Re: Boston University 2009-2010 Season Thread II: Still got a pulse, time for CPR
Looks like I picked a good week to go to New Orleans instead of freezing up here watching BU get their a sses handed to them.
Anyway, some good comments out here, mostly because they reflect what I've been saying for several years.
However, it helps to put this season in context by remembering a few things.
Parker made his reputation by being a great recruiter. Look over the years at the players he brought in here, even back when college was not a route to the pros. He's never been a great strategist, and he's a terrible motivator. He was all of these things in 91 when he brought a team of Amonte-McEachern-Tkachuk into the finals...and lost. He was in 97 when they beat the top team the previous game only to lay an egg and give away a championship. He doesn't have the ability to make adjustments in game or during the week, as how many times has he gone public saying he "saw this coming in practice" after a terrible game, all the while missing the point that its his job to correct these things BEFORE game time.
Now the mookies of the world may think that he should be drawing his salary purely as a figurehead and needs to accept no responsibility for what happens on his watch (kinda explains mook's canine loyalty to George W Bush, but I digress..
). I disagree. I never see this happening to Jerry York's teams, even if they aren't loaded with talent. I never saw this out of Walshy's teams, although he was paying them by the game.
So you can expect the team to keep having similar seasons except for those rare instances where a boatload of good recruits all come in at once and by virtue of their superior talent need less coaching and motivation than the average college kid. That's entirely possible because again with the new arena helping out the guy can pick talent. Coaching it is another matter. As I said in another thread, I never got the sense that players would go through a brick wall for Parker. His style is of a bygone era where the coach was king and kids had no other options. Bonino must be kicking himself for not leaving when his stock was highest. Beyond him, after this season the rest of them all need to stick around and try to put this debacle behind them. Its happened before that players motivated themselves as they reached their senior year, knowing it was the last chance to make a good impression (Yip, Lawrence, etc). It would also have been nice for the coach to go out on top to cap a legendary career. For every Joe Paterno out there, a guy who seems to have found a new level of respectability over the past few years after everybody had written him off, there's a hundred more Bobby Bowden's or Ron Masons who won't gracefully depart the scene. I have a feeling I know how this one is going to end up.
