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The good news is that I’ll waste much less time if the free site goes away. It’s hard to break the bad habit of hearing y’all bitchin’ about everything under the sun. Still, completely irrationally, I still care about NU sports, even if I’ve been priced out of football tickets…or rather don’t think they’re worth the price. I’m sure it won’t be long until men’s basketball tickets are equally expensive and unfriendly to fans. Between rising ticket prices, constantly transferring players, and the sell off to the streaming services, they’re killing the golden goose.

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hdhntr1 said:

NU "screwed the pooch" and deserves to be taken to the cleaners for their actions and no it will not come anywhere close to bankrupting the University. They signed a contract with him and got plenty out of it including a new stadium, plenty of other fundraising and other sources of revenue. When they chose to end the relationship, they did it in an extremely vindictive manner trying to destroy him financially, professionally and personally. Did they have the right to let him go, yes. Did they have the right to do what they did to him including not honoring the contract and working to destroy him professionally and personally? No.

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Did they have a right to fire him for cause for not adequately managing the team he was responsible for when they were sexually hazing teammates? Absolutely. Had it been going on for years. Yes! Did they dismiss him in an absolutely messed up way? Of course. The problem was that they initially made the wrong decision. Fitzgerald should have been dismissed right away instead of being given a slap on the wrist. He’ll likely get a hefty settlement, but he was rightfully shown the door for not ensuring that the team environment was safe from bullying and abuse. Good riddance!

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Mr Wickerpark said:

yes but hopefully this free site continues

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Turk, @lou v confirmed that we can keep free loading on the Basketball board. 👍

I have many Pacers fans in my family and they've been pretty happy so far.

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curdog said:

very well said. I was in the camp that he should have been let go after 2022 for performance reasons (not screaming for him to be fired but rather I didn’t think he could adapt to the changing landscape). I did not want his reputation thrown in the gutter over some accusations. And I keep coming back to the question: if these deeds were so heinous as to fire the face of the university, then why is no one else facing any repercussions?

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If they wanted to fire him at that point they could have and he would have walked into the sunset with what they owed him. There would have been discussions on this board whether he deserved more leeway because of his past contributions to the school and the program but it would have eventually faded into the woodwork. One reason they probably did not is that they wanted the new stadium. Early renditions were released in Sept 2022 and it would have been hard to fire the Icon at that point as he was instrumental in getting it, If he had been let go at the end of 2022 I can see Ryan not wanting to go through with it if, But by July things were more set in stone.

At the same time, I can imagine much of NU did not really like having Fitz being successful and the figurehead of the University so when this came up they used it as a way of getting rid of a thorn in their side. And to do it they had to act quickly.

Coach Chris Collins coaching on Doug Collins Court. Dig it.

Also, very interesting that we're stepping up our exhibition schedule game. Let's look at exhibition scheduling in the Collins era:
2014: Lewis
2015: none
2016: Quincy
2017: Illinois-Springfield
2018. none
2019: McKendree
2020: Quincy
2021: Lindenwood
2022: Lindenwood
2023: Quincy
2024: McKendree
2025: Lewis
2026: @Iowa State; Illinois State
2027: @Illinois State; Iowa State

All but the upcoming season have been home games. This coming year will be our first "road" exhibition game.

As I've stated before - my mental model is that most high major programs would rather not play true road games in the non-conference season. ("true road game" as defined as playing at the opponents home arena, and is different from "neutral site" games, or even "semi-home"/"semi-away" as defined by ken pom.). The 'Cats have played true road games as part of their assignment "Gavitt Tipoff Games" and "ACC-B1G Challenge." However, since the pandemic, the only true road non-con games they've played were at Dayton (2025 season, to satisfy a "home and home" that started in '24) and DePaul (2024, as part of a "home and home" that started in '23).

Perhaps scheduling a "road" exhibition offers the path to getting a real test, but not risk hurting your resume?

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hdhntr1 said:

Times have changed. Especially vs the BIG of even 3-5 years ago. The top programs are still in a class by themselves. But then there were bands where there was not that much difference. Being around 60 used to being the 40 to 60-65 band that was reasonably competitive in the old BIG (say 8-10 wins). Out side of that it was hard to compete Could not handle the top teams but could be competitive with the rest. But now 60 is more in the 55 to 80 band and in the new BIG, as stacked as it is becoming, consistently recruiting at that 60 level will make even 3 conference wins (the min required to get to 6 and bowl eligible) difficult to accomplish. To be able to have even a vision of competing probably gotta be in the top 50 at the very worst. (last year we were at 55 (17th or tied for 16th int MN) and only Purdue was behind us though we were only slightly behind IA, Heck, 2/3s of the conference (12 of the 18 teams) were in the top 37. By comparison in 2019 we were at 49 and we were 11th out of 14 Only 7 teams were 37 or below out of 14. Just shows how much it has changed. 60th won't cut it

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I think we are in the right conference. We should be blowing by ACC teams in another year or so. And I imagine that the P2 will have more attention from the media and recruiting sites. Which will help us, vandy, etc.
Maybe Im wrong but Im thinking we start creeping in the top 50 with Braun. Hopefully Braun succeeds but Im also thinking it will no longer be acceptable, by NU Admin, to have awful finishes. While I think we. can achieve 6 wins this year, I couldnt imagine Braun sticking around with another awful year like last year. Never mind, with the changing ncaa landscape, almost any coach would want to coach in a P2 program.

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CatManTrue said:

We freeloaders will need a new place to complain… for free. Does Turk still have a facebook group?

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yes but hopefully this free site continues

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curdog said:

And I keep coming back to the question: if these deeds were so heinous as to fire the face of the university, then why is no one else facing any repercussions?

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Had to read book at NU titled "The Enduring Questions". This is surely one of them. The perps deserve some heavy karma but for some reason nobody even wants to know who they were.

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