Answered Prayer

Reprinted from my post on DM Juice:

Friday was a good day to be a Cyclone fan again. With an athletic department headed my Jamie Pollard; you can sense ISU will not accept anything less than success. As a rabid Clone fan that grew up in Ames and went to ISU, I can tell this season was one of the worst to endure and it is nice to see a change on the horizon.

The firing of Wayne Morgan showed me that we would start looking beyond the win/loss record and also look at where we believe our two main programs are headed. If you remove Wayne Morgan’s win/loss record, what is left to show promise in the future?

One of my biggest problems with Morgan was his ever-present deflection of responsibility:

"Do you know how long Iowa State has been playing basketball? For however long that is, do you know how many times Iowa State has been to postseason tournaments? Probably 14 or 15. I hope that it's not a different standard for me” [Wayne Morgan Thursday’s Des Moines Register].

A different standard? Nope, just a higher standard. We pay you ¾ of a million dollars a year Mr. Morgan and I am sorry if you have a problem with expectations, but I want some return on the investment.

All we heard from Morgan this year was “have patience, because we have a young team.” Young team? The backcourt, headed by two juniors, was supposed to be one of the best in the nation. With the talent that Stinson and Blalock possess they should have elevated everyone’s game around them, instead they turned into selfish ball hogs and Morgan’s offensive schemes helped them.

There wasn’t a single game this season where I felt Morgan out coached the opposing team. If we won it was because we had more talent than the other team, not because we had a better game plan. In fact, opposing coaches would only have to watch one game film of Iowa State this season to know what defense and offense we were going to run. When teams would break ISU’s zone defense we would throw them more zone defense. When team would key on Stinson and Blalock and our NBA style clear out offensive, Stinson and Blaylock would just take triple coverage shots while a wide-open teammate stood five feet away. To be honest, I am not sure what we paid Morgan for this year.

I am just glad Jamie Pollard felt the same way.