It's already been discussed that Foster's bad attitude and erratic behavior hurt the team greatly and then led to the exodus that brought on the bad year the team had last year. I don't think anyone is holding Weber blameless but no one can say with any certainty that he could have done anything different. Perhaps, dismissing Foster earlier would have helped but I can't blame a guy for thinking that his best player was redeemable. One problem is just that people with a drug problem just don't respond in a way 99% of people would. They're unpredictable and can seem on track then suddenly suddenly back to their destructive behavior.
Beyond that a real contributor was Martin's poor recruiting after Hill left. Weber was left with few underclassman and the guys who should have been strong players and leaders as upper classmen those years weren't there. Basically we had Gipson who was a 6'5" center and by all reports not much of a leader. When Weber arrived it was less than two weeks before the late signing period and the only decent player Martin had on board to sign was Upshaw and we now know it's fortunate that he didn't come to K-State. Weber was left with a huge hole to fill and due to Martin's poor recruiting we didn't have any senior leadership (or talent) last year or the year before.
You can give partial blame to Weber for the last 2 years but you also have to admire his ability to rebuild the team and make such a rapid turnaround from last year to next. We've made a huge leap in performance and are peaking at the right time as the team seems to be finally gelling and losing their hesitancy. Not many coaches can go from next to last in the conference and not even making the NIT to making the NCAA tournament.
From here on though he'll have to prove that he can sustain the success. We won't have any scholarship seniors next year and it's up to Weber to guide the juniors to being effective team leaders.
People might say that Weber's history shows that he can't sustain success but the situation was different and more importantly most people are smart enough to learn from and improve themselves after a failure. And if you think past history matters, in a different situation he made Southern Illinois progressively better while he was there (with his players
Beyond that a real contributor was Martin's poor recruiting after Hill left. Weber was left with few underclassman and the guys who should have been strong players and leaders as upper classmen those years weren't there. Basically we had Gipson who was a 6'5" center and by all reports not much of a leader. When Weber arrived it was less than two weeks before the late signing period and the only decent player Martin had on board to sign was Upshaw and we now know it's fortunate that he didn't come to K-State. Weber was left with a huge hole to fill and due to Martin's poor recruiting we didn't have any senior leadership (or talent) last year or the year before.
You can give partial blame to Weber for the last 2 years but you also have to admire his ability to rebuild the team and make such a rapid turnaround from last year to next. We've made a huge leap in performance and are peaking at the right time as the team seems to be finally gelling and losing their hesitancy. Not many coaches can go from next to last in the conference and not even making the NIT to making the NCAA tournament.
From here on though he'll have to prove that he can sustain the success. We won't have any scholarship seniors next year and it's up to Weber to guide the juniors to being effective team leaders.
People might say that Weber's history shows that he can't sustain success but the situation was different and more importantly most people are smart enough to learn from and improve themselves after a failure. And if you think past history matters, in a different situation he made Southern Illinois progressively better while he was there (with his players
