Men's basketball needs new energy
By Editorial
The Santa Clara men's basketball has seen better days. Though the team beat Portland on Monday 80-56, the previous seven games weren't so encouraging.
Congratulations to senior forward Travis Niesen for receiving the WCC Player of the Week award in early January, but the praise stops there.
Let's face it: men's basketball has not been playing to its full potential. After last season's 7-7 conference record, this season's 2-7 is a bit of a letdown, especially after decent preseason wins over Cal Poly and Bucknell, and a close loss to Gonzaga.
The dedicated Ruff Rider could guess why the Broncos are having such a tough season, but for the rest of Santa Clara, the story is a little more complicated.
This year's team has a fairly young roster and starting lineup. The inexperience, coupled with the loss of seniors Doron Perkins and Kyle Bailey, has presented new challenges to both the team and coaching staff.
In addition, the bench has been littered with injuries that have prevented the Broncos from playing their best lineup. Original starting players Brandon Rohe and Sean Denison have been forced to sit out games while various back, foot and knee injuries are nursed back to health. Niesen also missed a game due to a back injury. The loss of key players may be a valid reason to lose, but with a 2-7 conference record, there's little room for excuses.
One difficulty is that two new transfer players, Danny Pariseau and seven-footer Josh Higgins, both from other universities, have to sit this season out before hitting the court as Broncos, according to NCAA transfer rules.
The men's basketball program seems to be getting a little stale. Head coach Dick Davey is in his 14th season with men's basketball and there have been rumors about assistant coach Steve Seandel taking his place to continue the "family-style" approach to coaching Santa Clara seems to be so fond of. The question is, When will the turnover take place?
In Davey's first 10 years at Santa Clara, the men's basketball team only finished below .500 once, but they have failed to finish above .500 for the past three years -- and this season may be the fourth.
If you have been to any of the men's games, you know that Davey has a tendency to get fired up on the sidelines. Whether that energy is being put to the best use of the team is a question that could only be answered from the middle of a timeout huddle. Of course the players are all by Davey's side, but maybe the time has come to start a new era of Bronco basketball -- an era that can only start with a shift of team leadership.
Santa Clara men's basketball needs a rejuvenation, no matter how that may manifest itself. The Ruff Riders have helped increase home-game attendance for the last few seasons, but without a winning team, there is not much to cheer about. And not just for the fans' sake, but shouldn't the "Jesuit university in Silicon Valley" have strong sports programs as well? After all, if we are trying to compete with universities like Stanford, we still have a long way to go.
If a change on the coaching staff would result in more wins, let's do it. Wouldn't it be nice if the next time Santa Clara hosts the WCC Championship Tournament, our men's team takes it all and earns the conference title?
Now that we have a real pep band and impressive fan turnout, the team should start to bring their A-game. There really shouldn't be an inverse relationship between seats filled and points scored by our team.
Let's hit the court running and give our school something to be proud of.