The Forgotten Years: The History of Wayne Morgan
- Thread starter Nuts4Cy
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Lol. And on and on it goes with the Morgan haters. How many times have I heard he could recruit but he couldn't coach, the players ran the asylum, he had thug players, they didn't play defense, they under achieved, he didn't get a job after ISU, Larry and Fred would have done so much better with his players, the scheduling flap, and on and on it goes. Bottom line, he had 3 winning seasons in 3 years, an NIT Final 4, advanced in the NCAA tournament, plenty of huge wins, his teams ran and were fun to watch, and he was the last coach to win at KU (and could have won twice there except for the worst call in ISU basketball history) just to name a few of his accomplishments. And some want to compare that era to GMac? Ridiculous. I don't care what he did before ISU or after, I only know that his 3 years were very good by ISU basketball history standards. And as far as not getting a job after he got canned, his name had been sullied by the phony scheduling flap nonsense, or maybe he just wanted to stay in Ames for his kids and work in private business. After rescuing the program following the LE fiasco and getting canned after the 3 good years he gave us, who could blame him for being sick of coaching for awhile.
Is anyone saying that Morgan wasn't more successful at Iowa State than McDermott. What I think the discussion is about is who has had the better head coaching career. That would be McDermott. For goodness sake, Wayne got fired from Long Beach State.
The Wayne years were fun. I was not especially sad to see him go, however.
Ahh...thanks. It makes sense that I would have left that deflated after a close loss. And to be fair, one of the other times I've left Hilton angry was one of McDermott's losses to UNI. That is literally the only time I've left before a game was over in my life.
Not sure if this has been touched on by other posters, but we started that game up 2-0. Colorado hadn't made their lineup with enough time left or something weird like that, so Stinson shot two FT's before tip. It was one of the weirder sequences I've seen.
I think Creighton will now be a lot like his UNI teams. Tough, fairly talented, not a team the big schools wanna play in March, etc. but I doubt they'll be playing on the second weekend of the tournament in the next ten years.
Anyone saying Morgan can coach make me laugh. Go back and watch the games under him.
standing there arms crossed looking like a lost puppy is not coaching.
standing there arms crossed looking like a lost puppy is not coaching.
When the discussion is about Wayne some on here always get in their "shots" and want to lump in the Morgan years with the GMac years when they couldn't have been more different: winning seasons vs losing seasons, post seasons wins vs no post season, basketball that was fun to watch vs no fun (need I go on). Some may want to compare Morgan's entire career with GMac's and that's fine, but the only thing that should really matter for most Clone fans is what he did while at ISU. I think Morgan won at least one conference title at LBS and if you say he was canned, I'll take your word for it. But I don't know the circumstances of why he was canned, which could have been for any number of reasons, maybe legitimate, maybe not. It's also likely that any other coach in ISU basketball history would have got an extension and a raise if his first 3 years as ISU's coach would have been as successful as Morgans, so sometimes being fired doesn't mean squat.
And neither is adjusting your cufflinks between dictates as the players are trying to run one of your so called 253,871 offensive sets.
He didn't look like a lost puppy when he tore into GMac for bad mouthing our players up at UNI. And since when does standing there with your arms crossed make you a bad coach. I think I've even seen Fred in that pose a few times. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that your team's results say a lot more about what kind of coach you are.
Okay.... 146-123 to 378-236....
im not even defending gmac. He ruined isu basketball completely for me at the time but it started under Morgan.
Morgan was fired because he was found to have ties to a pipeline that was landing him players from the inner cities. I have no idea what exactly was illegal about it, but I know one of his assistants was in worse hot water than he was, and I would assume he was paying this guy to get kids here. Morgan was also an A-hole with a capital A.
Doug wasn't a top talent coming out of high school. Most of the people that were around AAU ball that saw him play say he wasn't a great talent at that point. He had no major offers and was set to redshirt at UNI.
It may have played a factor in him getting fired, it certainly wasn't the whole reason though.
I appreciate what Morgan did at ISU. He took over a crap situation and gave us some success right away. He freakin won at KU and should have had two wins there if it were not for two insanely bad calls to help KU get it to overtime. People forget, but his team had bad injury issues in his first year on the job and his last year on the job. Homan sprained an ankle his first year on the job and was limited at the critical time of the year, that team could have made the NCAA had he stayed healthy. He could recruit, his teams played an exciting brand of basketball and had some success here, that was a big deal especially after coming out of the LE mess. His teams did frustrate me at times and I felt they gave a few games away they should have won.
