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YSU Women’s Basketball Fall Signees Update

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ysuguins4:

--- Quote from: ysufan0505 on April 27, 2015, 12:16:08 PM ---
--- Quote from: Wick250 on April 27, 2015, 12:13:52 PM ---go guins,

No conspiracy but still mysterious.  Same facilities, same campus, same league affiliation, same deficiencies in funding compared to Horizon League rivals.  Yet the women generally flourish while their male counterparts struggle, with the notable exception of Gorby's track men.  Mysterious indeed.

--- End quote ---

In basketball, it's simple. Coaching.
--- End quote ---

He ain't lying.  On the women's side, you only have to look at what happened after Eddie D retired.  The program went into the tank under Hill and Martin only to be rescued by Bolden and now Barnes.  The men's team had many good seasons under Rosselli and a few with Rice, until Cleamons and Stroia got their hands on it.  Peters had it going in the right direction, but then Robic took it down the wrong path.  Slocum is a better coach then Cleamons, Stroia and Robic, but he's no Bolden or Barnes.  Hopefully they hire the right person after next season, and men's basketball becomes relevant again.

IAA Fan:
I think the focus on women's programs is not mysterious. It is far more than coaching. Even Gorby's men's teams perform at a lesser-level than the ladies. Women's sports are still not as significant as their male counterparts. There is little no professional expectation, so this is the highest level for most female athletes. So you simply are going to get more "bang for your buck" with the ladies. 

As a DI college, we could not recruit high-school levels IV and less in Ohio men's basketball and even come close to competing at the same level we do now. As with football, a MBB prep player-of-the-year would not even look at YSU. There is no men's local basketball recruiting base, while the same cannot be said for the ladies. In track, we cannot field an entire team, so the focus is on certain events & Gorby knows how to play the points very well. Swimming is the same way. It has only been couple of years since we started to compete in team swim events outside of Diving (and seldom did we have high-end platform divers). Yet look at how our diving has suffered since we expanded the swimming program. Yet we are doing very well as a Horizon League swim team. Lady Pens golf and tennis out-perform the men.

The men's sports that do not perform as well as I would think they should are Men's Golf and baseball ...mainly because Kent is so strong in these sports I would think we could capitalize on that. Then again, Kent's new baseball coach receives over $300k a year ...which is probably about 10-times what YSU can afford. They have a baseball assistant that makes as much as Slocum. Even though there is a certain professional expectation in baseball, it is prior to the college level that top prospects are taken.

Golf is golf ...it has always been a money game & kids can play as-well-as adults. Just in the last couple weeks, the top golfer at Upper Arlington high school (Columbus) won an open invitational that included almost all of the OSU golf team.

go guins:
1AA
I have far too much respect for your overall intelligence to pooh-paw your comments, but on the other hand, I am completely missing your point.  How do professional expectations following college change the competitive balance between 1A & 1AA?  I CERTAINLY "GET IT" regarding coaching and the extreme value it has to program success, but the professional expectation effect is lost on me??
If your point is the "bigger schools" get the better athletes, and since they can't make money at women's track they don't care where were they to school, that removes the individual competitive drive from the equation and I would challenge that.
We have MONTHS before YSU football is relevant again, so if it’s not too much trouble, I’d be interested in further explanation.
Thanks  and thanks for all you do on this blog!

IAA Fan:
Sorry Go Guins. My daughter gets mad at me as well. I think a point is obvious & then when I reread it is obvious to no one. My business law prof at YSU said the same thing (Katz was his name for any older Williamson grads). Here are my points:

1. Women's sports have come a long way, but a D1 college is about as high a level as it gets for female athlete, as there are few women's pro sports and practically none that anyone cares about. HS female athletes are smart enough to realize that having their college education paid for (all or in part) is the best they can hope for. So YSU can pull in a much higher level of female athlete, which is why we have such solid resumes in this class. Not trying to insult the coaches, obviously this is a 1st-rate recruiting job at a mid-major level.

1a. Taking this one-step further, look at these resumes and pretend they are men. Would we compete in MVFC football or Horizon MBB with these level of athletes? Not really. We have to look further out for the top players and be willing to accept issues ...and end up recruiting questionable attitudes, to get D1 talent. This is a large part of the reason why we have come into so much in the way of player attitude troubles with our MBB as of late. As an example, an Ohio prep POY would not even look at YSU men's basketball, but one signed with the lady pens. In short we can recruit a better class of female athlete ...less people crying about contribution time or playing in cold-weather. I mean how much intelligence does it take to realize it is darn cold in NE Ohio during the winter?

2. Women's sports at YSU:

We have invested enormous resources into women's sports over the last few years. The reason for this goes back to the Title-IX gender equity requirements. YSU must match the number of women's scholarships with those for men. I think they gave us 25-years (from 1979) to do this, so Strollo had a lot of work to do these past few years. Now look at the old YSU women's sports:

Basketball: about 15 players
Diving: about 6 players
Volleyball: about 22 players
We had swimming an diving, but it was equal men vs women at that time.

We had no other women's sports. Now even if we gave scholarship every other female athlete on campus in the 70's ...it would only add up to about 50-60 scholarships (and I would say that is a very high guess). Well we have 63 scholarships in football alone, probably close to 100, if we include those on partial ...and we need to have an equal number of female scholarships. We simply did not have enough women's sports. In short, we did not even have enough women's sports to cover football scholarships, let alone MBB, baseball, golf, rifle, wrestling and the several other men's sports YSU offers (or did offer. Notice rifle and wrestling were dropped, along with men's swimming & diving). So we had to reduce the number of men's sports offered and increase the number of female sports (along with their scholarships) offered.

3. Baseball and men's golf should be our top non football/basketball sports, based on the local prep talent-level and the quality programs just down the road at Kent. I really think it is due to the lack of resources. Look how we almost lost baseball last year. Is suspect the only think that saved baseball is an increase in softball scholarships and the new women's bowling program.


4. Many sports are not impacted by division. Golf and tennis are prime examples, as with women's field hockey and LaCrosse. Upper Arlington High school teams are not called the "Golden Bears" for nothing. It is the home and Alma matter of Jack Nicholas. He build them a huge golf course and they are the top program in the state, they play the Buckeye golfers (and win) on a regular basis. It is the same course that OSU uses. I bring this up as players can be up for grabs in these sports, but they tend to be smarter individuals and migrate to high-end schools. Good golfers, tennis players and field hockey players also tend to be from wealthier families and do not need assistance.


The reason for my long post is to try and explain what I feel is the major impact on YSU sports ...much more than a particular assistant coach or head-coach.

ysuhoops24:
just throwing this out....as long as Matt Anderson is the swim coach that program will never sniff a Horizon League title.  Nick does a great job with the divers, however. 

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