BU Women's Coach Question

[BigJoe]

When is BU going to take a long look at Paula Buscher's BU record? Or should I say, they have already had plenty of time to take a long look... I think her all-time record is sub .500 and this is her 12th season...

[Da Coach]

Be careful what you wish for.

[bu fan 9]

Do you want Cross and Glasser making another coaching hire?

[BigJoe]

I understand what you are both saying. However, all I have to do is look at the record...

Take a look at what UW-Green Bay does year after year. I'm not expecting BU to dominate the MVC like Green Bay does the Horizon (not to mention top 25 rankings), but shouldn't BU be able to at least do a little better than what it has over the past several years?

Also, we have a great new facility and I think the goal would be to fill the seats with a winning Women's team. I think it can be done. I'm not so sure it can be done with the current coach. Maybe I am wrong. Good day!

[AZ BU Fan]

Be careful what you wish for.

Wow, you must not be on the BU payroll, or, she must have a great sense of humor!

[Da Coach]

Wow, you must not be on the BU payroll, or, she must have a great sense of humor!

I merely meant the same thing I meant when many wanted to see JL replaced. Changing coaches does not guarantee that your program will improve. We have seen it many times right here at Bradley.
How are you interpreting that to be a slam against anyone?

[TylerDurden]

When BU funds and supports women's basketball at a level comparable to its peer institutions (let alone relative to the men's program), then it should evaluate the coaching situation accordingly.

As it stands and for some perspective, the current head coach has the best winning percentage of any coach with at least three seasons at BU since the NCAA began crowning a WBB champion in 1982 (Coach Stowell coached two years and finished 33-22, 14-14 during his last season).

You also may notice that BU's fourth- and third-place MVC finishes coincided with the arena's opening - the first significant, outward boost of the program since it began. Note: this is not intended to be a slight toward those who may have contributed to the program throughout the years, but an honest observation about the situation at BU as it relates to programs they compete against.

[Reality]

Amazing... men's program is in the crapper, so you come after the women's basketball program??? How ironic, I've never seen more than a line or two directed at the women's program on this site (good or bad) until now. They just beat SIU 66-50 and overall are 13-10.

If your goal is take the heat off Geno... let's match salaries, resources, athletic administration support and fan support and then we can talk.

Only since the opening of the RC have the women had a facility that provided an incentive when recruiting. In fact, while playing their last game at the FH, the construction workers had to be asked to stop tearing down some seats until the game was over. Then off to ICC (great people to work with) for a couple of seasons and even a few games in local high schools.

Unfortunately, the majority of MBB fans do not follow womens basketball -- or many of the other programs. Kudos to the few fans who do (time, talent or treasury) plus BSS and Braves Club Members. Kudos to JG ... she was the first President that even cared to show up for a women's game in my lifetime.

[SFP]

Hey reality the women's program has been mentioned on this site, granted not too much but that may be part of the trouble.

I'm not sure by what you mean by resources. They get the same amount of scholarships, they play in a very nice arena and they have first class facilities. Perhaps they do not have the same recruiting budget but that should not preclude them from winning more. Now on how they would pick another coach? Well that could be an issue that none of us want to go through. I'd hope they would look at some of the women's best programs and grab an assistant who is essential in recruiting. I'm sure they could find someone that would suit our needs.

[NSBF]

The WBB program has lost 13 straight to ILS. Why isn't Paula subjected to the same scrutiny as the Men's coach? Coaches get paid to win and compete and while the program has shown signs of improving, at some point you have to question the talent and the person evaluating the talent and ask is it good enough to compete?

As long as ILS hosts the IHSA girls tournament, BU will be at a disadvantage. You have to shake things up sometimes to change the mindset surrounding WBB.

[BigJoe]

Amazing... men's program is in the crapper, so you come after the women's basketball program??? How ironic, I've never seen more than a line or two directed at the women's program on this site (good or bad) until now. They just beat SIU 66-50 and overall are 13-10.

If your goal is take the heat off Geno... let's match salaries, resources, athletic administration support and fan support and then we can talk.

Only since the opening of the RC have the women had a facility that provided an incentive when recruiting. In fact, while playing their last game at the FH, the construction workers had to be asked to stop tearing down some seats until the game was over. Then off to ICC (great people to work with) for a couple of seasons and even a few games in local high schools.

Unfortunately, the majority of MBB fans do not follow womens basketball -- or many of the other programs. Kudos to the few fans who do (time, talent or treasury) plus BSS and Braves Club Members. Kudos to JG ... she was the first President that even cared to show up for a women's game in my lifetime.

I am not trying to take the heat off Geno. I actually think he has not done a very good job since he has been here. Paula's record speaks for itself-bad. I left this board a couple years ago after being a regular poster for quite a long time because about anything I posted got taken out of context/twisted/and attacked for little or no reason. I am now back and it has already started with you. Can someone tell me what it is about this board that brings out such childish behavior?

The women's program has been discussed many times before and I thought I would start another discussion since as of right now they are in 8th place at 4-7 in the league. Is that your standard of excellence???

[TylerDurden]

I am not trying to take the heat off Geno. I actually think he has not done a very good job since he has been here. Paula's record speaks for itself-bad. I left this board a couple years ago after being a regular poster for quite a long time because about anything I posted got taken out of context/twisted/and attacked for little or no reason. I am now back and it has already started with you. Can someone tell me what it is about this board that brings out such childish behavior?

The women's program has been discussed many times before and I thought I would start another discussion since as of right now they are in 8th place at 4-7 in the league. Is that your standard of excellence???

I'm guessing it has to do with gratuitous, baiting threads that present specious and spurious arguments.

[Da Coach]

I actually agree with you that Paula has done a good job with absolutely awful facilities, perhaps among the worst in D1, for most of her career. And there have been signs of improvement the last 2-3 years with the new facilities, so I think she should get more time.
But I don't think it is specious or spurious to discuss this topic, considering a decent coach was just fired from the men's team who had a better record, and who played a large part in raising the funds to build those facilities.

[tornado]

I'm guessing it has to do with gratuitous, baiting threads that present specious and spurious arguments.

Tyler - you got some links to boards where threads like that aren't commonplace?
So since when does someone taking the bait and acting childish & immature get excused just because there was bait?

[TylerDurden]

T - I'm sure threads like this are on every board out there. I'm not concerned with that. I was addressing the ironic question BigJoe posted about why he feels threads turn "childish." I wasn't excusing anyone for being childish, just pointing out a reason why some folks may react the way they do.

DC - It certainly is a specious and spurious argument that was presented in the OP. The men's and women's programs at BU are apples and oranges.

That's the definition of specious and spurious. Spurious usually carries the sense of being counterfeit or of an intention to deceive; specious, the appearance of being correct but lacking merit, disingenuous, superficially plausible. Perhaps my use of spurious was a bit much considering that determining intent is difficult on a message board. It was definitely specious for the reasons we agree about.

For the record, I liked Jim Les. I could see the arguments on both sides of the aisle for keeping or not keeping him. In the end, the decision was made and none of us had much of a say in it. But, his program had many advantages over the women's program and was evaluated, in part, because of those advantages. I suspect things would have been different if the trustees had made a different decision in 2007, but they did not and now we're all stuck with what is in place.

Paula, as you and I agree, has not had those advantages and has been evaluated accordingly. The arena does change things, but as we both noted her teams showed great improvement once the arena opened (top-three MVC finish!). She still doesn't have much compared to the men, but she has more and will certainly be expected to produce more. I think that's fair.