"Long Beach should never be a middle of the pack team." I think we all want this to be the truth, but I think that is a pretty difficult expectation to meet for any college program. Historically, there aren't many mid majors or small conference teams that "dominate" a conference consistently other than what? Gonzaga?
Who Cares? Whatever happened worked and the team played much different in the BWT than they did the previous five games before(which they lost all five). Everyone out here knew CDM was not coming back and yes the timing was not the greatest but like I said whatever happened it worked. What would you say if they had flamed out in their first game against UCR? CDM had a lot of success the first few years here but the past few we have been a middle of the pack team in the BW. Long Beach should never be a middle of the pack team. CDM is long gone and lets now move forward instead of dwelling on the past. Tark, Lute, Tex, Joe, Seth and CDM are all long gone. It is time to get behind Coach Acker and see where he takes us.
Let me start by saying I've been lurking these boards for the last 20 years. Also, maybe I'm an outlier but I was extremely happy with CDM during his tenure at Long Beach State.
Having said that, I get people are and were frustrated with the success of the men's basketball team over CDM's tenure. I'm wondering, what expectations everyone has and how a new coach will play into them.
The Big West is a competitive conference with some great coaches.
Here are some stats over CDMs 17 year tenure:
of the 11 BW schools that have existed during the last 17 years, 9 different BW schools won the BW tourny
UCSB: 4 wins
Fullerton:3 wins
UCI: 2 wins
Long Beach: 2 wins
5 other schools with 1 win
Long Beach made the BW conference tourny final 6 times. The only team that appeared in the conference final more was UCI with 7 appearances. They share the same number of conference tourny wins.
I think CDM did a great job building competitive teams and coached them well. We were essentially 3 games away from being the most successful BW program during his tenure if you measure success by making the NCAA tournament (which I do because it is the first step in advancing a program from mid major to the next level)
Really hope Coach Acker can keep the team together for next year and has success going forward. Also, I think Bobby Smitheran made a serious blunder with this comment and if I was a player on the team, I would be pissed: “My belief and hope is that by doing what I did and the timing of it, they would play inspired, and that's what they did,” Trying to take credit for the team's work and success is pretty f'd.
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