wiu51 wrote:I just hope this isn't like when Coach Ball left. Ball built a good team and when he left Patterson had a good team for a few years then it went downhill.
I don't think we'll see that, for a couple of reasons.
1. We've already seen some of Coach Fisher's recruits and transfers that he's brought in do some serious contributing, and that was in a shortened recruiting window. I can't wait to see who he can bring in given a full season of recruiting and visits and stuff.
2. If you look at the record though, yea, Ball had some great teams from ~'96-'98 and there was a little bit of a drop off after that for a couple of years (most likely due to the best RB in school history being done and heading off to play pro football), but then in '02 and '03 we had really great seasons too, and only a few of Ball's recruits would have still been there by then, if any. Also, if you look at the end of Patterson's tenure here, we were trending back up...6-5 for a couple of seasons, then we had the crazy 1-10 year with all the Coach P health stuff and getting "let go" or whatever that was plus Barr getting injured, but then 2010 was really good too...8-5, made playoffs, had amazing QB, WR, LB, etc...and those all would have been Coach P's recruits even though it was Hendrickson coaching them. Honestly I think that if Patterson had been able to stay here until he retired, he would have been one of those coaches where we have teams that are really really good for a couple of years, then we drop back down to middle-of-the-pack, then work our way back up near the top...kinda like that over and over, but even in the bad years, we're not a "doormat".
The situation that we're in now, I think Coach Fisher and his staff can both recruit really well and coach really well, as evidenced by the team not giving up and losing in the latter half of most games. They stay in it, they keep fighting. Maybe they don't end up successful, like against NDSU, but they've won most of the games, and like they say "Good teams find a way to win". It's stressful, it's ugly at times, but we've clawed out win after win. We've got 3 more very winnable games this season, and if we come away with even one 1 out of those 3, then we're likely in the playoffs and we'd have increased our win total for the regular season again, for the 5th year in a row. Coach Nielson could recruit really well...I'll give him that...he brought in some really great players, but he was frequently out coached in the second half of games...something you now see happening with USD.