What's happened to Tulsa?

[brettromar]

You think they regret firing Wojcik? He did a good job in his first year at Charleston. I think Manning has a chance to succeed if given time, but I don't know how patient they are going to be.



I hear you and I appreciate the viewpoint and (at least) partially agree with your post. And actually, I hope you're totally right. That said, OU was hit with a significant amount of injuries and arguably overachieved to go 10-2. That's because we had some quality depth and some competent coaching...mostly.

Quality depth is the responsibility of the head coach as well. If we're going to 'award' Blankenship credit for recruiting the current squad then let's also have Blankenship shoulder the blame for those depth issues.

But it's all relative to your opponents. Sure OU being OU can recruit a certain quality depth but we're also playing much tougher competition. It's not like Tulsa limped to 5-7 with some close losses against good programs like Houston, SMU, UCF and East Carolina. They went 3-9 and often weren't even competitive. They were 2-6 in conference, getting waxed by programs like UNT and UTSA that were in the Sun Belt or WAC a year ago.

Injuries are a factor, no question. But not to that extent. I hope Blankenship succeeds but I believe the jury is definitely out.

I agree but it is much harder to get depth at TU than OU. That is what Baylor has talked about doing, getting depth.

I believe TU had huge number of frosh and sophs playing this year that were not expected to play. If TU doesn't make a jump back up next year, I am in your boat. However this year I think they get a little pass with graduation and injuries. TU won't ever have the depth OU has or the depth to overcome that many guys out and something in the range of 70 missed starts this season.

 

[badger]

You think they regret firing Wojcik?

They have higher expectations at TU than NIT and CBI. More importantly, TU was reporting lower ticket sales, so they had to do something to garner interest in the program again.

"Since 2005, we have seen a 35 percent decrease in season-ticket sales, a 43 percent decrease in revenue and rapidly growing apathy among our fan base, Basketball is expected to be a revenue-producing sport and a marquee sport at The University of Tulsa.

"A change in leadership was necessary."

 

[thebigabd]

The other thing Tulsa has been terrible at is local recruiting. They have two Oklahoma players on their roster right now. I don't know how much priority they place on this, because I don't talk to any of the coaches of anything, but back in the day they had a lineup of:

PG: Greg Harrington (Texas)
SG: Dante Swanson (Wagoner, OK)
SF: Eric Coley (Eufaula, OK)
PF: Kevin Johnson (Texas)
C: David Shelton (Kansas Juco)

Bench:
Marcus Hill (Booker T. Washington, Tulsa OK)
Antonio Reed (Booker T. Washington, Tulsa, OK)
Jason Parker (Tulsa, OK)
Charlie Davis (Texas)

I can't find the information but I believe Tony Heard is local too, and I think at some point all of these guys played on the same team, or most of them anyway.

They don't even have a scholarship player from Tulsa on their current roster.