redpony wrote:Corso wrote:Coach will be fine, and so will the Mustangs.
You must be using the Bill Clinton dictionary for your definition of 'fine'.
If you consider dropping from 15 to 55 in the RPI and from an early season high of 5 to out of the top 30 in the NCAA rankings then yes, we are doing very fine. Hardly an SO dictated top 25 performance.
If we do not get to the quarter finals in the NCAA tournament then I hope you will join in signing a petition to get rid of this inept coach and replace him with one that has a proven national championship winning resume.
I seriously doubt that we will win CUSA tournament let alone do well in the NCAA's. I do not recall in recent years any of our soccer teams being ranked so low or performing so poorly.
GO PONIES!!!
Bruce Arena and Sigi Schmid and Schellas Hyndman would struggle, too, if their best player quit a couple of weeks before the season to go pro, and they lost Geppert and Oliva right away, then lost da Silva and Mirsky for extended periods of time, etc. Coach McClements took a previously weak program at Vanderbilt and built it into an NCAA Tournament team - winning a conference Coach of the Year award along the way, for which he defeated, among others, our own Schellas Hyndman - and might still be there if the school hadn't yanked the program out from under him. Every time there's a change in coaches, there's an adjustment period. Sometimes it's very quick, sometimes it takes a little longer as the new coach and the team get used to each other. That's what this year has been going on this year while the team has pattled upstream against the ridiculous stream of injuries (I know, every team has injuries, but we've had a lot major ones to players counted on to play significant roles.)
I would say we have to win the Conference USA Tournament to make the NCAAs, and you're right - there's a chance we won't. But Coach is settled into his position now (what did he have, two weeks before he started two-a-days after he got hired?), the team now knows what he expects and a lot of freshmen - including several he redshirted to fortify the future of the program - have gained valuable experience with him and knowledge.
Is he Schellas Hyndman? No, but he doesn't have to be. Coach Hyndman was given a chance at a young age, too (at Eastern Illinois), but he inherited a more veteran - and healthy - team. Coach McClements knows what he's doing, and regardless of how this postseason goes, will be just fine.
(I'll save you a seat at Westcott Field next week if you'd like to come out and cheer for him, rather than just ripping him on a message board.)