How's McClain look now...I HAVE A BETTER ANSWER!

Fri Nov 19, 2010 10:16 am

This:

Fri Nov 19, 2010 10:21 am

He is still the only UW coach to win a MWC championship. And at least his kids played hard for him.

Fri Nov 19, 2010 10:31 am

Still think all the McClain hate is f-word stupid. He is a GREAT coach. Best we have had in Wyo for a LONG time

Fri Nov 19, 2010 10:33 am

TwoTone wrote:Still think all the McClain hate is f##king stupid. He is a GREAT coach. Best we have had in Wyo for a LONG time

Disagree completely. GREAT coaches don't get fired, then turn into assistants, then get left for dead, then turned into assistants again.

He is partly responsible for where we are right now, like it or not.

Fri Nov 19, 2010 11:21 am

McPeachy,

I somewhat disagree. When McClain was fired, he left behind Brandon Ewing and Brad Jones. I think that in the pre season coaches poll, Wyoming was picked very high, second or third. I might be wrong but I know we were thought to be pretty good. Schroyer took that team and drove us straight into the play in game.

I thought Heath should have been fired after that first season. He had decent talent and made it WORSE!

While I agree that McClain just could not recruit any good big men or shooters in his last few years, we were pretty competitive. He did bring Justin Williams here. We had Jay Straight. I know there were some bad years and I thought too many JC players were brought in who turned out to be not very good. But compared to Schroyer, McClain recruited NBA type talent.

With the right hire, we might have been competitive right away. So, I put this situation at Heath's door and no one else's.

Fri Nov 19, 2010 12:21 pm

I agree McClain was a good coach and won two MWC championships. He wasn't as good with the academics and butt kissing the McPeachy types so that is why he was gone. Even the last few years he was here he took us deep into the MWC tourney and never lost as many blowout games as Heath has in Conference. Look it up yourself if you don't believe but I think McClain only lost less than 5 conference games by 15 or more points. Heath did that last year.

Heath needs fired. I said it before when they were going to fire McClain "who are you going to get?" Now anyone looks better than Heath and had we kept McClain it wouldn't be as bad as it is now.

Fri Nov 19, 2010 12:24 pm

Come on guys, McClain wasn't a good coach. He was at the beginning, but fell to the bottom half of the conference. A solid coach should keep us in the top half.

What Wyoming needs to do is spend a little money and get a good coach. We can certainly do better than what we've had the last couple of hires. We can get a good coach to come to Laramie if we dangle some dough in front of him.

Fri Nov 19, 2010 1:05 pm

JimmyDimes wrote:Come on guys, McClain wasn't a good coach. He was at the beginning, but fell to the bottom half of the conference. A solid coach should keep us in the top half.

What Wyoming needs to do is spend a little money and get a good coach. We can certainly do better than what we've had the last couple of hires. We can get a good coach to come to Laramie if we dangle some dough in front of him.

You may be right, Jimmy. But with the program in the condition it is now, I'm starting to remember McClain as if he was Red Auerbach!

Fri Nov 19, 2010 1:08 pm

I think we'd all take McClain at this point, but we should all want more.

Fri Nov 19, 2010 2:11 pm

thirtyseven wrote:I agree McClain was a good coach and won two MWC championships. He wasn't as good with the academics and butt kissing the McPeachy types so that is why he was gone. Even the last few years he was here he took us deep into the MWC tourney and never lost as many blowout games as Heath has in Conference. Look it up yourself if you don't believe but I think McClain only lost less than 5 conference games by 15 or more points. Heath did that last year.

Heath needs fired. I said it before when they were going to fire McClain "who are you going to get?" Now anyone looks better than Heath and had we kept McClain it wouldn't be as bad as it is now.

Whatever. You don't know me, and don't make this poop personal.

You apparantly either have a short memory, or haven't been a fan for very long. Remember the 100th year celebration game vs. Utah? We didn't score a SINGLE POINT for the first 12 (TWELVE) game minutes! 100th year celebration game. Look at attendance for Mac's last 4 years and it tells the story. Stories like the Joseph Taylor stomp! There was a quality situation. And there are many, many more.

Fri Nov 19, 2010 3:26 pm

Whatever. You don't know me, and don't make this s##t personal.

You apparantly either have a short memory, or haven't been a fan for very long. Remember the 100th year celebration game vs. Utah? We didn't score a SINGLE POINT for the first 12 (TWELVE) game minutes! 100th year celebration game. Look at attendance for Mac's last 4 years and it tells the story. Stories like the Joseph Taylor stomp! There was a quality situation. And there are many, many more.[/quote]

Well if you remember Brandy's team also got into a brawl. I almost support our players sticking up for each other to the extend of what they did. As for the one cherry picked blow out game your talking about, sure that was a bad game but wasn't Utah in the top Ten that year and It was Mac worse team in the 9 years he was here.
It wasn't pretty but find me a coach in all of sports who didn't have a Bad game in 9 years, let alone a coach at wyoming. But yeah agree to disagree but your wrong hahaha

Fri Nov 19, 2010 3:36 pm

Danmully wrote:Well if you remember Brandy's team also got into a brawl. I almost support our players sticking up for each other to the extend of what they did. As for the one cherry picked blow out game your talking about, sure that was a bad game but wasn't Utah in the top Ten that year and It was Mac worse team in the 9 years he was here.
It wasn't pretty but find me a coach in all of sports who didn't have a Bad game in 9 years, let alone a coach at wyoming. But yeah agree to disagree but your wrong hahaha

I don't remember that (as I should) but was an off-the-bench gang stomp involved? I highly doubt it. I know Jim personally...and he was a tough SOB as a coach, yet his players loved him. He should have never left UW for SDSU (but is was health related), and we ended up with Dees running what was (IMO) a national contender down a notch or 2 (or 3).

Mac had 4 losing seasons in a row (MWC) to end his career at UW...that was too much, coming off of 4 winning seasons in a row (although not all the players were McClains).

Fri Nov 19, 2010 7:31 pm

How is a 17 win season that got him fired a losing season?

Mon Nov 22, 2010 8:46 am

TwoTone wrote:How is a 17 win season that got him fired a losing season?

MWC losing season. 4 of them in a row...at .500 or less (only one at 7-7).

Yes, Buckymac was / is a better coach than Heath, but let's not think he was Jesus Christ and walking on water.

Sad that our program has sunk to this level...that we are hindsighting McClain and praising how "great" he was...

Mon Nov 22, 2010 12:24 pm

McPeachy wrote:
TwoTone wrote:How is a 17 win season that got him fired a losing season?
MWC losing season. 4 of them in a row...at .500 or less (only one at 7-7).

Yes, Buckymac was / is a better coach than Heath, but let's not think he was Jesus Christ and walking on water.

Sad that our program has sunk to this level...that we are hindsighting McClain and praising how "great" he was...

Exactly. I think we can all agree (at least everyone on this board, I know a few people on other boards don't) that McClain>>>>>Schroyer. But really, in Heath Schroyer we are talking about the worst coach we have ever had on the hardwood.

McClain's program was heading the wrong direction overall. I have zero doubt that we would have been better off keeping him compared to Heath, but I also don't believe the bar needs to be set that low. As McPeachy pointed out, in McClain's last 4 seasons we were 23-37 in MWC play and 57-63 overall (or thereabouts). That's better than Heath (15-33 MWC, soon to be 16-48 or so), but hardly grounds for celebration.

This is why I am so stridently anti-Burman. McClain had issues and I understand the move, but what a giant missed opportunity to hire a quality coach. Ewing, Jones, Platt, Okoye, Taylor, and maybe Spencer (although I assume he wouldn't have made the grade regardless of the coach) was a pretty solid nucleus. Coming off of a 7-9, 17 win season, that is a group that was good enough, along with a couple of added pieces, to be a contender. Yet, instead of going out and hiring a quality coach, Tom brought in his buddy. Worse than that, they used off the court excuses (APR, etc.) to try to mask the poor quality coaching that was going on by Heath's staff.

The rebuilding job that faces the next coach is monumentally more difficult than what was there 4 years ago. The right coach at that time really could have had the Pokes bounce back quickly. The nucleus of players was there and the fanbase was not that far gone. The attendance was still around 6k and the 10k years were only 4 years removed. The next coach will face a 4k attendance, 8 years removed from relevancy and a roster that is not ready to compete at this level (although I like each of our players individually and I don't mean to single them out as the problem, but cumulatively we don't have the talent level right now to compete in the top half of the MWC).

There is no reason why such a difficult hire should be made by someone who has proven he is incapable of doing so.

Mon Nov 22, 2010 2:02 pm

NowherePoke wrote:
McPeachy wrote:
TwoTone wrote:How is a 17 win season that got him fired a losing season?
MWC losing season. 4 of them in a row...at .500 or less (only one at 7-7).

Yes, Buckymac was / is a better coach than Heath, but let's not think he was Jesus Christ and walking on water.

Sad that our program has sunk to this level...that we are hindsighting McClain and praising how "great" he was...
Exactly. I think we can all agree (at least everyone on this board, I know a few people on other boards don't) that McClain>>>>>Schroyer. But really, in Heath Schroyer we are talking about the worst coach we have ever had on the hardwood.

McClain's program was heading the wrong direction overall. I have zero doubt that we would have been better off keeping him compared to Heath, but I also don't believe the bar needs to be set that low. As McPeachy pointed out, in McClain's last 4 seasons we were 23-37 in MWC play and 57-63 overall (or thereabouts). That's better than Heath (15-33 MWC, soon to be 16-48 or so), but hardly grounds for celebration.

This is why I am so stridently anti-Burman. McClain had issues and I understand the move, but what a giant missed opportunity to hire a quality coach. Ewing, Jones, Platt, Okoye, Taylor, and maybe Spencer (although I assume he wouldn't have made the grade regardless of the coach) was a pretty solid nucleus. Coming off of a 7-9, 17 win season, that is a group that was good enough, along with a couple of added pieces, to be a contender. Yet, instead of going out and hiring a quality coach, Tom brought in his buddy. Worse than that, they used off the court excuses (APR, etc.) to try to mask the poor quality coaching that was going on by Heath's staff.

The rebuilding job that faces the next coach is monumentally more difficult than what was there 4 years ago. The right coach at that time really could have had the Pokes bounce back quickly. The nucleus of players was there and the fanbase was not that far gone. The attendance was still around 6k and the 10k years were only 4 years removed. The next coach will face a 4k attendance, 8 years removed from relevancy and a roster that is not ready to compete at this level (although I like each of our players individually and I don't mean to single them out as the problem, but cumulatively we don't have the talent level right now to compete in the top half of the MWC).

There is no reason why such a difficult hire should be made by someone who has proven he is incapable of doing so.

+1000!!!!

Mon Nov 22, 2010 2:24 pm

Mcpeach, we don't see eye to eye on Mcclain ( I think he was a good coach) but I 100% agree that Schroyer needs to be gone and a good coach hired. No point in bitching about the Mcclain firing, it is in the past and you are correct that an upgrade could have been made after his firing (I agree that we could have found someone with a better upside than Mcclain).

No point worrying about the past, I don't care about Mcclain anymore I just hope we get a good hire after this year and return the program to were it was and better.

Mon Nov 22, 2010 4:16 pm

marcuswyo wrote:I just hope we get a good hire after this year and return the program to were it was and better.

That is my biggest concern. Can the right hire be made by the same guy that hired Heath? Do we get to shell out another $30,000.00 for nothing? What a f-word complete waste of money that was. Could have traveled the band to CSU / AFA for a few years on that budget...both football and basketball.

For my own sanity, it is best for me to let the season play out...and on March 12th make the appropriate calls to the appropriate people...whatever that may be.

Thank you UW Football...for at least keeping me from jumping.