Blog About Tention

[upstonehouse]

Hey Lions fans... I've been meaning to post this for a while now and finally got around to it:

blog.oregonlive.com/pilots/2008/03/a_tisket_a_tasket_no_coach_in.html

Tells how I feel about the Tention firing, which upon further reflection I feel was pretty darn unfair to the guy.

Please let me know if I got any facts/names wrong... I was kind of shooting from the hip on it and didn't spend much time looking stuff up.

Hope the coaching search is going well...

[fanblade]

I think your article is very fair. I'll have some more comments later but I think it speaks to what some upset with Tention's firing at LMU are thinking.

[fanblade]

OK, I was halfway done with this extremely long post ... I then realized I do not know if anyone will really care and a lot of the pieces have already been said over the months by mostly every fan and poster I've talked to. So I'll settle with just a long post...

The main reasons.

1) Stability does not necessarily breed competitiveness. The big west is an example. Their coaches get very cozy and well tenured but the teams are not necessarily competitive. When the rare NCAA appearance of a school not named UOP is made it is in the form of a sacrificial lamb. This is not the model that I feel LMU wants.

2) Blowouts were a signal of poor motivation, direction, and teaching. We were being blown-out by teams with less talent and even younger teams than us. We can make excuses, some real and other not but the blowout disparity was too great to ignore. It was the largest in LMU history and it has been well known that our history hasn't been made up of powerhouse squads.

It was a chilling, hopeless, and draining effect that dragged from season one's missed opportunity, to the UP Tourney blowout in season 2, to all of season 3. It was an amplifying echo. Yes there were road blocks and wrenches but many teams face them but are not sent in path of destitution.

3) Tangible improvement over Aggers. Aggers was a capable coach, a nice coach, but not well suited for the growing competitive environment of the WCC. .500 seasons sound like a nice treat right about now but I really do believe the administration wants us to be #1 and #2 in the conference year in and year out, the President and AD have said this. In Tention's 3 seasons there were no real improvements over what Aggers was able to do in recruiting, scheduling, or record. Looking into the crystal ball in the next 2 or even 3 seasons would we be WCC pre-season picks for #1 or #2? That is looking at the trends of other teams in our conference as well as us. Bennett went dancing in his 7th year but the Gaels were competitive much earlier.


Was it a mistake? I do not know. I think who Husak picks as the next HC and what sort of boost to resources and support for the program occurs will send a signal whether this was just a gun-happy, reckless move to meet expectation that can never be fulfilled or if this will be a new direction to build actual basketball champions.

I do know that so far we were not in the best position to reach the lofty almost outrageous goals the administration is promoting. Winning championships and being competitive nationally.

[fanblade]

The LATimes is now chiming in with an article.

Fullerton looks to build on basketball success

By Peter Yoon, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 22, 2008

OMAHA -- For five days, the Cal State Fullerton basketball team basked in the spotlight, the Titans attracting so much media attention in the buildup to their NCAA tournament appearance that even loquacious Coach Bob Burton sometimes ran out of words.

Now the trick will be to try to build on that success instead of letting it become a distant memory, which is what happened the last time the Titans made the NCAA tournament in 1978.

"Hopefully nobody has the mind-set that we're the big thing in the Big West now and we can come back and relax," junior guard Josh Akognon, the team's scoring leader, said after Fullerton's season-ending 71-56 loss to Wisconsin in a first-round game Thursday. "Hopefully, everybody comes back hungry and we can come back and get out of this first round."

Getting out of the first round has been no easy task for Big West teams. Of the teams currently in the conference, only Pacific, which has first-round victories over Providence in 2004 and Pittsburgh in 2005, has won an NCAA tournament game in the last 18 seasons.

UC Santa Barbara in 1990 is the only other current Big West team that has won a first-round game since that 1978 Fullerton team that advanced to the Elite Eight.

"I hope we can change those kinds of things," Burton said. "I hope it's the case that at least we've put the program on the map now and now people are saying, 'Geez, maybe some good things are going on over there.' "

A repeat for Fullerton will be difficult. The Titans will have Akognon back after he averaged 20.2 points and scored 31 Thursday, but they lose six seniors, including four starters.

Pacific will enter next season as the favorite, with every player returning from a team that finished a game out of first place.

Cal State Northridge and UC Santa Barbara should also be in the mix, though the Gauchos need to replace conference co-player of the year Alex Harris.

One thing the Big West has is some stability among its coaches. Four of the league's nine coaches have been with their teams for at least 10 seasons and three others have been with their teams for at least five.

That's not the case in the West Coast Conference, which has had five of its eight teams change coaches in the last year -- including Pepperdine and Loyola Marymount.

Pepperdine, which last made the NCAA tournament in 2002 and last won a game in 2000, has brought back Tom Asbury, the coach who led the Waves to NCAA tournament appearances in 1991, '92 and '94. He takes over a team that has gone 26-64 the last three seasons.

"Do we have challenges here in this program? Of course we do," Asbury said at his introductory news conference last month. "We're certainly going to do everything in our power to build this program back up to where it was."

But the Waves are in flux. Former coach Vance Walberg abruptly resigned in the middle of the season and many of the players are still deciding whether they will come back to play for Asbury.

Loyola Marymount has its own problems. Coach Rodney Tention and the school parted ways March 12 after the Lions went 30-61 in his three seasons.

Nobody has officially even interviewed for that job yet, a school spokesman said, but a search team is formulating a list of candidates.

Among those who have been in contact with the school are former San Diego coach Brad Holland and Denver Nuggets assistant Mike Dunlap, the former coach at Division II Metro State who is a Loyola graduate and is a former USC assistant.

Other names of interest include Fullerton's Burton, Northridge's Bobby Braswell, USC assistant Gib Arnold and Washington assistant Cameron Dollar.

"One of my goals is to find someone who will bring the program not just back to respectability, but to prominence," LMU Athletic Director Bill Husak said in a telephone interview Friday. "And with the quality of candidates that have shown interest, I'm fairly positive that we can do that."

The Lions have not been to the NCAA tournament since their magical Bo Kimble-led and Hank Gathers-inspired run in 1990, and they have had only three winning records in the last 18 seasons, a span in which they've lost 20 or more games eight times.

[crimson50]

Fanblade I disagree. Nice to see you throwing the coaching staff under the bus to explain why the lions have been down. It is awful what they did to Rodney. Shoved out when he had 3 seasons. This is the NBA. He was a great guy and it is sad that his one time supporters are dancing on his grave just because he couldn't live up to a fantasy after 3 years.

[newlionfan]

alert2 said:

We were being embarrassed on a national stage. That was not the idea. End of Story.

That's what happens when dreamers think there is a quick fix. Rodney got the Tyrone Willingham treatment.

[greendoberman]

The writer of that article (the LA Times) is an LMU alum that graduated back in the glory days. I'm sure he has an opinion he wished he could share.

[lionspride]

crimson50 said:

Fanblade I disagree. Nice to see you throwing the coaching staff under the bus to explain why the lions have been down. It is awful what they did to Rodney. Shoved out when he had 3 seasons. This is the NBA. He was a great guy and it is sad that his one time supporters are dancing on his grave just because he couldn't live up to a fantasy after 3 years.

Disagree with you crimson50maynard. Rodney made his bed with his recruiting strategy mistakes of big men. The blow outs were an embarrassment, let alone to DII teams. 2008-2009 would not have shown much improvement because of missing big men. Recruiting strategy and lack of motivating players done it Tention. He never felt the Tension because he thought he was going to get a "bye" for this 2007-2008 season. It was not until Husak was attending practices and getting compliants from alumni/boosters/parents of players did Tention feel the heat. It was too late for him to recover.

O.J., Tim, Jenkins (if he does not transfer), Walker, Sutton, Wright, and Kwame will be solid for the Lions in the upcoming years. We just need 2 big guys that have solid skills or 1 dominant big guy that can own the paint. The next coach will develop this talent as Rodney could not get these players to play his AZ system (that is if Husak better make a pick or this program may be heading for another 5-7 years of futility).

[lmu2008]

Doesn't anyone remember how when RT first got here and promised lots of scoring and a run and gun offense? We finished last in scoring, so much for that, that's why he's GONE and good riddance.

I'm not getting my hopes up for Monty cuz once he slips through our hands I won't be heartbroken. Therefore I'm going to lower my expectations and assume the next coach will be someone we're all going to be pissed off about...

[lmutex]

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That's the spirit.