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I'd much rather be a springboard than giving 8 year long extensions to a coach with a .500 career record, that isn't being poached by bigger programs... -Decent academics on both ends of the spectrum CHECK -Growing school both enrollment and buildings CHECK -Nice/decent area to live/raise a family CHECK -Newer arena CHECK -Pays competitively CHECK -East coast city, 3 hours from NYC and Richmond with Philly DC and NJ sandwiched in between for recruiting CHECK -Currently no other local teams to compete with CHECK (Not counting the twerps) -Close enough for most players families to come to a good amount of games CHECK -Decent conference that should allow for opportunity to make dance and play as a 12-14 seed CHECK -No long bus rides in conference CHECK -No real job pressure except from 10-15 posters on TowsonFans.com CHECK

TUTigers2012, you’re absolutely spot on about your “who would want to coach here” thoughts. I’d be happy to be a lily pad for a coach to move onto a bigger program, after making us a success. If that means we were used, than in the immortal lyrics of Bill Withers “I want to spread the news that if it feels this good getting used, you just keep on using me until you use me up.”

There are always crickets when the team is winning because you're 100% right in the fact that people in today's world would rather be negative/pessimistic about things to make themselves feel better/smarter. I hate coming on this board when we lose because everyone is a know it all and makes it incredibly personal. I feel like the majority of the posters would rather be right than the programs being successful.

And who do we have? Nobody. Read that again. N-O-B-O-D-Y. Every team in this conference with the exception of probably Elon and JMU has someone on the team that when you look at the scouting report, you say, "we need to make sure we stop this guy". We don't have that. And we haven't had that really since Benimon left (you could make the case for Moto or Morsell but they were prone to disappear on their own more than what the opponents did to them). All we have are a bunch of complementary players who, if they were paired with an alpha dog, might light it up on a regular basis as well. And because it's a bunch of spare parts, we get the inconsistency we see on a game-by-game basis. The team that I saw take Florida to the wire is light years away from where we're at now. But given what we've seen in the first 14 games, it makes sense. Play great at Florida, clank a home game against Kent State, throw away a win against Buffalo, blitz the hell out of St. Joe's, come back from yakking a lead against Tulane, embarrass yourselves against NE and in the 2nd half against Hofstra. Get used to it the rest of the season because who knows what we're gonna get on a nightly basis. It comes down to recruiting and while the staff might be 'trusting their eyes', it's become pretty obvious that they need to go see the ophthalmologist. Unfortunately for them, the culture of the program is such that it won't be attractive to someone who would be the alpha dog that we desperately need. The refusal to use the athletes to get out and run and to revamp the offense is a giant black eye on the staff. And for certain players to take steps back in their development also earns the staff demerits. After the way we've shown ourselves against two of the best teams in the conference and what we will likely show in game 3 against the other really good team, I would be shocked if we're not playing in the Friday night loser bowl in the conference tournament. The New Year's Resolution for this staff had better be to take a long soul-searching look inside themselves and make some characteristic changes. Otherwise, the cycle will never change and opponents will continue to brush us aside like what we've seen these last 2 games.