Honest question time.

I have also been told that UP is fully intending on implementing the "Cost of Attendance" scholarship additions that are currently being discussed by NCAA schools. This will be a strong differentiator for UP.

I'm not going to look-up the various academic majors that each WCC school offers, but I've been told that although high academic standards are in place at all the WCC schools, UP is lacking in academic majors that might interest an elite basketball.

There are quite a few majors at UP, but the two programs that are highly regarded are nursing and engineering....there just aren't a lot of D1 basketball players interested in those two majors, and if they were, the coaches would have a hard time allowing the student-athlete to miss multiple practices due to labs and clinics.

Soooo...  I have made some strong comments on this forum lately stating the need for change in the program.  I think I need to temper those just a little...  after having some time to think about it, talking to some other folks, and pondering some thoughts from the recent coverage, I still am of the thought that there needs to be some change in the program, but maybe not necessarily the head coach.  Rev has proven lately that he is in fact changing his tactics (for example, practicing of halftime breaks/returning to the court, change in practice styles leading into the tournament).  I do not know if that was happening previously.

One win (vs. SMC) does not make me think things are instantly where I want us to be... there needs to be continuous changes/improvements all around the program--all aspects need to be constantly critically reviewed (and never static).  Do we have the correct Assistants?  Is the institutional commitment (priorities, money/funding, marketing, campus involvement) where it needs to be in relation to our peers?  Are the incoming recruits of high enough caliber on and off the court?  Are the tough decisions being made?  

I am not yet convinced that we are cementing ourselves as a mid- to top of conference team.  Are we going to avoid the mistakes that have lead to the poor results from recent years (decades)?  I'm not sure, but I am now seeing some progress, albeit slower than any of us want.  If we fall back into 9th-10th place next year, I reserve the right to flip back on my position!!

DoubleDipper wrote:I'm not going to look-up the various academic majors that each WCC school offers, but I've been told that although high academic standards are in place at all the WCC schools, UP is lacking in academic majors that might interest an elite basketball.

There are quite a few majors at UP, but the two programs that are highly regarded are nursing and engineering....there just aren't a lot of D1 basketball players interested in those two majors, and if they were, the coaches would have a hard time allowing the student-athlete to miss multiple practices due to labs and clinics.

This is an interesting point...  what is the U doing to address this, if it is a true issue?  It is hard to just add a major in Basket Weaving... but maybe emphasizing other majors/courses/options? Time to get creative...

Common majors for athletes are sociology, business and communications.  UP has all those.  Other common majors are general/interdisciplinary, sports admin/mgmt and criminal justice. There is a general studies program, but nothing for the other two.

sports/college/2008-11-18-majors-graphic

http://www.up.edu/academics/majors/

PilotNut wrote:It is hard to just add a major in Basket Weaving... but maybe emphasizing other majors/courses/options?  Time to get creative...

http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2014/7/9/5885433/ncaa-trial-student-athletes-education

http://www.sportingnews.com/ncaa-basketball/story/2014-06-11/unc-rashad-mccants-2014-nba-ncaa-college-basketball-fake-classes-easy-majors

Not really sure that is the path we want to go down.

How about this idea?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/education/edlife/football-major-basketball-minor.html?_r=0

All I can say about the majors and curriculum offered at UP is this. My son at first declared his major as biology to prepare for med school. After quickly realizing that labs and such would not work with practice he changed to engineering. That path was quickly derailed as there is only 24 hours in a day and apparently that major takes approx 25 hours a day. In fact the only basketball player that I recall who successfully completed that task was Tara Cronin but she was quoted as saying that all she had time for was to eat and study. Apparently sleep was not on the agenda.
At the end of the day Psychology won the day with the thought it would lend itself nicely to law school.
My point is that UP has some great majors to offer, the difficulty lies in balancing the time required to be a true student athlete at a D1 program.
As a parent I would rather see a .500 team laden with students prepared to be successful in their careers than a bunch of "basket weave" graduates who squandered a fully paid education and a prime opportunity to secure a career that will last a lifetime.
Is this the popular opinion of fans around the country? Not likely but it is the priority of one parent who doesnt have to worry about what their son is going to do after basketball becomes a faded memory.

Well said, pd1....

I believe that is the way many of us think, but as few of us are the parents of D1 athletes, it is good to see your words reinforce our views.

The few parents I have spoken to who have thought sports were more important than academics have found there children usually end up transferring or dropping out when the academic rigors are too tough....unfortunately, there child then has no real academic background to enter the "real world."

It is interesting, but not surprising that your son had to reconsider his choice of majors twice while at UP....there is just not enough time in the day to do everything.

I had a chat with Alec and his mom recently....they are both focused on studies! It is often difficult to emphasize that point with teenagers, but parents should have a clear picture.

I didn't mean to imply that we should add sham courses/degrees... rather with limited options compared to larger institutions, I hope the U can provide viable options for student-athletes, and the course offerings are not a reason a SA goes elsewhere.

NoPoNeighbor wrote:How about this idea?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/education/edlife/football-major-basketball-minor.html?_r=0

From the article:

“Kids come to universities to play basketball and football professionally,” Dr. Pargman said. “Why don’t we legitimize that effort?”

What happens when their body no longer allows them to be athletes for a career? Then what've they got? For example, the UO lineman described in this article. oregon_lineman_andre_yruretago  Mr. Yruretagoyena's major is General Social Science. His options include:
• The Crime, Law and Society track
• The Applied Economics, Business, and Society track
• The Geo-politics, Environment, and Policy track
• The Social Studies Teaching track
The UO web site lists many possible career paths.  Not sure what a football major prepares for except jock. http://admissions.uoregon.edu/majors/gensocialscience

Hey all,

I have been an avid reader of this forum for some time. At one point earlier I did have an account for about a week or two before I deleted it. This discussion made me want to come back.

Background on me: I graduated last year from UP and went on to the University of Georgia has a graduate student (for free!) to study for a PhD in Sport Management. Our program is housed in the Department of Kinesiology where we offer undergraduate majors in Exercise Science, Physical Education, and Sport Management. I can confirm that many athletes end up in our department.

I think UP would actually be a good place for a sport management major or minor given the availability of pro and college sports around Portland as well as the Nike and adidas HQs. Currently in Oregon: only U of O has a program (a good one at that). I will mention that Gonzaga, USF, and Saint Mary's all have programs too. You can check the NASSM website for schools that offer it.

I am open to answering any questions you have about it at all because I will admit I was spooked by it when I first looked into the degree (i.e. it's not a traditional degree like Biology, Economics, etc.). It's a growing field and athletes and non-athletes might want to see something like it available to them.

Go Pilots! Sic 'em Dawgs!

Welcome back!  It's good to hear from fans from across the country.  

UGAPilot wrote:I think UP would actually be a good place for a sport management major or minor given the availability of pro and college sports around Portland as well as the Nike and adidas HQs. Currently in Oregon: only U of O has a program (a good one at that).

Interesting point... I guess a question would be if there is enough demand to justify another school in OR offering the degree.  As you point out, with the growth of the Timbers, Adidias, Columbia Sportswear, Nike, etc., this may be something to consider.

This Scott Leykam interview is a must read for fans of any or all of the UP sports....and it should generate some interesting discussion.

http://portlandtribune.com/pt/12-sports/253298-120597-up-steps-up-its-game

Very good information. It addresses the elephant in the room: UP has finished at, or near, the bottom of the Commissioner's Cup standings for many years.

I look forward to hearing more about the fundraising activities coming up!

And covering the seats at Merlo?! That probably has a lot to do with T2 starting to play there.

PilotNut wrote:Very good information.  It addresses the elephant in the room: UP has finished at, or near, the bottom of the Commissioner's Cup standings for many years.

 

Well, depends on what you call many years. In 2010 the men placed Third and the wome 5th , despite not sponsoring several WCC sports that count towards the cup.
( no rowing and Softball then)

We might stand a better chance if we had Softball softball and Golf, but we just dropped the latter for Rowing a couple years ago and I've never heard of an interest in Softball. I suspect we will add Lacrosse first, and that isn't a WCC sport.

From the WCC site:

Year & final overall standings out of how many teams (due to additions of BYU & UOP):
2014-15, TBD, but I would guess it will be 9th or 10th.
2013-14, 9/10
2012-13, 8/9
2011-12, 9/9
2010-11, 4 (tie)/8
2009-10, 3/8
2008-09, 5/8
2007-08, 7/8
2006-07, 8/8
2005-06, 8/8
2004-05, 7/8
2003-04, 5/8
2002-03, 4/8
2001-02, 4/8 (Inaugural year of the Cup)

So I didn't remember that we did better in both 2010 and 2011. I can't put my finger on it, but I thought there was an adjustement for the different # of programs at the schools (I believe softball was just added as a WCC sport when Pacific joined? Or was it BYU?) Needless to say, there is plenty of room for improvement across the board here.... these are cyclical, and we are down right now (WBX, MBX, VB, MSOC, WTEN)... thus Leykam's focus/drive to catch up an turn things around.

We have never fielded a full complement of teams. I don't think they make allowances for that. Your points come from your placement in each sport, no weighting, as far as I recall. We get a big goose egg In Sports we don't field.

Blame Golf, and before that, rowing.

Good honest question. Reveno should definitely be back as coach based on graduation rate, clean player conduct and being generally competitive.
As many have stated, recruiting is the key to success and recruiting to UP is difficult. What the program needs is to hit the jackpot on a couple sleeper recruits.
Looking back, we might've expected Bailey and Vandermars to lead this team to glory. But it didn't work out for a variety of reasons.
Maybe Maker and Johnson (heart issue not withstanding) will be the jackpot pair that can mesh with returning players and take the team to the next level in the next few years. We shall see.
Reveno has represented the university well and so have his kids. We just need that one breakthrough class.
I say he should stay.

Well, he must be doing something wrong! As much as fans from other WCC schools bad mouth opposing coaches, they all say only nice things about Rev. He needs to beat their teams more often, and then we'll see how much they describe him as classy!

Actually, I am proud of how Rev represents UP, and I could not say that at some other WCC schools.

As far as holding leads, what I see as the primary problem - going for long stretches without scoring. It is hard for me to understanding what exactly Rev is doing offensively in the half court much of the time. The players seem to stand around much of the time, the floor is poorly spaced much of the time, and bottom line, the inability of guys to CONSISTENTLY knock down open shots. Defensively, I like a lot of what I see. For a team that is outmatched athletically much of the time, they play very good team defense - most of the time.

I think it's really hard to compare the efforts made in recruiting now to even 10 years ago, let alone 20-25 years ago, due mainly to the prevalence of the internet and social media. The best players I've seen at UP in the last 20 years have been Canaan Chatman (transferred along with Ray Ross from Oregon State), Lemont Daniels (transferred from a CC in Arkansas, if I remember correctly), Pooh Jeter (out of HS), and TJ Campbell (transfer). For sustained success, more high level recruits will need to be recruited from the high school ranks, so we have them for four years. Kevin Bailey was a "big time" recruit - from UP's typical expectation profile of a recruit - at the time. He had a nice career, but was very inconsistent, and I realize that injuries explained that to some extent. I've been saying this for years - you've got to go out and get players. I realize UP has relatively difficult academic requirements, but so do most all of the WCC schools. The players they have been recruiting are nice pieces, role players, but at some point, you have to get the difference makers and give them a reason to come here. I'm not really sure what the answer is, but I agree with PilotNut that there is a lot of apathy and no one seems to have come up with a solution.

Maybe we need to find out from past recruits who did NOT choose UP, but were recruited here, why ultimately they chose not to come here. I think this would be very useful information, and perhaps some follow up could be done in this vain.

They're asking questions, honest or not, at San Diego:


An announcement was made today stating that USD’s head coach for men’s basketball, Bill Grier, will not return for the 2015-16 season. Bill recently completed his eighth season with the Toreros men’s basketball program.

Unfortunate, but not unexpected...

The lack of discussion about Coach Grier's status when we were in Las Vegas was very telling.

On the flip side, the scuttlebutt indicated Coach Keating would remain at SCU even though he's not very well liked by a number of the SCU administrators.

No word on Coach Walters, but an official poll of USF fans indicated they enjoyed watching the women's team...

It's really too bad about Coach Grier leaving....obviously one of the most liked coaches in the conference, he always treats everyone with respect and dignity.  The tough thing about coaching is you've got to win....and Bill Grier did win, just not enough!

How does Grier's record compare to Reveno's?

[Grier // Reveno]
Overall: 117-144 (.448) // 128-157 (.449)
WCC: 51-73 (.411) // 54-84 (.391)
.500 seasons: 4 of 8 // 4 of 9
avg. WCC finish: 5.375 // 5.778
highest WCC finish: 3 // 3
worst WCC finish: 7 // 8

These two guys couldn't be much closer in terms of performance. Bottom line? If USD fires Grier and UP keeps Reveno, USD has higher standards.

Similar on-court records. What about the rest of the story?
APR 2012/12   966 // 980
APR 2011/12   936 // 995
14/15 avg attendance  2008 // 2155

What was Grier's graduation rate?  How many dismissals and transfers?  How much internal stuff we'll never know about?

Grier's best year was with Brad Holland's recruits.  He never matched it again.  
# winning seasons  2 // 4

He seems like a good guy, sorry to see him fired.  Curious to see who USD gets next.

Grier replaced Brad Holland.  Holland (according to wiki) was supportive of USD's strict academic requirements and graduated all but one of his players over 13 years. A lack of recent success was stated as the major reason for his firing.  So USD hired a GU man to get some of their success formula. Guess that didn't work out for USD.  Maybe they'll recycle an NBA coach next.