Probation, lol. Do you know what our probation was? I think it was something like a loss of 1 scholarship for 2 years, and 2 years with slightly reduced off campus recruiting visits. It was hardly anything, and it certainly wasn't anything severe enough to make any sizeable impact on the program.
And Billy's last year before Kelvin took over he was 15-13. That is very close to the record the two seasons for Capel before Lon took over. We weren't some dumpster fire. Let's not forget, Lon inherited Cam Clark, Fitzgerald, Pledger, Neal, and Osby (I think). That isn't "decimated." Everybody assumes because Capel couldn't win that the talent was bad. No. Capel was just a bad coach.
Stop acting like he was paying players. Most of the "unallowed" phone calls and texts were to players already committed to him. It really wasn't him recruiting guys in that last class, I remember a BUNCH of them being calls to Austin Johnson, long after he had been committed to OU. Violations? Sure. But none of his violations, that I saw, were of the manner that suggested the violations were the reason we were landing kids. His recruiting improved his entire time at OU. From JUCO's early, to getting better HS talent, to finally bringing in some top HS talent at the very end. That's a pretty natural progression for a coach that stays in one spot for that long and keeps winning at a higher level.
And you still don't get it (ie, Kelvin vs Lon). Yes, in a lot of ways the results look similar. I don't agree that the recruiting does. But it's manner that they are getting there. Sampson slowly build the program up over his first 5 years, then he pretty much kept them at 25 wins after that. Sure, he had 2004 season when he was rebuilding with a bunch of highly rated freshman, and Bookout missed most of the season. But that team was still one win from Dancing. If THAT is a coach's down season, I can live with that. A little different than and 11 win, 20 loss season, followed by two more <20 win seasons. It's about the consistency, direction, and toughness of the program. Lon has always had a rockier program than I'd prefer for here at OU. Too many ups and downs. OU should be able to consistently trot out a 20-25 win team, and a team that makes the Dance with at least an 8 seed (top half) most all of the time. Limping into the tournament two years in a row and trying to compare that to a coach/team/program that also made the Dance two years in a row but did so MUCH more easily, is disingenuous.
Why was that year disappointing? Do you know how young that team was? And they lost Bookout? And JB down the stretch? And they still were one game from making the Dance, and had a better record than the last three OU teams.
And I'll say this again, by year 8 of a coach's tenure, "what he was left with" doesn't matter. He's had at least 3-4 full recruiting classes, of his own, move through the program. Nobody is upset over Lon's overall body of work, necessarily. They are upset with the last three years, and where the program is currently and is projected. We should be more stable this far into Lon's tenure. But we're not. We should have a fairly solid roster top to bottom. But we don't. Too many project guys, even with next year's projected roster. That is the complaint some of us have.
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