A few words accurately describe the U bastketball program year-in and year-out: defensive toughness, smart shots, ultra-conservative play, etc.
But the program has also set an astonishing trend of off-season attrition. Not just the players that obviously weren’t making it, but the guys who everyone thought would give us 1-3 more good years. So many of them abandon the program (or vice versa), and it makes me wonder if there isn’t a lesson to be learned here.
Yes, Majerus is a fantastic coach, and has brought more success to Utah basketball than most people ever dreamed of. At some point, though, don’t you start to wonder what would happen if he were able to check his ego and stop seizing every opportunity to humiliate his players in public? Maybe players would stick around.
It seems reasonable to me that we might expect to see not only increased productivity, but we might also have the same group of guys playing together for more than one year. Give them time to gel as a team; maybe a little continuity from year to year.
Or is it really better to start over from square one every season with a new group of guys, as we seem to do every year since ’98? I hope I’m not the only one with these concerns.