I’m just not really sure the evidence bears out what you’re saying. I was also amongst a handful of very vocal concerned citizens about Weber very early on, which is why I got banned from every other forum and ended up on HQ to begin with.
The whole Custard name goes back to mocking Bruce Weber. I openly disdained Mike Thomas from the moment I met him in person and obviously hated the Becktard hire and results.
I was very disappointed in the John Groce hire but came around a little bit that first season when we won some big games and looked halfway competent.
A lot of people mistook me pointing out that his failures here weren’t because of X’s and O’s (like most people thought) so much as his recruiting, which most people thought was his strength.
When he was winning at Ohio, it was on the back of a dynamic point guard in DJ Cooper. Then he came to Illinois and played Tracy Abrams at PG for like seven years, as well as some other completely forgettable guys. Being the constant bridesmaid for high-level recruits ultimately cost him his job, not his coaching.
I will stand by my opinion that snatching Lovie in February after Whitman was hired was still a good move because it got us off the list of programs that had never had a minority head coach, while also reestablishing a little bit of credibility in the wake of the Beckman fiasco.
People forget how bad of shape we were in when our interim AD was saying that extending our interim coach who was coaching under Beckman during the player abuse scandals was not a dagger in the heart of the program.
Loviebonly made one bowl game, but he brought in a lot of talent that made Bielema’s transition a lot easier and didn’t handcuff us into having to hire a minority basketball coach when it came time to fire Groce. Wish we would’ve won a few more games, but it served the purpose it needed to serve, and we’re in a way better place for it now.
I’ve been pretty candid and objective in my thoughts over the years and I’ve been right the vast majority of the time.
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