Soft Pretzel Logic

The problem I have is that Bilsky seems to be distant and aloof from what is staring him in the eyes.

His teams are struggling. His campus is disinterested. And the alums are barking.

Unless I am getting lost on Locust Walk, the problem seem evident.

Jeremy

There is a reason that the former Penn guys are there for Fran. And that is Fran himself.

It speaks volumes to his terrific coaching, his personality, and his track record. Bottom line - he wins and is liked.

Bilsky is not liked. If he would look in the mirror, he would realize why he is not liked. By the students, by the alums, and by the former guys who suited up for Coach Dunphy.

And now, Bilsky is paying for it.

Fran Fan

Being an outsider in this "family feud", can someone clue me in on this Bilksy gu? He has a reputation, at least on this board, somewhere up there between Saddam Hussein and the Iron Sheik.

Whats the deal?

Chaz

Steve Bilsky is Penn's athletic director, and a former basketball player who was on the early-1970s powerhouse Penn teams.

The rest I leave to the commenters.

And by the way, I've tried over the last few days to reach some of you by sending emails to the addresses that you used to post comments under. They've all bounced, especially the Penn ones.

So please, do me a favor and use a real email address. I promise you that it doesn't get displayed on the blog itself, only on the system side.

I really am the only person that sees your contact info, and I'm not going to spam you or even sign you up for Philly.com's various mailing lists. I mean that.

I think we all knew that Bilsky is the AD, but why is he so universally disliked?

Is he really that much of a jerk?

And if he is like the Iron Sheik, does he wear the pointed boots that always caused trouble? :)

JACK

Unfortunately, for a college coach to be evaluated, you need to look at his coaching which can be evaluated immediately AND his recruiting, which takes several years to evaluate. As with any new hire, Penn fans need to have a little bit of patience.

That said, there are still some worrying aspects of this season. I knew coming into the season that Penn would probably not win many non-conference games and would not be the favorite going into the ivy season. But when the teams plays horridly (FGCU, St. Joes, etc.) I get concerned. Yes, they looked much better in the second half against Temple, but will it continue?

I'm disappointed also, with this year's team. I think the effort has been consistently acceptable. My main issue with the coach, is his rotation. I don't understand playing 12 guys. If you have many equally talented players, pick an 8,9 or 10 man rotation, and improve those players. Also, only based on observing the coach-player interaction, there seems to be very little affection. It isn't essential that a team love its coach, but when the results aren't there, I think it can unravel quicker, if there is a lack of mutual respect.
The coach should get through next year, to show better results. If the team is under .500 in the League (likely this year), this year AND next year, it will be time to consider a change.

I am thoroughly convinced that Miller is a vastly superior coach to Dunphy, both as an X's and O's guy and as a recruiter. This team will be dominant within 2 years, perhaps even winning an NCAA game. Next year's recruits will be excellent, the sophomores will be much better, and the team will have some experience under its belt. Miller's tenacity will rub off on the players as the Dunphy recruits (who were always soft, at least the past few years) disappear, and they will play harder and better. Will notes the lack of affection, but is that coming from Bernardini or Gaines? Nope, it's the Dunphy recruits.

I think the investment that Glen made by giving his bench players minutes last year helped them in the tournament game. Sure they still lost but it seemed that some of the younger guys were playing with more confidence in that game.
They have played well at times during this season but the team is still a work in progress.
The Ivy League season is what really counts so don't give up hope yet. GO PENN!

I am anything but impressed with Miller.

At times this season, the team appears to be spiritless and confused out on the floor.

Assignments are missed on defense, communication is poor, and there is no leadership.

Maybe old Glen and his staff should stay away from the New Deck after practice and spend some more time looking at game film from the games against better teams (UNC, Miami, and even SJU and Temple).

And sadly, I have given up hope even in the Ivy. We have too many better teams ahead of us to leapfrog.

I can confirm seeing members of the staff, not Miller, at New Deck.

Who isn't a fan of the New Deck. That's a quality establishment. IMO, Miller can not be judged until this recruiting class are juniors. It takes time for players to mature (i.e. Nova's class of Foye, Ray, Sumpter) and obviously the upperclassmen are not producing like everyone hoped they would. I am a big fan of Dunphy's but he didn't leave Miller with a lot beyond Jaaber and Zoller.

Fran is doing more at Temple with Chaney's leftovers than Miller is doing at Penn with Fran's leftovers.

Both will need to get their "own guys" in there, of course.

Nothing wrong with the New Deck in my book either. Parking can be tight, but then again its West Philadelphia.

Can Jonathan offer up his "points of praise" for Bilsky?

I am sure they exist, but I have no idea what they are...

This Bilsky is getting pounded here but I would like to know some of his point of merit.

Thanks!

I'm not going to go out saying the sky is falling here because, as many posters point out, Miller's recruits are very good. And, yes, he deserves a chance to get his guys into the program and the real evaluation should come down at the end of next season.

BUT, that is not an excuse for what is actually happening on the floor in games this season, right now. Anyone who can say with a straight face they are impressed/satisfied/accepting of the play that Penn has exhibited in the past month has not seen very much basketball in their lifetime. This lackadaisical, lethargic and utterly unorganized play we have seen in the St Joe game, Temple, Florida Gulf and even NJ-Tech is off the charts horrendous. Maybe this would be ok for the first game of the season, but this is January basketball and no team should look this bad even if they are freshmen. That to me is a coaching deficiency. And Miller sits that bench like he doesn't have a care in the world on top of it really pushes me over the edge. Aren't good coaches the ones who can get the most out of the talent they have and not just the talent they want?

Amen to that, ADH

Fran Fan say: "Bilsky is not liked. If he would look in the mirror, he would realize why he is not liked. By the students, by the alums, and by the former guys who suited up for Coach Dunphy."

Would Fran Fan please say more about his comment on Bilsky? It is a rip off to make a comment like this and not fill in the blanks for those of us who don't know why he isn't liked.

While there are a lot of really good points here about the youth of the team and the need to give Miller, or any coach for that matter, time – recall Dunphy was hardly an overnight success at Penn – I think there are some basic trends (and concepts to basketball that Miller appears to espouse) that are cause for concern.

In no particular order, they are DEFENSE: When this team plays man-to-man, the defenders 2 passes away are frequently so close to their men that they could literally touch them, rather than being in a position to give any sort of help…this leads to an unending series of drivers and cutters getting virtually to the rim before appropriate help arrives (not really the hallmark of the “X and O coach” we supposedly got as this is not a hard concept to teach)…before that this year they tried a 1-3-1 zone at the start of the year and scrapped that after giving up too many looks on 3’s rather than working on it…so what is Glen Miller’s defensive identity? Man or zone? 1.5 seasons in we don’t know?!? ROTATION – 17 games in we have no sort of definable rotation…guys are run in and out like a fire drill rather than groups of guys learning to play together. Find me another team in college ball that makes anywhere near the number of substitutions this team does, I don’t have any numbers but who would be surprised if we turned out to lead the NCAA in this…how are these guys going to learn to play as a group if they never play as a group??? INTERIOR PLAY: At this point we are getting almost nothing from our interior players offensively (a nice stat line by Eggleston at Temple aside). Cam Lewis is unable to convert most shots but is useful defensively, yet Miller continues to put him and the other big guys in position to fail by having them down by the bucket offensively…why not try to run a high post offense? – dare we learn from Princeton? – to get them away from the basket and create more room for Grandieri/Bernardini to try get something in a less congested basket area. When something isn’t working you need to change! RECRUITS – We all (me included, until recently) seem to think these recruits are really good…but almost every larger group of Penn freshmen looked more ready as freshmen than this group if you think about it – Zoller and Ibby fit right in and looked good as frosh; Ugonna and Koko were more ready; Michael Jordan and Langel did more with no real upperclassmen; Barry Peirce and Jerome Allen were better; Hass Duncombe was in interior force from day 1 and it goes on through Lefko/Chris Elzey and beyond.

Even Miller’s past has to be questioned in light of what we have seen…he won at Brown when he had Hunt and Nuiallitia (sp?), and didn’t when he didn’t have these guys…so he won with maybe 2 of the best 3 players in the league, impressive in retrospect? Did he “coach anyone up”?

I really wonder if Miller cares at all about these non-Ivy games, or if they are just a laboratory to get ready for league play…but if they are going to continue to ding me $550+ for 2 season tickets they better start caring about all these games a little more.

At least Princeton is worse than us...Don't lose that one Glen!

Lost in all of this is that Penn lost to a struggling Drexel basketball team. However, let's give the Quakers credit for winning the Ivy league last year.

I was at the Penn / St. Joseph's game and it was a disappointment. The SJU fans were fantastic and the Penn student body was noticeably absent. It was a sellout crowd but the Penn fans were mostly non-student body. It was almost a display of disinterest from the student body which is very out of character for the Penn organization.

Amidst all the shaky assertions in this thread, I decided to focus on this one in particular, because it's perhaps the most indicative of how ridiculous some of the criticisms of this year's performance have become:

RECRUITS – We all (me included, until recently) seem to think these recruits are really good…but almost every larger group of Penn freshmen looked more ready as freshmen than this group if you think about it – Zoller and Ibby fit right in and looked good as frosh; Ugonna and Koko were more ready; Michael Jordan and Langel did more with no real upperclassmen; Barry Peirce and Jerome Allen were better; Hass Duncombe was in interior force from day 1 and it goes on through Lefko/Chris Elzey and beyond.

I guess people's memories get hazy and inaccurate with time, because very few of those players were "more ready" in the opinion of whoever was coaching them at the time. As far as I know, during the Dunphy era only Onyekwe was a starter from day one; even Allen and Jordan didn't start every game their freshman years on teams that sure weren't blessed with anymore upperclass talent than this one is. As for production when they were actually on the floor, I don't have the '91-'92 stats at hand, but I do have '96-'97: that year, Jordan averaged 12.1 PPG; Bernardini is at 12.2 PPG right now.

And you're really reaching if you have to go back to the Schneider and Littlepage era for the names of Lefkowitz and Duncombe to demonstrate how much more "ready" recruits were in the past. I was there, and they weren't. Certainly no more than Bernardini or Eggleston have been this year, in terms of playing meaningful minutes.

As for the more recent vintage of players, let's look at last year's graduating class of stars: Ibby never started as a freshman, and barely played until late February. Zoller cracked the starting lineup earlier, but didn't play more than 20 minutes in a game until late December, and scored 20 points or more all but once that entire season. Bernardini has done that 4 times already this year. Neither of Jaaber or Zoller averaged even 10 points per game on the season their freshman year.