messages. I have full confidence these issues are and will continue to be taken seriouslessly and will be dealt with appropriately.

 

[GopherLady]

Am I discouraged and disappointed in today's revelations? Yes. Am I happy and confident Tubby Smith and the U administration are the ones making the decisions in regards to the university, program, and players' futures? Absolutely.

I, for one, am on board and will support Tubby. I just got around to watching his 5-minute press briefing from this morning (on startribune.com) and also saw the brief interview Mike Max had with Joel Maturi. Consistent messages. I have full confidence these issues are and will continue to be taken seriouslessly and will be dealt with appropriately.

You read my mind, Year of the Gophs - I just got home and was logging on to do a "Kudos to Tubby" thread. I took a managerial communications course about a year ago, and he is handling things perfectly. They always say when managing a crisis, be the 1st one to tell people about it. If you don't, what people will make up with probably be worse than the truth. He was able to discipline the players before things publicly leaked out about them...which is what you want to do. Also, when you're the 1st one delivering the message, you also have the opportunity to spin it the way you like. I'm not sure if Tubby spun anything, but he was honest. The biggest mistake people make when bad things occur is to avoid it - but being upfront is far more effective.

As for not only the delivery, I am just glad he's our coach. He's someone that is not a "win at all costs" type of coach, which is very rare in college basketball. If he was, his 5 star recruit would be suspended from team meals, or some other ridiculous punishment. Especially after the Trevor news came out yesterday, and being down two PF's, he still did the right thing from an outsider's account.

I have piece of mind knowing that he will do the right thing.

 

[Jim V2]

Completely agree, GL. But I'd add one more thing:

Tubby has perspective. I'd bet the Royce thing, while disappointing, didn't shock him. And I don't think he'll overreact. He's been involved before with kids with issues, and will have a plan for dealing with it. Of course ther'es no guarantee the plan will work, but it's clear that Royce respects Tubby even if his actions don't show it, and that there may be no one with a better chance of getting Royce over this hurdle than Tubby. I wonder if anyone has ever before taken something away from Royce that he really cares about--but it will happen now, and in the long run, we may all be saying that it worked out for the best that Tubby got the chance to impose significant discipline now.

 

[Winnipegopher]

I am not as high on Tubby's management of this as you guys. Perhaps I am just cautious or cynical since I always felt like Clem was above reproach on discipline.

Again this is speculation, but unless he was involved with Royce, Bostick is being unfairly involved in this. If they are indeed separate then why release the suspensions together. As of right now the natural assumption is that Bostick was with Royce. Skipping class or bad grades are not as serious as criminal activity.

I agree that Tubby is doing a good job of managing the message but at what cost? If they knew about White since mid- October but waited to suspend him until after the Mbakwe announcement, that is dishonest and also a bad message that the program is more important than the people in it.

I hope I am wrong about this but that is how I read it.

Flame away.

 

[Mikie S]

I am not as high on Tubby's management of this as you guys. Perhaps I am just cautious or cynical since I always felt like Clem was above reproach on discipline.

Again this is speculation, but unless he was involved with Royce, Bostick is being unfairly involved in this. If they are indeed separate then why release the suspensions together. As of right now the natural assumption is that Bostick was with Royce. Skipping class or bad grades are not as serious as criminal activity.

I agree that Tubby is doing a good job of managing the message but at what cost? If they knew about White since mid- October but waited to suspend him until after the Mbakwe announcement, that is dishonest and also a bad message that the program is more important than the people in it.

I hope I am wrong about this but that is how I read it.

Flame away.

Unfortunately, I agree with this post.

 

[Mulligan]

I am not as high on Tubby's management of this as you guys. Perhaps I am just cautious or cynical since I always felt like Clem was above reproach on discipline.

Again this is speculation, but unless he was involved with Royce, Bostick is being unfairly involved in this. If they are indeed separate then why release the suspensions together. As of right now the natural assumption is that Bostick was with Royce. Skipping class or bad grades are not as serious as criminal activity.

I agree that Tubby is doing a good job of managing the message but at what cost? If they knew about White since mid- October but waited to suspend him until after the Mbakwe announcement, that is dishonest and also a bad message that the program is more important than the people in it.

I hope I am wrong about this but that is how I read it.

Flame away.

I'm certainly glad Tubby is our coach, but I was just going to make the same point. The linking of announcing the three suspensions seems strange although I'm not sure I'd call it dishonest.

 

[dingo]

I am not as high on Tubby's management of this as you guys. Perhaps I am just cautious or cynical since I always felt like Clem was above reproach on discipline.

Again this is speculation, but unless he was involved with Royce, Bostick is being unfairly involved in this. If they are indeed separate then why release the suspensions together. As of right now the natural assumption is that Bostick was with Royce. Skipping class or bad grades are not as serious as criminal activity.

I agree that Tubby is doing a good job of managing the message but at what cost? If they knew about White since mid- October but waited to suspend him until after the Mbakwe announcement, that is dishonest and also a bad message that the program is more important than the people in it.

I hope I am wrong about this but that is how I read it.

Flame away.

Without knowing what Bostick was suspended for I have a hard time agreeing or disagreeing with your assessment with regards to him. If his infraction was severely less that will come to light when he is un-suspended.

As for Tubby and handling the timing of the White suspension. I dont really have a problem with him handling it inhouse first. Talked to White, his family, etc to make sure they were all on the same page until he told the public. Remember it was not Tubby who decided to release the Mbakwe decision on Monday, that was a Maturi decision. Im sure Tubby was in the loop on it, but the timing was that of Maturis.

 

[underground629]

At first I assumed they did something together to get in trouble, but as soon as they actually released what Royce did, the articles made it pretty clear that they were unrelated incidents.

I don't agree that it was dishonest to release the details about White and Bostick this late. For one, he's obviously not going to release info within the few days after it happened when he needs to find time to talk to Royce, the security guard, Maturi, and possibly others. Plus, what's the difference? It's not like White played in any games during that time. There's no difference in terms of the suspension between releasing the info then and releasing it now. Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't he still doing everything with the team other than playing in games?

Also, why would you not break the bad news of 3 players all at once rather than having 3 distractions to the team spread out over a few weeks. All that does is make the program appear to be in worse condition than it is because it then seems like Tubby has lost all control over his players because there's seemingly a new incident each day. In general, I think people would rather hear bad news all at once.

I am not as high on Tubby's management of this as you guys. Perhaps I am just cautious or cynical since I always felt like Clem was above reproach on discipline.

Again this is speculation, but unless he was involved with Royce, Bostick is being unfairly involved in this. If they are indeed separate then why release the suspensions together. As of right now the natural assumption is that Bostick was with Royce. Skipping class or bad grades are not as serious as criminal activity.

I agree that Tubby is doing a good job of managing the message but at what cost? If they knew about White since mid- October but waited to suspend him until after the Mbakwe announcement, that is dishonest and also a bad message that the program is more important than the people in it.

I hope I am wrong about this but that is how I read it.

Flame away.

 

[Blizzard]

As of right now the natural assumption is that Bostick was with Royce. Skipping class or bad grades are not as serious as criminal activity.

Tell that to Kevin Payton.

 

[GoFerit]

Simutaneous posting.. I was more or less repeating what people above me were saying about the timing of the announcements... like underground629...

 

[GopherLady]

I am not as high on Tubby's management of this as you guys. Perhaps I am just cautious or cynical since I always felt like Clem was above reproach on discipline.

Again this is speculation, but unless he was involved with Royce, Bostick is being unfairly involved in this. If they are indeed separate then why release the suspensions together. As of right now the natural assumption is that Bostick was with Royce. Skipping class or bad grades are not as serious as criminal activity.

I agree that Tubby is doing a good job of managing the message but at what cost? If they knew about White since mid- October but waited to suspend him until after the Mbakwe announcement, that is dishonest and also a bad message that the program is more important than the people in it.

I hope I am wrong about this but that is how I read it.

Flame away.

Good post, Winnipegopher - I see your points, but I guess I read it differently. When Tubby made the announcement, he simply said that both players would be suspended indefinitely, and if they got their stuff in order, they may be coming back sooner rather than later. That did imply they were both involved, but Tubby did not say it was for the same incident. In the past day, we've not found out Devron was not involved (or that's my assumption). I think it was just a timing issue, they both had something come up, and since it's really not our business to know what they did, Tubby did not tell us - the media did.

As for the timing of Royce's (which is the only one we really know facts about now) - who knows when Tubby found out about this. The incident occurred on October 13, leaving about 3 weeks in between the incident and the suspension. It's quite possible it took Tubby a week to even find out, unless Royce was upfront and told him right away. Then, last week, Tubby's father passed away, and he had to deal with this stuff, while mourning the loss of his father. I'm also guessing that kids don't get suspended as a knee-jerk reaction - he probably talked to any parties involved, Maturi, got police reports, etc...and that takes time. I don't think 3 weeks is in anyway unreasonable to make the right decision.

And as far as Mbakwe is concerned, I believe that was Maturi's date to decide, not Tubby's, and I think it was set a couple weeks back - so I'm not really sure how that's an issue?

 

[Gopherholefan]

Can I add a theory? Why would Tubby need to tell us (the general public) any earlier than yesterday, two days before the first game/exhibition? In the audio, he said something like, in addition to mbakwe, we will have two other players suspended for Thursdays game.. Could we assume that Royce was suspended a couple of weeks ago and that it was just brought to light yesterday?

 

[Jim V2]

I am not as high on Tubby's management of this as you guys. Perhaps I am just cautious or cynical since I always felt like Clem was above reproach on discipline.

Again this is speculation, but unless he was involved with Royce, Bostick is being unfairly involved in this. If they are indeed separate then why release the suspensions together. As of right now the natural assumption is that Bostick was with Royce. Skipping class or bad grades are not as serious as criminal activity.

I agree that Tubby is doing a good job of managing the message but at what cost? If they knew about White since mid- October but waited to suspend him until after the Mbakwe announcement, that is dishonest and also a bad message that the program is more important than the people in it.

I hope I am wrong about this but that is how I read it.

Flame away.

Can't. You said nothing flammable. But I think you're arguing a little different point. My point was not that Tubby was necessarily going to be a master of handling the nuances of releasing suspension info (and I agree that it seems like it would have been better to separate the last two--I'm not sure they had a ton of choice with Mbwake,) but that if there's a coach who has a chance to get Royce straightened out, it's Tubby with his combination of being clear about not acccepting BS and the respect his players have for him because he's a great coach.

And I hear you on Clem, and I agree that I was fooled too, but call me naive--I think Tubby's rep speaks for him to a degree Clem couldn't even approach.

 

[Winnipegopher]

Thanks for the responses. I still think that they should really separate Bostick from this (if he is separate). However, I had completely forgotten that Tubby's father passed away in the middle of this mess. Given that, I am prepared to retract my comments. Perhaps this was just the best time to deal with it as he dealt with far more important issues.