I profiled the offseasons of DeMeo and 3 low major first year coaches this summer. I liked the hires and thought they killed it in the offseason. Bart Lundy, Pat Chambers, and David Patrick.
Now that OOC is over let's take a look at how their teams have performed so far.
DeMeo's JUCO team is 12-4 and ranked 27th as of 2 weeks ago. Their best player, the San Diego State transfer, has missed 5 games and been hurt, but the 6 D1 transfers he added all average 9.8ppg+ or more points and are having successful seasons.
The Low Major 1st Year Coaches
The only other 1st year coach I could find with a leap of 100 or more in NET is Northwestern State's Gipson with a 167 spot improvement. He had some solid transfers as well.
I only post these examples for the consistent ECU basketball excuse-makers. They have long made these excuses that teams can't improve significantly in one season or that it takes years of patience to see menial results like ECU got the last 4 years. No it doesn't. There are coaches doing it on shoestring budgets and pay with far less resources all over the nation every season. Even 1st year poorly funded coaches like these guy that were easy to see in the summer.
This is the current rank of basketball budgets, and the coach's pay is double and triple I suspect of some of these jobs.
Basketball Budget
Certain people would talk about crap from the 1900's like it matters today. Sacramento State has never been to an NCAA and has a 31% all time win percentage. 7th worst all time. Ancient history excuses don't matter either.
If some jabroni like me can see what they are doing in the middle of the summer it's kind of obvious. There is nothing special about their game plan or execution. They were all proven head coaches with strong resumes that landed experienced proven players with strong resumes. It's a simple proven formula, not rocket science. If they can do it in low-major conferences with their resources I'll continue to point out there is no excuse at ECU.
*Edited. For accuracy, the Sacramento St rank was not correct. It said 108 NET at the time I wrote this but I just checked again, and it was 187. Not sure if that was a website mistake or legit and multiple teams of their schedule lost big a day later. The others 2 were still accurate.. Either way 187 is the correct number today. It's still a massive improvement, but not quite as impressive.
