MBB: Ohio Athletic Conference

[mc1983]

I was reading up on the Berg hire of Mike Summey and I'm not sure what to think.  Almost no HC experience, but a lot of D1 experience at a lot of places.  I guess we'll see how it goes.  Here's his resume I pieced together since the Berg bio has some holes in it: 

97-99  Graduate manager, NC State
99-03  Asst. coach, St. Francis (PA)
03-04  Asst. coach, Queens University
04-06  Asst. coach, The Citadel
06-08  Asst. coach, North Florida
08-09  Head coach, Bethany
09-13  Dir. of ops, Miami (FL)
13-15  Assoc HC, St. Francis (PA)
15-20  Asst. coach, BGSU
20-22  Asst. coach, NC State
22-24  Asst. coach, Campbell
24-25  GM, Utah

He's been placed in a difficult spot just trying to field a roster. Between transfers and graduation, there's not much left. Markell Johnson-Nichols appears to be staying. But otherwise, the team looks to be very young. Bucheit brought almost all of his freshman recruits to Marietta.

[Dr. Acula]

At this point you basically have to give him a pass on this first season because it's going to be difficult to recruit the majority of a roster for this year when you get hired in late June.  They understandably had to cancel their team camps in June because they didn't have a coach yet so that doesn't help either.

[Dr. Acula]

I decided to do a little Fuline praising tonight because something today reminded me of the pre-Fuline days.

Fuline's 1st year (2011-12) they went 7-11 in OAC play.  He's never had a losing record again.  The last 7 seasons they're 95-24 (.798).  Excluding the 12 game COVID season they've averaged 23.3 wins/yr over that span.  For reference, Lee Hood's 19 yrs they averaged 13.2 wins/yr.

He's made the NCAA tourney 4 times.  3 of those times they advanced at least to the sweet 16.  And I think we all agree that the 2020 squad that was robbed of their chance to keep playing had a real shot at the final 4.

Mount started playing basketball in 1895.  Prior to Fuline they had one 20 win season...Hood's fantastic 1996-97 team with Aaron Shipp and Neal Richards that went 25-5.  Fuline is AVERAGING 20 wins a season (280 wins in 14 seasons).

I will never stop being thankful that he decided to take the Mount job and stay in Alliance long-term and I'm sure anyone else who was around before him agrees.