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BU 2011-2012 Season: The bar is low, boys!

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Re: BU 2011-2012 Season: The bar is low, boys!

brassbonanza said:
If he's taking responsibility in the locker room in front of the team and the other coaches, that's the most important thing. .
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So it's better that he lies and blames young kids for his inadequacies in public and that's better, as long as he owns up to it in private. Hmph, not sure on that one.
 
Re: BU 2011-2012 Season: The bar is low, boys!

defkit said:
To me, they are both a far second and third to motivation. However, development is linked to motivation.
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Isn't recruting also linked to motvatoin? Shouldn't a players self motivation (and I can also use self dicipline here) be evaluated as part of the recruiting process?

defkit said:
In general, once the arena was built, recruiting has not been an issue, at least as far as talent. I have concerns with the lack of academic excellence over the past decade, but I honestly can't say if that is a big change from the 90's, as I didn't follow that aspect of the "game" back then.
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See above. Would not also academic excellence (to some extent) be linked to the self motivation / self dicipline level of a player?

I would argue that the problem may just be that while we are clearly recruiting talented players, we may not be recruiting (or at least landing) the "right" players.

Edit: To answer your question about the 90's... while I certinaly did not know every player. I can say that every player that I knew and was in class with would have generally been considered a good student.
 
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Re: BU 2011-2012 Season: The bar is low, boys!

Couldn't motivation also be an issue if you don't believe in your coach/his tactics?
 
Re: BU 2011-2012 Season: The bar is low, boys!

I don't think it's that simple, but in any case, all it takes is one (or a select few)
 
Re: BU 2011-2012 Season: The bar is low, boys!

For whatever it's worth, I'll say this- I either had class with, or knew close friends who had class with, about 11 different hockey players during my time at BU. I would say 7 or 8 qualified as "good students," meaning they showed up, did the work, contributed to discussions at least occasionally, etc.
 
Re: BU 2011-2012 Season: The bar is low, boys!

Two more quick points on the freep article, first, I'm not a journalist, nor did I study it, but I feel safe in making the statement that if you're going to write an article that's going to obviously be this controversial, make sure your facts and numbers are ALL 100% correct. The 13 second oversight, while not relevant to his point, detracts from his credibility. Second, don't contradict your own point. His column is titled "End of the road has come for Parker", and he follows it up with more definitive statements saying he believes "it's time for a change." Yet in the final sentence of the column, he ends his definitive commentary with far less declaratory and on the fence language: "For him, it may be time to call it a career." That's just bad writing, and again detracts from his credibility. Stick to your point and believe in it, or don't write about it.
 
Re: BU 2011-2012 Season: The bar is low, boys!

Harry Cleverly said:
It should also be noted that Bavis replaced Quinn as associate head coach, and Powers replaced Bavis as fulltime assistant.
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Right, but that's just the title game. I'm sure that Bavis kept doing the majority of the duties he'd done before, and Powers took on the roles (such as defenseman as mentioned) that Quinn had held.

J.D. said:
It's rinse and repeat with Parker as well...there's no difference.
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Yep, but it's the complete opposite so I never get bored. Eventually the "oops, I still haven't figured out what these timeouts are for" gets boring. At least Parker knows how to use those...

claver2010 said:
I thought you guys would like this: http://www.bcrejects.com

Saw it tweeted last night don't know who did it.
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Cute, but www.stanfordrejects.com has it beaten for years now. ;)
 
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Re: BU 2011-2012 Season: The bar is low, boys!

Good comments but I've been saying this about Parker for a dozen years. He didn't lose the ability to relate to and get the most out of players this year. He jumped the shark sometime in the late 90's.

Coming off of BU's mid 90's run, recruiting should have been near the top of anybody in the country. That would have been reflected in the post-Drury years. Those happened to be, aside from the one DiPietro year, the worst years of the program. Forget about bringing in a solid class, there were lucky for years to find one good player. Occasionally a talented player got mismanaged (Whitney for example). More often though these guys (think Sabo) just weren't any good.

I think this is due to two main problems.

1) He comes from an era where coaches had an adversarial relationship with their players. He's a college hockey version of former long time Bruins GM/Fossil Harry Sinden. We can complain about kids being coddled too much all day, but facts seem to bear out York's approach to his team vs Parkers. Clearly constantly throwing your team under a bus and kicking people out of the program isn't working. I've always gotten the sense that those BC kids would go through a wall for York. I don't get that sense over here.

2) He relies on the same system with few exceptions (2008-2009). He likes to grind, dump & chase/suck, clog the zone, etc. No matter what skill set a recruit brings in, he wants them to play the style of the 4th line checking forward. How often have we seen a defenseman near the top of the team's scoring leaders. Unless you have Bobby Orr back there, that shouldn't happen, but it does because of the way the team's O is designed. In some years, crashing the net more would have yielded better individual seasons and more wins.

You can't keep laying this on the assistants. Teams all have turnover, but the coach is ultimately responsible. With the arena, tradition, and location of the university BU should be bringing in top 5 classes every year and that should in turn be driving results. That ain't happening from where I'm sitting.
 
Re: BU 2011-2012 Season: The bar is low, boys!

Jacques Joubert said:
Thanks for calling this to my attention. This will be down at the end of this business day.
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Oh boy!

145 Jacques Joubert's Mom's Basement
Winthrop, MA 02152

October 26th, 2011

Mr. Robert A. Brown
President, Boston University
1 Silber Way, 8th Floor
Office of the President
Boston, MA 02215

Dear Mr. Brown,

This morning I learned that some rascals bought the domain name to www.bcrejects.com and used it to direct its traffic to www.bu.edu. I find this action to be a very offensive reminder to me of that fateful day when I did indeed get a thin envelope from the BC admissions department and was subsequently forced to register to attend Boston University. I've personally guaranteed some people in an online fan forum that this technological shenanigan will come crashing to a halt by the end of business today. As it is now, it is 3:45 pm and I am putting on my chain mail to attend a Magic: The Gathering tournament at King Richard's Faire and I will be unable to help you for the remainder of the day. It's very important that this be taken care of right away! If you need any assistance in removing this in the subsequent days, please leave a message with my roommate (my mom) and she will relay the message to me immediately upon my return.

Sincerely,
Jacques Joubert
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Re: BU 2011-2012 Season: The bar is low, boys!

some thoughts on motivation:

anybody that says "you shouldn't need to motivate" or "they are already motivated so bulletin board material shouldn't matter" has either never played sports at a highly competitive level or has gotten used to repeating what the aforementioned coach potatoes always say.

For hockey fans to believe that is really hard to understand...look at 1980...was Herb Brooks there just to make sure the guys had the right jersey on and changed lines?

Pro, college, HS or sandlot...motivation is often external. The player has to bring a base level of motivation but the coach is there to make the sum greater than the parts.

All upsets aren't because the favored team faltered and, no, every player doesn't show up for every game with the same level of intensity. They can say it doesn't matter but that is because they don't want to let on that Rex Ryan's blathering or Lebron's antics have gotten them really ticked....it would be admitting that they have a higher level of focus than normal...which they wouldn't normally want to confess.

I can assure you I've been involved (playing, coaching and parenting) in situations where something such as a speech, a late hit, a bad call, an insult, an injured teammate etc. have served to increase intensity and focus.

Every coach should be able to get his team at peak performance for each contest but they aren't equals in that regard. Some do it through intimidation, others through more productive means...watch the HBO documentary about the St. Patrick basketball team..there are some good locker room discussions with the coach that give you one perspective on how it goes. (albeit one he knows is being televised) It absolutely is possible that what motivates one squad falls flat with another and if the coach doesn't change the tune to match the times, it gets tuned out.
 
Re: BU 2011-2012 Season: The bar is low, boys!

Rover said:
I've always gotten the sense that those BC kids would go through a wall for York. I don't get that sense over here.
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Agree 100%. Interestingly, we used to hear about how Parker had droves of former players that would stay in close touch with him throughout their lives. And I do believe that used to be the case. I'm just not sure I see players from the last 5 - 10 years doing the same thing. Even a player we know to be very close - Travis Roy - heck, his injury was 15 years ago. (Wow time flies).
 
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