The pain of harsh reality

People don't like being wrong. Some learn from it. Some refuse to accept it, despite overpowering evidence. We see it endemically in the body politic, of course, especially lately, but it is rarely more apparent than in sports fandom, that special domain where so many of us are convinced that we are as knowledgeable as coaches.

To wit the latest post on the Eunuch board. It's from one of our best fans (and I mean that sincerely), but one who was so invested in the myopic conviction that all our problems were the fault of the last coaching staff that instead of meeting the evidence that the program has been shredded head on, he has decided to double down on a storyline that was always questionable at best. Obviously, the glass was not always half empty under Coach Jeter. But that perception was generally more common among those who refused to look behind the curtain, who "didn't give a flying f*** who the AD was" -- even, apparently, when the AD was taking actions that directly harmed the program.

In truth there is no evidence whatsoever that the team is better coached today than it was under Coach Jeter. Quite the contrary. And this isn't a knock on Jordan. It would have been shocking if a rookie coach had the same coaching acumen as a veteran who took us to five 20 win seasons, two NCAA tournaments, two HL titles, two HL tournament titles, and steered us back to being a winning program after one AD's inexplicable decision to consign us to a high school gym, again after the academic suspension that was the result of administrative incompetence killed our momentum in 2015 -- and despite the "sabotage" of another AD. Many fans just don't want to be bothered by such arcane issues as whether the AD is truly assisting the program, just as others don't care about how recruits are acquired, or what the character of the team and its players is like. It's about winning or losing, period. The just want to eat the sausage, not watch it made.

But let's take a clear eyed look at where we are, in exactly that context of winning and losing. Instead of having a team that would have featured three high D1 quality senior starters -- an astonishing rarity in mid-major basketball -- including arguably one of the top 5 or 10 guard tandems in the country, we have a team that, despite playing in the worst, weakest Horizon League in history, is objectively terrible. 8-19. 4-10. That's not just an objective measure -- it's the only one that counts in terms of winning and losing. Overmatched and undercoached, and with no better prospects than the dim possibility of not finishing in last place. In the worst, weakest Horizon League in history. And we not only traded a real possibility of a league championship and an NCAA tournament this year for a race to the bottom -- we are also clearly years away from simply getting the program back to where Rob Jeter already had it. If we ever do. And in making this awful trade, a lot of good people got hurt in the process. Perhaps that horrible realization is setting in for some.

And there's another critical objective measure that we need to look at. Attendance. Surely to the surprise of the few who agreed with our friend on the E board, their conviction about what ailed the program does not appear to have been widely shared. There was no burst of enthusiasm for change going into this year that brought more fans. Far from it. The fans voted with their feet -- by not walking into the Arena, notwithstanding all the physical improvements. They saw what happened to our program for what it was -- an ill-considered and ill-intentioned purge of good people, from coaches to administrators to players. Good people who had devoted themselves to making this a program we could be proud of despite the interference from and lack of support by those whose responsibility it was to provide that support.

At this point there is simply no doubt that our attendance has crashed to Cobbian levels, just as our team's performance has. How do you think that will affect our entire athletic program going forward? It's pretty obvious. And that is 100% on our administration. 100%.

This is us now. This is Milwaukee basketball. A struggling team in a terrible league with disappearing fan support. Some folks need to own it.

This appears to be a classic case of cutting off our nose to spite our face.

Typically a coach is fired AFTER a last place single digit win season, not fired to HAVE a last place single digit win season. Either Braun is a counter-intuitive genius or she is a rank incompetent. At this point, does anyone expect that Milwaukee will have a bounce back season next season like we did after Jeter's last single digit win season (21-14 and an NCAA Tourney first round win)? I don't.

The bigger question is why so many "Milwaukee Fans" are so invested in the administration that they ignore the very obvious signs of an utterly collapsed program. That is the part I cannot understand at all. There is LITERALLY no pressure being put on her by these so-called "fans" for the state of the program. None. Not even a whisper of discontent.

You would think after all the tumult she has caused, and the expectations she herself set, there would be at least one on that board who is unhappy with her performance. It's like they are so determined to prove they were "right" when some of us said that the emperor had no clothes that they are in full cognitive dissonance mode now, and no matter how bad things get they will just ignore it.

I mean we are at a point where multiple High School programs are drawing more attendance than a D1 program in a metro area of almost 2 million people, and even FREE BEER cannot improve those numbers. I think if they had a promotion where they PAID people $20 to come to a game, they would not break 1,200 butts in the seats.

In fairness, that board is down to about ten people, only a few of whom ever post. Probably 65-70% of the posts are from one guy. And what do we have here? Another ten people?

The sad truth is that the fan base is so eroded at this point that almost no one cares either way. That's how you kill a program.

Just imagine how much easier life will be for our AD when she doesn't have a men's D1 basketball team to worry about any more. I assume this was the plan, since everything that has happened seems to have that result as its object.

This seems like the best place to interject that our present RPI is 271. Only once during Rob's 11 years did we finish lower than that ... and it happened during the Klotsche Banishment Season of 2012-13, when we finished at 307. Outside of that, our nadir was 241 in the Reboot Season of 2006-07.

For the record, we finished with a 207 RPI (and a 14-16 mark) in the Season To Nowhere of 2014-15, when Rob held the team together enough to goad it into 7 wins in our last 9 "meaningless" games.

Back to today, it's a virtual certainly that we'll finish with our fewest wins and our lowest rating since Andy Geiger decided to tether us to the Horizon League for the foreseeable future ... or until we drop down a division or two.

Does anyone realistically expect that we'll finish with many more than 13 or 14 wins next season with Cody exhausting his eligibility and the gravy train of talent recruited primarily by Chad coming to an end? In fact, isn't it likely that we won't be much better than we were in the Transition Year of 2007-08, when we finished at 14-16 and with an RPI of 180?

Rob was going to leave at the end of this season anyway (why on earth would he have stayed?!?) and LJ or somebody close to him in terms of background and profile would have been available this upcoming offseason, so what exactly was gained by the purge?

There is of course no good answer. Even if the AD considered Rob bathwater, her impetuous firing of him last year threw the baby out with him. I will never, NEVER get over the fact that for her, firing a guy who had only ever represented the University with class, and who would only have been with the program ONE more year, was worth severely damaging the program, alienating fans and donors to the extent that our attendance has collapsed to Cobbian (if not ANTRIMIAN) levels, driving away some of the finest players we have ever had and thereby destroying the real potential for a great year in a program that needs them terribly. If someone can cite a worse management decision by a D1 AD, I would like to know what it was so that we can all be vigilant that decision maker never comes close to our program. The only thing close that I can think of was Geiger taking us back to the high school gym.

We can complain all we want about being the red-headed stepchild to Madison, or having to exist in MU's shadow, but so much of the dysfunction in our athletic program over all these years is purely because of the bad hiring decisions we have made.

And dr, last year I made the same point you made: LJ, or a dozen guys just like him, would have been available this year, next year, etc. Hell, in many respects Rob was just like him -- except for having 11 years of experience and having already demonstrated he knew how to win despite the administrative incompetence around him.

Some people, when brought in to lead an organization, seem to believe that they have a mandate to change everything, rather than to build on the organization's existing strengths and make changes in areas of weakness. My dad regards such people to be bad leaders; he said so to me when we had such a leader brought in to the division i work in, and I certainly saw plenty of indications that my father's analysis was correct during this leader's (mercifully) short tenure.

i believe the same analysis applies to the Athletics department. Amanda Braun seems to have decided that she was brought in to change everything rather than building on the existing strengths of the department. Only three employees have continued to work for the department through the transition. I think that indicates that Braun had decided she needed to change things rather than getting and using the advice of good, experienced staff to build on what is working well. The upheaval also suggests poor human relations skills, as some of the staff decided they wouldn't be able to work with or for Braun.

My division lost a number of good people to bad leadership, and would have lost far more if the leader had not left rather abruptly after a relatively short time in place. Braun has stayed in place longer, and has done more damage, which means it will take more time and effort for Athletics to recover.

Change, we are told, is inevitable, but care must be taken that changes made are for the better. I imagine that those who didn't like the results under Coach Jeter's leadership have persuaded themselves that any change made would be for the better, at least eventually. I wonder how long it will be until they recognize that some changes are for the better, and some for the worse, and will see of what sort the changes are that Amanda Braun has made. Plenty of us have seen or expect to see little if any evidence that Braun's changes will lead to improvements.

Your first problem is you never listened to Mark Twain: "Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel."

I'll have my thoughts on this later.

They've picked up the discussion about the improvements to Panther Arena again this week on the other board. A couple of folks are complaining that so many of the concessions stands are not open for Panther home games. While there is recognition that the crowds for Panther games are so small it doesn't pay to open too many concession stands, no one seems want to discuss just how badly attendance has dropped off.

If it's going to take Coach Jordan and his staff three seasons or so to really make their mark on the program with a roster they've recruited, i don't suppose attendance numbers will be rising significantly any time soon. The optimists on the other board insist that the Panthers will be contending for the league title sooner rather than later, which should bring numbers up...if it happens. But the program will have a long way to go to get the numbers back to where they were...and even then playing in the arena won't help the department's bottom line unless the Panthers regularly draw larger crowds than they ever did before.

It's important to note that it will take an attendance jump of 2,800 or so to bring attendance back to 2010-11 and 2011-12 levels, which is where we had it before our consignment to the Klotsche Center, one of the worst moves in the history of our program.

The precipitous decline in attendance was not Rob Jeter's fault. It had fallen off gradually since 2005-06, but only by about 1,200. In fact, Rob had helped restore it to 3,200 by 2014-15, an increase of 1,000. Now it's crashed to 1,390, shades of the Ric Cobb Era for those of us who were around and lived to tell about it.

Is anyone in a decision-making administrative position taking note of this? Anyone? Bueller? ... Bueller?

Goals for next year? My buddy the Marquette fan, a longtime college basketball observer, says that 13 wins and a top-220 RPI is realistic.

This just got me thinking further about the state of the program.

What should we reasonably expect for next season?

Let's be clear. This season is OBJECTIVELY the worst season of Milwaukee basketball in every way since the Cobb era. Since the 1990s! The destruction of the program was so complete that the bar has been set so low that there is no way (God help us, I hope there's no way) that year two under LJ won't be "better." But what does that mean? Even if he can will this group to 16 or 17 wins or even 20 wins, what in God's name have we gained? NOTHING!!! But what have we lost? PLENTY!!! Donations by the hundreds of thousands. Fans by the thousands. Credibility, good will... it goes on and on. It's a complete debacle, for no better reason than ego.

So what should we "reasonably" expect? We should reasonably expect that next year will be much, much better than this year -- and still won't be any better than, and very likely won't be as good as, any of the last five years under Jeter that were played in the Arena!

So how will that measure up when she said the standard for the program had to be sub-100 RPIs? There's as much chance that Mexico will pay for a wall as there is of our program having a sub-100 rpi in the next two years. So what's her plan then? To fire LaVall, trash the program again and start over? Check out my sig line, Coach. Watch your back! -- you have been set up to fail!!