This was a tough time for Coach Randall to come to OHIO, following Coach Crawley, who not only is a class act, but a coach who moved the program  in the right direction during her short stay.

 

But it’s often the case that there is more of a learning curve for a new head coach than what we saw from our previous coach. New coaches often need some time to develop their program, their coaching style, their staff, and to develop a recruiting base with all its connections.

 

My sense, with Coach Randall, is that she’s meeting this challenge. This year, she’s put forth as hard a working group of players as I’ve seen. She’s taken their athleticism and developed a solid defensive team which has kept them in games all year. Their major problem has been serious limitations on the offensive end, especially their shooting, and that won’t get you many wins.  

 

So besides witnessing a team that has learned to play with full effort for 40 minutes, especially a solid defense, what is it that makes me optimistic? First, with only 9 players, 5 of them (3 frosh & 2 transfers) are playing in their 1^st year at OHIO. And two others are sophs. It takes some time for a new group like this one to start to jell, and that clearly started near the end of the year as they blew out Miami by 30 in their last regular season game, followed that with a solid road kill at NIU in the MAC tourney, before losing a close game in Cleveland to perennial power BG.

 

Next year, she returns her young base of players, and to that she adds her best recruiting class by far. Now would be the worst time to pull the plug. And I’m sure that’s not going to happen. But she will have to show, in the next few years, that she can win.