[lex24]

I’m with TC.  I have been pretty outspoken in my criticism of Haase, but since he is coming back regardless, I might as well hope that I was wrong and that he is successful. It’s not a high likelihood, but nothing good will come with continued failure.



BC

I will root for Haase too and hope to be wrong about what kind of coach he can be at Stanford. But I do think something good can come from continued failure. Walt Harris flaming out got us a vacancy that turned into Harbaugh and turning around the program. Haase muddling through well enough to keep his job but not well enough to make us relevant would be disappointing to me. I'd rather rip off the bandaid and hope to get a better coach.

A reasonably likely scenario is that things align for next year to be Haase's best team, perhaps even a fringe tournament team, but then we return to a norm of not making the tournament most years, with occasional exceptions when he's able to align good recruiting with retention/seniority (which will of course be cyclical because we don't shop in the transfer portal). Is that better for the program than next year being a failure and finally being able to move on from Haase? That's not clear to me.

Fans face a similar dilemma in football. Obviously scraping our way to six wins and getting back to a bowl would be very welcome for a program that has been in the wilderness. But if that provides an excuse not to address systemic rot in the program, there is a real chance that is worse for the medium- to long-term health of the program than catastrophic failure in 2022 would be. As a fan I never want to (and don't think I ever will) root against our teams. But it's not crazy to think that a six win football season or 12th seed basketball season would be fool's gold and not actually all that reassuring that either program is on the right track.

On football side, If it’s 6 wins with major contributions from underclassmen with a good recruiting year, perhaps it’s a sign of righting the ship.  If it’s 6-6 and they don’t get major contributions from frosh and soph classes, and recruiting is blah - it’s probably the outlier.

[lex24]

I’m with TC.  I have been pretty outspoken in my criticism of Haase, but since he is coming back regardless, I might as well hope that I was wrong and that he is successful. It’s not a high likelihood, but nothing good will come with continued failure.



BC

I will root for Haase too and hope to be wrong about what kind of coach he can be at Stanford. But I do think something good can come from continued failure. Walt Harris flaming out got us a vacancy that turned into Harbaugh and turning around the program. Haase muddling through well enough to keep his job but not well enough to make us relevant would be disappointing to me. I'd rather rip off the bandaid and hope to get a better coach.

A reasonably likely scenario is that things align for next year to be Haase's best team, perhaps even a fringe tournament team, but then we return to a norm of not making the tournament most years, with occasional exceptions when he's able to align good recruiting with retention/seniority (which will of course be cyclical because we don't shop in the transfer portal). Is that better for the program than next year being a failure and finally being able to move on from Haase? That's not clear to me.

Fans face a similar dilemma in football. Obviously scraping our way to six wins and getting back to a bowl would be very welcome for a program that has been in the wilderness. But if that provides an excuse not to address systemic rot in the program, there is a real chance that is worse for the medium- to long-term health of the program than catastrophic failure in 2022 would be. As a fan I never want to (and don't think I ever will) root against our teams. But it's not crazy to think that a six win football season or 12th seed basketball season would be fool's gold and not actually all that reassuring that either program is on the right track.

On football side, If it’s 6 wins with major contributions from underclassmen with a good recruiting year, perhaps it’s a sign of righting the ship.  If it’s 6-6 and they don’t get major contributions from frosh and soph classes, and recruiting is blah - it’s probably the outlier.