People have a tendency to panic when things go wrong within ONE season, and ignore the big picture, and proceed to project toward the future based off one poor season. After his first two years, almost everyone was practically annointing him King of Gopher athletics just cause of an NCAA berth. Now that there's a few struggles, people sit there and talk about how stubborn he is, and how he can't win cause of this and that. While some of it is true, we have to remember not to overreact here. It sucks, but this is still just one season. Tubby can't undo a bunch of good to great seasons and change everything he does based on a bad season here and there. That's just not how it works.
Again, no to belabor this, but this team is not light years away from even competing for the Big Ten title. Just look at the losses.
Portland (61-56)
TA&M (66-65)
Miami (63-58)
@ MSU (60-53)
@ IU (81-78 OT)
MSU (65-64)
MIchigan (71-63)
@ NU (77-74 OT)
22-2 doesn't look so bad lol. Obviously you probably don't win all of those, but you get my drift. We also were fortunate @ PSU, so it can go both ways, but this year seems to be a year when we just aren't winning a lot of these nip and tuck games at all. Perhaps coaching is to partly blame for all these close losses, but you gotta realize that just sometimes, things don't work out and it can snowball as far as the players losing confidence, becoming frustrated, and sometimes acting out because of it. If they catch a few more breaks earlier in the year to avoid some of these losses early, then they're playing with more confidence and suddenly the team is winning all of the close games. Look at Kansas this year. They have one loss, but they've been on the ropes about as many times as us. The difference is they are closing their games out, like good teams do. Is Bill Self really coaching up that team to win those games, or is it perhaps the senior leadership of Sherron Collins and Cole Aldrich carrying them through?
I hope this team stays together so we can see guys like Devoe and Ralph as seniors and see how things are working at that point. I'm willing to bet the outlook will be much brighter than it appears right now.