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Not quite sure how to word this. It will probably be one of my lengthier posts. But, here goes: Welcome to the cip farewell tour. In the next few weeks, I'll be fading away from this forum. Nothing bad, it's all really good, but I want to let everyone know why my involvement here will be sporadic, at best. As some of you know, I grew up in Hampton. Mrs. cip moved there when she was in high school. We've been together for 23 years, and for some reason we've always had it in our hearts to get back to Hampton. I'm a firm believer in Divine Providence, and we both agree God gave us that desire. We were waiting on his timing. Well, that timing finally came. Sometime shortly after December 1st, we will be opening a restaurant and lounge in Hampton called Conlee's (our grandson's first name). The doors that came flying open in a 7 day period for us to purchase the old Legion in Hampton are amazing. I tell people to never give up on their dreams. They will come true. It takes faith. God has your back! The reason I'm posting this is twofold. First of all, I didn't want to disappear and leave everyone wondering what happened (ala Auroran---by the way, he hasn't posted for awhile...). Secondly, and by far most importantly, I wanted to thank everyone for giving me much joy since Dave started this website. It has given me the opportunity to meet a lot of people who I now consider friends. You have also put up with my nonbasketball nonsense which makes up the majority of my posts. Thank you for that. Although I'll still be around for the next month, I wanted to let people know I won't be starting the game threads anymore. That really was fun. It's time to pass that torch. I'm saddened I won't be much of a part of HHC just when the program is on such an upward trend. However, I will stay in touch. I'm only just a private message away. With the new forum it's great that the messages go to my email account. So, when you slackards want salsa, you can let me know. Finally, I expect you guys to make an appearance at Conlee's. Those of you who live west of Lincoln have no excuse not to show up. We'll have plenty of TV's, plenty of adult beverages, and THE BEST steaks and burgers in this fine country of ours. GO BIG RED! You know there has to be a video.....

All right let me clarify. I should have recognized in the over-dramatic, hyperbolic world we live in, where the meaning of "literally" has now become "figuratively," people would misconstrue the meaning of crossroads. Crossroads is simply a point in which traveling in two directions is possible. I have never judged the success of my teams and the success of the teams I root for based on the win/loss record. I base success on how close a team comes to reaching its overall potential. You can play well and reach your potential and still have a losing record if that is where your potential lies. This team is young, inexperienced and playing in what projects as the toughest conference in the nation. They are going to have trouble winning games no matter how well they play, but there is still a level of performance that they can still reach. Some teams do over-perform and some under-perform. Trying to stay with the drama people have attempted to turn my position into: There now seems to be a struggle for the soul of this team. It is possible to turn a team around once it has gone off course but it is hugely difficult. If they do not get these issues of rotations, roles, and attitude fixed this will be an under-performing team. If Coach Miles can get his team to "buy in" as he stated in his interview posted somewhere on this site today, then they have the opportunity to reach their potential or even over-achieve. This is the crossroads they are at. That does not mean that we should pack in the season or begin discussing how well of a job Miles is doing. Every season has a crossroads and some years you can have several. Sometimes it is impossible to identify when you arrived at that crossroads until the season is over and you can look back in retrospect. This season that is not the case. It seemed obvious to me (which is why I started this thread) that there was problems with the attitude, effort, cohesion and everything else that some just call team spirit. In reading Coach Miles quote it appears he has come to the same conclusion, I assume long before I did. Whether the Huskers win tomorrow or not will not answer the question as to whether we have these problems sorted. I mentioned I had questions after game 3 & 4 but no one seemed to care because we won those games. Winning did not change the fact that this problems existed and I'm sure Coach Miles was aware of them at that time. The losses just brought these issues out into the bright light. These are issues that can stunt the growth of a season or completely decimate a team if things do break down into an us against them within the team. I don't think our coach will allow that to happen. We are now at the crossroads. We can go one way and even though I'm sure we will win some more games, be an underachieving team. Or we can use the experience and pull together to start to make strides to reaching our potential. That would be the two directions we have available at this crossroads. You know, that place where it is possible to start going in one of two different directions. One direction being underachieving and the other being potential reaching. Should I have maybe used the phrase "fork in the road." If this is what you meant, than your post was rather pointless as a young team like this can go any number of directions every single day. Calling us over-dramatic when you picked one arbitrary game to deem a "crossroads" is a bit absurd. That being said, I now better understand what you are trying to say. I still disagree. You can disagree, but it still doesn't sound like you understand what I said. It was not after one game. I realize my questions were across multiple threads and I'm sure that lead to many people's confusion. I expressed concern after game two and again after game three. We of course won those so the vast majority saw no problem. We were (hopefully no more are) scoring almost entirely off of individual initiative. As the articles since the team meeting after UAB said at that point they were all concerned about the lack of assists. Assists usually mean easy baskets and as the first two tournament games showed, we will not be able to create and finish those shots against better teams. We have to create multiple easy baskets to be able to compete in B1G. I don't claim to have supernatural insight because I was a basketball coach, but I have lived this particular senerio. This was more than a day were a team can go multiple directions. I was not talking about a program crossroads or that we needed to bring Miles coaching into question. But it was a crossroads for this season. These are the type of things that spread dissent and distrust through players and creates a situation that makes team-building impossible. Players form into camps or simply individuals and pulls a team apart. I would like to say I was above saying, "I told you so." But I'm not. After reading about Miles intentions going into the meeting and what happened starting with Smith and then all the players reactions it completely echos my original concern. They realized how serious the situation was and that it needed addressed immediately for the sake of the season. And I would like to think I was above feeling the need to respond to you, but it does seem that I have not progresses past that pettiness. So even if you think my thread was pointless, based on the reactions of Coach Miles and the rest of the team they completely agreed with me. There is little doubt in my mind that Miles had these concerns before the first game. It appears that the players are reaponding in a positive manner, but as I previously said we are not out of the woods yet. I look forward to seeing how they react as a team the next time they are under real pressure.

Baseball had a top of the line recruiting class this year, bobcat. Smile