We are being materially outspent

That argument would hold more water in my eyes if we didn’t get embarrassed by GW twice, embarrassed by Davidson at home, and lost to Rhode Island twice. Like VT said, Mooney has a $2 million roster playing like a mid-tier CAA team.

Also, you’re boiling it down to players which is not the only factor in a team’s success. I feel very confident in saying that if Josh Schertz had our roster he would do better than if Mooney had Saint Louis’s roster. Navy (who has no NIL), Stephen F Austin, Miami (OH) would all do better than us in the A10 this year with significantly less NIL.
 
SLU, VCU, and Dayton at the top. You know Fordham and La Salle are at the bottom. I assume Bona is down there too, although who knows with Woj impact. Loyola and Duquesne maybe down toward the bottom too? Not sure where St. Joe's might fall. Rhody is probably at or near the top of the second tier, Mason and GW maybe similar or a bit below. Davidson maybe in our range.

VCU/SLU/Dayton
Rhody/GW/Mason
UR/Davidson
St. Joe's/Bona/Duquesne/Loyola
La Salle/Fordham

Dunno, maybe just a wild guess that's totally off, but that's my stab at a logical ranking that puts us in the middle.
 
Here is what I read and I absolutely hate this - - Its Hardt and PQ's job to get us money and they aren't doing a good enough job. Its Mooney's job to get the most out of the money they do give him and he isn't doing a good enough job. And then the part that is the most depresssing - - each is covering for the other. Mooney - - the administration is trying hard to do better but its tough, blah, blah, blah. Admin - - "we are being significantly outspent" - - which means - - - no holding Chris accountable because then he might point the finger at us so no rattling his chain for terrible results, terrible schedule etc - - let's just let him be as as long as he is a company man helping cover us up, we can all go about underachieving safely!

Its all just too hard and no one should be accountable as a result and we will just fade into mediocrity or worse and just convince ourselves its the best we can hope for! VCU saying its goal is to be top 35 in the country is outstanding for them. Would love to hear from our admin that we even have a freaking goal but I am sure it's just "to compete"? We will try hard to compete in this new era! But its hard and no one can be expected to make miracle happen!
 
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Spider17 said:
I think they will. I don’t think this would have been written by JOC if there weren’t credible sources to back that up. Also Mooney hinting at other donors stepping up too, so I expect we will be operating at a higher funding next year. Not sure if it’ll be $5 million or not but my guess is closer to $5 million than $2 million. Whether we will have better results congruent with that funding is totally different.

On the other hand, if this was written just as an excuse with no actionable change and we keep operating with the same budget with the same coaching staff and getting the same results, we only have ourselves to blame.
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Mooney has obviously been able to convince “the donors” in the past, so don’t doubt he could do it again.

What I doubt is the BOT deciding now is the time to invest more in the men’s basketball program, specifically investing more in paying players. Can’t believe that significantly more money is needed to retain any of the returning players and there are limited open spots unless players are booted from the team and we know UR doesn’t operate that way. Plus I can’t see UR spending top dollar on a player that isn’t interested in a UR degree either.

If the University decides to invest more money, then the additional money will no doubt get passed down to the fans via increased ticket costs which will further suppress sales which were obviously already down this year. Doesn’t make any business sense.

The timing simply makes no sense and all this talk boils down to another excuse as others have already said.
 
97spiderfan said:
This is the same song and dance we have heard from this administration and from Mooney for the past 15 years. Nothing has changed. First, we needed to renovate the RC to compete, than we needed to "align" our academics better to compete, and of course than we needed a new practice facility to compete in the new world of college athletics. And it is NIL and paying players that is preventing us from competing.

Always an excuse, always one more thing to kick the can down the roads and excuse the recent past and present. Hell, they don't even offer us hope for the future, just some convoluted argument that we are always behind everyone else and can't catch up. Newsflash, that is on Mooney, Hardt, and PQ, they are the leaders of our program and they collectively have failed and continue to fail because they have no vision, no accountability and no plan, other than give us more of your money.
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Agree 97, same point I was making. New excuse every few years. He loves it because it gives him 3 to 4 years of cover, nit that anyone is our admin really cares anyway. The BS statements ala warpspeed and we will have more in the spring are just infuriating because he says nothing. As you say kicking the can. Such strong leadership by the Triumvirate. Weak sauce. Mooney should have been bitching about his NIL budget and on the phone to his country club cronies way before now having PQ and JOC carry his water. Pitiful.
 
Someone earlier asked how much we spent this year. I don't know the numbers answer but my answer is "way too much." Because we clearly aren't getting our money's worth out of anyone, with one posssible exception in my view.
 
Spider17 said:
I’d love to be a fly on the wall with these conversations that PQ/Hardt have to convince our BoT or other donors to give more money for Mooney.

PQ/Hardt: We need more money for our men’s basketball program, we are being materially outspent.

BoT: With the extra $2-3 million is it so we can buyout Mooney’s contract and find a coach who has had proven success at the lower level?

PQ/Hardt: No, it’s because Saint Louis, VCU, Dayton spend more than us.

BoT: Ah, so that must mean we’re in 4th place in the A10 placing knocking on the door of being top of the A10. We’ve beaten teams that have lower NIL than us so we just need that extra boost to beat the remaining top teams.

PQ/Hardt: Not exactly. We’ve lost to a lot of teams with worse NIL than us in conference and out of conference. We are a bottom half team again like we were 3 out of the past 4 years.

BoT: At least Mooney has a strong core of returning players who we don’t want to lose with NIL. That way we can pay more for some key transfers to get us back to the top.

PQ/Hardt: No, not really. We are losing 4 out of our top 6 scorers. Only one player coming back next year has demonstrated ability to be an A10 level of starter.

BoT: So if we’ve consistently been a bottom half team, lost to teams with worse NIL than us, haven’t recruited any core players to build a roster around, how do we know Mooney will be able to make the most out of the increase in funding we give him?

PQ/Hardt: He went to Princeton. I’m sure he will figure it out!
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Very accurate. There is really no justification to stay the course. I go back to 2019 when I wanted to stay the course, but I could understand why others didn't after back to back 20 loss seasons. Well, we are having back to back seasons that are way worse than those were when you break it down, and we certainly have no one on our roster who compares to Jacob, Nick, Nate, and Grant. My goodness, what a drop off in talent. And, we went 9-9 and 6-12 in the A-10 in those 20 loss seasons with those guys and lost Nick early to injury and had him for none of the A-10 games in the 6-12 year. With Blake and a good recruit in Tyler, we added a healthy Nick, Blake, and Tyler to a team that had Jacob, Nate, and Grant. That is reason for optimism. Those two 20 loss seasons, counting the A-10 tourney, we went 17-23 in the A-10 with much better talent returning while last season and this one, we are 9-22 in the A-10 with dramatically less talent returning. Very very very little reason for optimism.
 
sman said:
no idea where this 4-6th idea came from. the top 3 have a $5M budget. we were told our $2M is around the middle of the league. where are we pulling 4-6th from?

my belief that payroll matters isn't an excuse for UR or Mooney.
I'm saying if we really want a kid and offer him $133k, and SLU really likes the same kid and offers him $333k ... we're losing that kid 100% of the time. we're fishing is a much smaller pond than the top 3 teams.

vt thinks our roster is comparable to the top teams in the league and it's all just coaching. I think that's wishful thinking. we can win on a given night like the GMU game. but our roster isn't top of the league strong. and I agree ... either is our coaching.
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I think our roster stinks this year. I am saying recruit better, spend the 2 million better, and coach better.
 
An article like the one today by JOC is the exact reason why I follow the program from a distance now. I love the Spiders, but as others have pointed out the excuses are just disgusting. Clearly the brass in the RC care more about keeping a struggling coach employed than getting this program on a winning path. And as I have said before, if the administration doesn't care if we win, why should we?
 
sman said:
no idea where this 4-6th idea came from. the top 3 have a $5M budget. we were told our $2M is around the middle of the league. where are we pulling 4-6th from?

my belief that payroll matters isn't an excuse for UR or Mooney.
I'm saying if we really want a kid and offer him $133k, and SLU really likes the same kid and offers him $333k ... we're losing that kid 100% of the time. we're fishing is a much smaller pond than the top 3 teams.

vt thinks our roster is comparable to the top teams in the league and it's all just coaching. I think that's wishful thinking. we can win on a given night like the GMU game. but our roster isn't top of the league strong. and I agree ... either is our coaching.
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I just went with 4-6th based on not being top3.

Let’s stipulate that if it were purely about money our position in the final standings would match our spend and we would beat every other team spending less than us.

That’s not what’s actually transpiring.
 
In our own building, Huesman v Mooney. Huesman loses a number of portal players to FBS schools every year. My recollection is that Mooney has only lost Tyler and Djia as graduates to bigger schools, the others seem to go to smaller programs. Big difference in recruiting success.
 
A part of me gets the frustration, but context matters. Coach Mooney has been here over 20 years because he’s built stability at a place that simply doesn’t have the same resources as the top of this league. Look at what’s happening across the conference — the upper-tier programs as mentioned are spending at levels that are more in line with the Big East than any "mid-major". That’s not speculation; it’s reality in the NIL era. You can’t expect a smaller school to line up financially with programs operating with power-conference money.

Could results be better? Sure they could, but acting like this is an even playing field ignores what’s actually happening in college basketball right now. Stability, competitive seasons, and staying relevant in the conference race are accomplishments when you’re not spending at the top of the market. If we want different results, it absolutely starts with matching the investment — not just swapping out the guy who’s been holding the program together for two decades.
 
SpiderTrue said:
A part of me gets the frustration, but context matters. Coach Mooney has been here over 20 years because he’s built stability at a place that simply doesn’t have the same resources as the top of this league. Look at what’s happening across the conference — the upper-tier programs as mentioned are spending at levels that are more in line with the Big East than any "mid-major". That’s not speculation; it’s reality in the NIL era. You can’t expect a smaller school to line up financially with programs operating with power-conference money.

Could results be better? Sure they could, but acting like this is an even playing field ignores what’s actually happening in college basketball right now. Stability, competitive seasons, and staying relevant in the conference race are accomplishments when you’re not spending at the top of the market. If we want different results, it absolutely starts with matching the investment — not just swapping out the guy who’s been holding the program together for two decades.
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let’s start with a “swap out.”
 
Arachnid said:
In our own building, Huesman v Mooney. Huesman loses a number of portal players to FBS schools every year. My recollection is that Mooney has only lost Tyler and Djia as graduates to bigger schools, the others seem to go to smaller programs. Big difference in recruiting success.
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Fascinating that no bigger schools are coming after our players and no bigger schools are coming after our coach even in the most transactional era ever of college athletics. The market has certainly spoken.
 
SpiderTrue said:
A part of me gets the frustration, but context matters. Coach Mooney has been here over 20 years because he’s built stability at a place that simply doesn’t have the same resources as the top of this league. Look at what’s happening across the conference — the upper-tier programs as mentioned are spending at levels that are more in line with the Big East than any "mid-major". That’s not speculation; it’s reality in the NIL era. You can’t expect a smaller school to line up financially with programs operating with power-conference money.

Could results be better? Sure they could, but acting like this is an even playing field ignores what’s actually happening in college basketball right now. Stability, competitive seasons, and staying relevant in the conference race are accomplishments when you’re not spending at the top of the market. If we want different results, it absolutely starts with matching the investment — not just swapping out the guy who’s been holding the program together for two decades.
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Charleston Southern, Elon, Furman, Marist, Bucknell, William & Mary, Florida Gulf Coast — these are some of the teams we’ve lost to in the past 2 years who definitely have lower NIL than we do.

Tied for 10th, Tied for 12th, Tied for 1st, Tied 11th — these are our A10 regular season finishes (so far this year) and the other past 3 years, where the furthest we went was quarter finals in the tournament. Not only are we not competing at the top of the conference, we’re not even top half. 2023-2024 was an anomaly based off other data.

I don’t consider either our OOC or A10 results even close to staying relevant. Don’t confuse stability with comfort.
 
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