Jimmy Lemke returns again to co-host his namesake event with Bob, talking with fans from all over the Horizon League once again to talk about the previous season, as well as prospects for next season. This year’s participants:
Former IUPUI player and assistant coach Matt Crenshaw returns to his alma mater to take over the men’s basketball team, and Bob, Matt and John talk to him about his new role. They also talk about his time in the Navy and as a player, as well as his familiarity with Horizon League foes he’s come across during his career. And, of course, they talked about his former coach, Ron Hunter and the impact he made on Crenshaw’s career and IUPUI.
Bob, Matt and John welcome Sean Paul, who has been busy on Making the Madness, as well as other venues, to discuss latest comings and goings in the Horizon League. This includes the recent hire of Matt Crenshaw as the next head coach of IUPUI, several key transfers into the conference, as well as one notable intraconference transfer.
With the NCAA giving athletes an extra year of eligibility, we are tracking players in the Horizon League as to whether they will take advantage of the extra year, as well as if they intend to stay or transfer elsewhere.
After finishing last season (8-16), Will Ryan and company have some work to do. A year ago, the focus was on establishing culture and creating a foundation to grow from. This off-season, Will Ryan will officially begin a full rebuild of UW Green Bay. The system Ryan implemented is meant for a specific kind of player, and finding fits on a roster of holdovers proved to be a daunting task.
There is no way to sugarcoat losing a player like Amari Davis. However, the sky is not falling. Yes, the list of outgoing transfers is up to 8, but none of those players were recruited by coach Ryan. The optics of the roster turnover may look bad, but this isn’t a reflection of the job Coach Ryan has done to this point. According to the NCAA, approximately 40% of men’s basketball players who play Division I out of high school leave their initial school by the end of their sophomore year. Especially given the landscape of college basketball today, transfers happen all the time. Even more so when a new coach is hired. The exodus was to be expected, and could actually prove to be a blessing for the retooling of the programs roster.
There are plenty of open spots, but this offers Coach Ryan the chance to recruit players that fit his style of play. With the increasing number of players available in the transfer portal, CC, and late signee’s due to the odd circumstances of this last season, Coach Ryan won’t be devoid of options.
Another priority may be attempting to even out the classes. With players attaining an extra year of eligibility, most programs are going to have the issue of lopsided classes. As it stands the Phoenix only have two upper class-men on the roster. So, pursuing a few upper class-men to play now, who won’t further disorient the current number of graduating classes could prove to be advantageous.
When played correctly, the system doesn’t require top tier talent (although it helps). It’s more important each player is sound in their assignments and versatile. While most fans seem to think the team needs to find one or two players who can immediately come in and get buckets, I don’t think it’s quite as pertinent. Yes, Green bay lost a significant amount of their offensive output, but this offense isn’t designed for one or two guys to carry the load offensively. It’s designed to spread things out and have multiple players score at or near double figures on any given night.
Green Bay certainly has some needs in the short term, all of which revolve around shooting. In a perfect world they would land a big man above 6’8 to help on the glass. If that player can shoot, even better. A veteran play-making point guard or a combo guard who can stretch the floor are also positions of need. Overall, specific positions aren’t a huge deal, as the system allows for players to be somewhat interchangeable. It’s more about the skill-set they bring than the Guard/Forward designation. I can’t begin to speculate on who they might be interested in, but what I do know is they will be able to stretch the floor.
To those who think Coach Ryan should have adjusted the offense and defense to better fit last year’s personnel, I wholeheartedly disagree. This defensive system is assignment specific and needed to be implemented right away. I would argue that ingraining the systems ideals and attempting to turn it into muscle memory was more important. I feel similarly about the offense, because creating a foundation to grow from, and add to, trumps the need to win now. Coach Ryan mentioned this off-season that he did his best to take the skill-sets of the players on the roster and find ways to put them in position to succeed within the offense he was wanting to run.
Coach Ryan’s phoenix noticeably improved as the season wore on, even with a group that largely didn’t fit his style of play. So, I think that should give fans the optimism to see what he can do with players that are hand-picked.
Will Ryan was hired to create something sustainable, the school knew this wasn’t going to be an overnight success. They believe in what he’s selling and are going to give him time to build things his way. I have no doubt that Green Bay will recruit significantly more high school players (predominantly in state) and see less roster turnover down the road. The model is to get old, and stay old.
While rebuilds can be tough, they can also be a beautiful thing. You get to see things built from the ground up and watch everything come full circle. Enjoy the process, I think it’ll be worth the wait.
Mitch Listau is the first domino to fall for Will Ryan and the phoenix. The former Waunakee standout is headed home. Listau, a career 35% three-point shooter at Belmont, thought it best to pursue greater opportunity in his home state. The sweet shooting lefty should be in a position to vie for a significant role next season, and likely a lock to be a part of the rotation. Listau has some size for his position, which should allow him to play either spot on the wing. He’s also a decent ball handler for his position and has a knockdown mid-range jumper. Green Bay needs all the shooting it can get right now, so landing an in-state kid who fills a need seems like a no brainer.
Averaged: 6.3 points, 2 rebounds in 13 mpg as a freshman.
1.237 PPP (99th percentile)
Jacob Ognacevic is exactly the kind of big man that fits into Will Ryan’s system. Ognacevic is a stretch four, who has good footwork and a soft touch for a big man. A big man like Jacob Ognacevic would be a plug and play stretch big for the next four years, with potential to be an all-conference performer. Rumor has it that Ognacevic wants to get closer to home, and Green Bay can offer both opportunity and proximity to home. On paper it makes sense, and would definitely be a fan favorite.
Maria Marchesano was announced as the Head Coach of the Purdue Fort Wayne Mastodons Women’s Basketball program on March 30. The Fort Wayne native returned home after four seasons at Mount Saint Mary’s in the Northeast Conference. Marchesano took over a team that had just one winning season in the decade prior to hiring her and led it to two in four years, culminating in this both regular season and postseason NEC Championships in 2021.
Returning to her hometown played a significant role in Marchesano’s decision to take the Purdue Fort Wayne job. “There were other options on the table, but it’s really hard to say no to your hometown,” she said in an interview with HoriZone Roundtable, “I think that was a big factor: coming home, wanting to build this program back up, wanting to create something that the city can be proud of and just to be back near my family.”
In addition to a return to Fort Wayne, the move marked a return to the Horizon League for Marchesano. She played in the league for Butler from 2001 to 2005. Realignment has been a major part of Marchesano’s story as it relates to the league. On one side, although she’s a Horizon League alum the Butler team that she played for in college has changed conferences twice since her graduation and is currently in the Big East. On the other, she has experience with several schools that didn’t join the league until after her graduation. While this is her first time back in the league as a coach she’s previously been Associate Head Coach at current member IUPUI, and has been on the sidelines as a coach for conference games against RMU and her new school Purdue Fort Wayne.
While realignment has changed the league’s landscape dramatically since 2005, there’s still a lot that Marchesano finds familiar from her time as a player. “There’s still a lot of similarities,” she said, “Green Bay and Milwaukee are still tough, that was how it was back in the day. That was the worst trip to make to go up there and play those Wisconsin schools. Wright State was always a really good, athletic team. You see that’s still the case. Obviously new faces with IUPUI and Purdue Fort Wayne in the league, but a lot of the same trips. Youngstown, Cleveland State, UIC, Detroit; those are all very familiar faces.”
On paper, adding the 2021 NEC Coach of the Year to a team that went 1-21 this season is the definition of a home run hire. Her predecessor for the award — Charlie Buscaglia at Robert Morris — saw his team join the Horizon League alongside Purdue Fort Wayne this season, and after losing four-year standout Nneka Ezeigbo and struggling to find a go-to player, finished ahead of the Mastodons in league play. With other programs at the bottom of the league that have replaced coaches recently opting to hire Division I assistants or lower division head coaches, the fact that the Mastodons were able to take advantage of a perfect storm and land a coach with a proven track record as a Division I Head Coach feels like a game-changer.
The Horizon League is clearly a stronger conference than the NEC, but if Marchesano can pull off even remotely the type of turnaround that she has at Mount Saint Mary’s it will dramatically strengthen a league that’s already coming off of a very impressive postseason. The Horizon League pulled off the biggest seedline upset of the NCAA Tournament, a blowout victory in the NIT and a WBI Championship. According to the NET Rankings, Mount Saint Mary’s would’ve been the sixth best team in the Horizon League this season, just behind Northern Kentucky. If Purdue Fort Wayne quickly turns from a team schools are devastated to lose to into one that can finish at least in the middle of the pack, it will serve to strengthen the resumes of the league’s top teams. If the climb continues further than that, dreams of a two-bid Horizon League might become a reality in the not-so-distant future. The evolution of a young Robert Morris team as it finds its new go-to players will play into that as well.
Despite the reason for this change being a difficult season, the way that Purdue Fort Wayne appears to have made an outstanding hire only adds to Horizon League Women’s Basketball’s exciting outlook after a great postseason. It puts pressure not only on the league’s bottom teams to get it right going forward, but arguably on the middle teams as well. It looks like both 2020-21 addition to the league might quickly move out of the bottom third of the league standings.
We finally got clarity on the status of IUPUI’s head coaching job on Friday, when the school announced it wouldn’t retain Byron Rimm II. Rimm was named interim coach for the 2020 season after Jason Gardner abruptly resigned following an OWI arrest, and led the Jaguars to a 3-15 Horizon League record. Despite reports of candidates interviewing for the position, the school opted to retain Rimm for another year. The result was a much-improved team, finishing 8-10 overall and 7-9 during the Horizon League regular season. Nonetheless, the school decided to go in a different direction. A likely contributing factor is that Marcus Burk, Jaylen Minnett and Elyjah Goss — three Gardner recruits who carried an insane amount of the workload for the Jaguars — have indicated they won’t be returning for next year.
As a result, the first Horizon League Men’s Basketball coaching search of the season is underway.
As with Green Bay last offseason, listed candidates will be limited based on previous salaries offered by the involved schools. While that’s not how things played out for UIC last year when the school gave Luke Yaklich half a million dollars per season, those types of dramatic increases aren’t the norm. That doesn’t completely exclude coaches making more than IUPUI’s projected salary — which should be about in line with the 175,000 Green Bay is paying Will Ryan annually — as Dennis Gates took a six-figure pay decrease to leave Florida State for Cleveland State. It will still make it difficult to list a coach like Gates — who went from making 400,000 dollars per year at FSU to 280,000 per year at CSU — for this opening.
Here are some names that could be in play for the IUPUI job:
When the position appeared open last year, Stan Gouard seemed like a home run hire for IUPUI. The then-University of Indianapolis coach put together a team that finished the season nationally ranked in Division II and likely would’ve finished in the top half of the Horizon League despite having fewer scholarships to offer. Now he’s returned to his alma mater Southern Indiana and staying put might prove to be a strong long-term move if USI chooses to follow former conference rivals Northern Kentucky and Bellarmine to Division I in the near future.
Greg Lansing was recently let go by Indiana State at the end of his contract despite a fourth place finish in the Missouri Valley conference. That result becomes even more impressive when you consider that Lansing’s 250,000 dollar annual salary is lower than eight of 12 Horizon League coaches and is nowhere near the seven-figure high end of MVC salaries. Lansing has proven himself as a quality head coach in the same state as IUPUI, and he’s done it in a tougher conference than the Horizon League. Throw in the potential portal additions that would come with him and Lansing seems like a home run if he wants to stay in college basketball.
David Ragland is a Valparaiso, Indiana native with extensive experience both in the Horizon League and in the state of Indiana throughout his coaching career. He was an assistant at Northern Kentucky in the school’s first year in the Horizon League before spending two years in the league with his hometown school Valparaiso. Ragland spent the past three seasons at Utah State, but following Craig Smith’s departure to Utah it doesn’t seem like a guarantee that he’ll be moving to the Pac 12. With that said, Utah State’s coaching search is still ongoing and the fact that Ragland hasn’t been asked to join the Utes could mean he’s a candidate for an internal promotion that would obviously remove him from contention.
A name frequently linked — or…Linc’d (I’m sorry) — to the job is ex-Green Bay Head Coach Linc Darner. But if I’m being honest, Lansing has similar strengths and no reason to choose to sit around collecting buyout money. This one is mostly fan service. It would be a blast to watch if Burk, Minnett and Goss were coming back!
Another unconventional way for a cash-strapped program to approach this hire would be to tap its own Women’s Basketball Coach Austin Parkinson for the job. Parkinson took over a three-win IUPUI team in 2010 and won just four games in his first season, but hit the 20-win plateau in his third year and has now met that mark in seven of the last eight seasons. He led IUPUI to its first NCAA Tournament automatic bid in 2020 after winning the regular season crown outright. The weird nature of this season may very well have cost the Jaguars another regular season crown, as the team’s 6Before taking over the women’s program, Parkinson spent two years as an assistant for Ron Hunter with the men’s team. Clearly he knows how to build a program and how to win at IUPUI. Conventional wisdom might not be the answer with the Jaguars’ budget, so Parkinson might be the perfect fit for the job.
With all of that said, there are rumors swirling that the search might be a little further along than has been indicated. It would explain the seemingly late decision for a school that’s been done with the 2021 season for over a month.
Hearing IUPUI is zeroing in on 2 B10 assts and a D2 HC in addition to current Interim Byron Rimm. Quietest job in the country
If the final candidate pool truly is limited to Big 10 assistants and Division II coaches, here are some names that could be involved:
Gouard fits the criteria and could still be listed here, but outside of him it’s going to be a crapshoot trying to pick out a single Division-II Head Coach. Former North Dakota State and Ohio coach Saul Phillips put forth another excellent season at Northern State and was frequently mentioned during the Green Bay search last year, though he’s had far more success out west than closer to Indianapolis. It would be an interesting development for Phillips to wind up coaching in the same conference as his former assistant Will Ryan.
If the Jaguars opt instead for a Big 10 assistant, Ohio State’s Terry Johnson would make a lot of sense. Johnson previously coached in the Horizon League as an assistant Butler from 2007 until the school’s departure to the Atlantic 10 in 2012. Johnson had two stints as an assistant at Purdue Fort Wayne and spent two years at Indiana Tech. He has experience in the Horizon League, with current league members, and generally in the state of Indiana throughout his career. Chris Holtmann has pushed hard for his assistant to get a head coaching job, and this could be the offseason where it happens.
Brandon Brantley is another current Big 10 assistant with local ties that could make him a strong hire. Indiana’s coaching staff is in a flux, though IU assistant . Meanwhile, Micah Shrewsberry recently left Purdue for the head coaching job at Penn State. As a result, Brantley seems to be the strongest in-state option for a Big 10 assistant that IUPUI could target. With that said, Shrewsberry’s departure is a potentially complicating factor. Although Matt Painter wouldn’t want to hinder his assistants from opportunities to run their own programs, he also likely doesn’t want to lose as many assistants as many programs that change head coaches in a single offseason. Shrewsberry’s departure should also leave more money available for Purdue’s assistants, which could put Brantley out of IUPUI’s price range.
In this bonus episode, Bob and John talk with Milwaukee women’s basketball head coach Kyle Rechlicz. The discuss, among other things, the first-round win in the WNIT, how next year is shaping up and the unique challenges that presented themselves this season.
As I’ve taken some time to reflect on the season that was for the Cleveland State Vikings men’s basketball program, the one constant remains pride. As a CSU senior and former employee of the basketball team, I have seen this program in some of its more dire straights from an up close and personal point of view. From the days of mass transfers, to academic problems galore, this program has been through the wringer over the better part of the last decade. To see what Dennis Gates and his staff have done in two very inordinate seasons is nothing short of miraculous.
Gates’ second season at the helm saw an influx of impactful newcomers combined with seasoned veteran leadership. Statistically, Cleveland State was led all season long by senior first team all Horizon League member Torrey Patton. The second year Viking scored just under 15 points per game, in addition to being the team’s leading rebounder. Patton was a major force all season long for the Vikings, but the senior had some of his best games near the end of the season when CSU needed it most, as he did in his junior season as well.
The Vikes also received major contributions all year from a pair of juniors; Tre Gomillion and D’Moi Hodge. Gomillion earned defensive player of the year honors in the Horizon League, while Hodge’s season was highlighted by a 46-point outburst on his birthday, in CSU’s second of five matchups against Purdue Fort Wayne, and a game winning assist to Deante Johnson in Cleveland State’s road victory in Dayton versus Wright State. Both Gomillion and Hodge will be integral pieces of the operation next season with the anticipated departures of Patton, Craig Beaudion, and Al Eichelberger.
Cleveland State big man Eichelberger also deserves a tremendous amount of recognition for his contributions. The grad student came into the season earning preseason second team all Horizon League accolades. Unfortunately for Eichelberger, his season was derailed by multiple nagging injuries to his foot and knee. He played sparingly for CSU most of the regular season, with his workload increasing as the season went on. Despite the injuries, Eichelberger remained engaged all year long.
When asked following his heroic overtime three point shot in the conference tournament versus Purdue Fort Wayne to evaluate what has been personally a disappointing season, Eichelberger expressed gratitude for the season the team was having. He said he did not care about personal statistics or accolades, as the goals of the team were what everyone was working towards. In a day and age where many college athletes look for the best personal opportunity to seek a chance at a shot at the pros, Eichelberger showed an unbelievable amount of leadership all season long by sticking with his team despite the constant injuries.
One cannot properly reflect on the 2020-2021 Cleveland State Vikings without giving proper acknowledgement to the “bench mob.” Captained by Jeremy Sanchez and Ben Sternberg, the CSU bench was a constant source of energy all season, in a year where fans were not permitted to attend games due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only has Sternberg become somewhat of a local celebrity though his tenacious spirit and incredible story, but the entire bench unit all made the most of their minutes on the floor. Cleveland State benefited from multiple significant performances from bench contributors such as Chris Greene, Jayson Woodrich, Yahel Hill, and Al Eichelberger.
Gates likes to break down the season into multiple phases. While the Vikings were unable to complete their final phase of winning a national championship, they had an historic year that fans of the program will remember for their entire lives. Not only has Gates and his staff cultivated a transformational environment for their players on the floor, but the seriousness in which Gates’ student-athletes take their off the floor responsibilities is extremely refreshing and reassuring as a classmate of these players. Genuine people attract others that are just as genuine, and the relationships that Gates has with not only his staff, but perhaps most importantly his players are at the forefront of the Vikings’ turnaround.
I circle back to the feeling of pride. I’m not only extremely proud of this season’s results, but I also take great solace in the fact that Cleveland State has a head coach and staff that young people can relate to and confide in. Culture remains a buzzword in sports at both the amateur and professional levels. Gates’ culture at Cleveland State will be the most sustainable aspect of their program; and for that, I am proud.
Bob, Matt and John (with a new Twitter handle, @horizoneJohn) talk about the post-season success of the Horizon League’s women’s basketball teams, including Wright State’s upset of Arkansas in the NCAA Tournament and Milwaukee’s dominant win over Drake in the WNIT. Bob and Matt also have a conversation with Cleveland State’s Chris Kielsmeier, whose team took the WBI crown.
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