In just a few short years since Bruce Pearl left for Knoxville, the Milwaukee Panthers have taken a turn for the worse. You expected them to take a step back after Pearl left, but this team has gone from perennial Horizon League contender, to lower tier school in a mid-major conference.
Rob Jeter's style doesn't seem to be resonating with this team. They went from playing a frantic style under Pearl to a half court style, similar to what Bo Ryan - Jeter's mentor - runs in Madison.
A mid-major's success is heavily evolved around recruiting. If you can get just one really good player to commit to your school, you'll be a contender in your conference because of the parity small conferences have.
Bruce Pearl was able to do this, seemingly every year. Whether it was recruiting high schoolers, or in most cases, getting transfers like Eddie "No Pants" McCants, the Milwaukee Panthers were never short on talent under Pearl.
The same cannot be said since Jeter took over. I didn't like the hiring of Jeter at the time, and I like it even less now. Rather than going out and trying to make a splash by once again targeting a hot-shot assistant or division II coach rising through the ranks (like they did with Pearl), the Panthers played it safe and took Jeter.
I think we all expected Jeter's first year at the helm to be rough. It's never easy in your first year when you're drastically changing styles, and lose a fair amount of talent. I didn't like the hiring mainly for that reason. Why try and go in a completely different direction when what you had been doing worked so well? Find someone that runs a style similar to Pearl's.
The other major flaw with this hiring, was personality. Pearl wasn't short on this. Pearl was an extremely personable, likable figure. He knew how to play the game and schmooze people. He could have sold a skate board to a guy in a wheelchair. When you're a mid-major, you need to be able to sell your program. Kids don't want to come to you, they're still hopeful they'll get scooped up by a bigger program. You have to sell yourself, your program and more importantly the kid on how he'll benefit from coming to your school. I just don't see Jeter as the personality type that can do this.
Finally, the other gripe I have - and we should all have - with Jeter is the state of the program itself. Todd touched on it earlier this week, but what kind of a program is he running? Every year you see countless stories about UWM student-athletes getting in trouble and getting booted from the team. The program is an absolute joke right now.
They put up a very small fight against Marquette - at least for a half - after getting worked over by them last year, and today got steamrolled by the Badgers. Look, I don't expect them to win either of these games, but you have to at least make one of them a game, mainly the Marquette match up. You have to show you can at least hang tough with your state school rivals. Especially Marquette. That's how you win recruits. You have to really motivate your kids and sell them on the fact that they're the ugly step-child no one cares about. Losing to UWGB would be an absolute disaster, you can't get shutout in state games.
The Jeter experiment is not working. It's time to find the energetic salesman type coach that can help bring this team back to NCAA tournament births.
If a coaching change is made at seasons end, one name to keep an eye on is North Dakota State's Saul Phillips. Phillips led the Bison to their first ever 20 win season last year, playing more of an uptempo style than half court grind it out style. More than that, Phillips is a Reedsburg native, played for UW-Platteville from 1991-1995 - captain of the 1995 National Championship team - and has served as an assistant coach at both UW and UW-Milwaukee.
I hate to push coaches out the door and speculate on their future, because after all they're human too, but this move would seem to make a lot of sense. The only roadblock would seem to be whether or not someone like Phillips would be interested in making a lateral move.
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