Cleveland State

[Masterofreality]

I posted this on another thread, but I thought it deserved its own. (Mods delete if not worthy.)

I respect the hell out of Gary Waters, he's not doing it with thugs, or empty headed players. Not only that, he's done this in three years- the same time as Sippin' Mick has had, although not in a comparable league, but also not with the advantages Little Mickey has either.

J'Nathan Bullock, the kid with the dreads, was a high school honor student with a 3.4 GPA and is majoring in Mechanical Engineering for Gawd' sake. Cedric Jackson transferred from St. Johns and is a Communications Major- and it shows. Chris Moore went to my kid's High School- St. Eds in Lakewood. Norris Cole was Salutatorian of his High School class at Dayton Dunbar, is a member of the National Honor Society and is a Education major.

I'm loving what Gary Waters represents and what he's doing at CSU. That is a program that I'm getting behind. I might buy seasons to them next year. They deserve support, because, like Xavier they are building their program the truly right way with quality people.

Root for them.

[XU 87]

Gary Waters is a good coach who made a bad decision when he went to Rutgers. And he actually had some success at Rutgers. The one thing that is good for Cleveland State is that Waters is 58 years old and may not receive much interest from larger schools at this point. So maybe he'll be at Cleveland State for a while. On the other hand, based on his past success, I would think there are some schools out there that will have some interest in him.

[chico]

I really like the way they play. They are one tough team and the few times I've seen them they look to be a team that will never quit.

Waters is a very good coach, one of those guys who with the right breaks could have been up there with the better guys in the game. Kind if reminds me of Staak or guys like Ron Jirsa or Ralph Willard in that they were very good coaches but made a bad choice of schools when jumping to a bigger conference.

[XU 87]

I don't agree with you about Jirsa. He didn't do well at ether Georgia or Marshall.

As for Willard, he was pretty successful at WKU and has done fairly well at Holy Cross. I'm not sure why things didn't work out at Pitt. But I think he's good coach and am a little surprised that he hasn't gone on to a bigger program considering his success at Holy Cross.

[The Artist]

Good post, MOR, didn't know any of that stuff. They're on my list of teams to root for.

[Firehose]

Pat Forde's latest column: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=forde_pat&id=4002983&sportCat=ncb

Sounds like we could have a very good relationship with Cleveland State. I'd love to see what we could do with some of those coaching techniques. Imagine if every player on our team had CJ's guts - that would be a scary prospect.

[chico]

I don't agree with you about Jirsa. He didn't do well at ether Georgia or Marshall.

As for Willard, he was pretty successful at WKU and has done fairly well at Holy Cross. I'm not sure why things didn't work out at Pitt. But I think he's good coach and am a little surprised that he hasn't gone on to a bigger program considering his success at Holy Cross.

He only got two years at UGA, so it was hard to tell. I think he could have done well if he had been given the chance - he had two very good recruiting classes and won 20 in his first year. I agree that his tenure at Marshall was not stellar.