Rejoice: Monson's out!

I can hardly dare to believe my eyes - the Star Trib has got Dan Monson being uncermoniously fired. Apparently those compromising pictures of Joel Maturi that I often theorized were in Monson's possession are no longer enough to outweigh Monson's total failure as a basketball coach.

For anyone who might be feeling a little bit uneasy or undecided about this, let's go over the list of charges against Monson:

1) His teams stunk out loud.
44-68 in the Big Ten during his tenure. One NCAA Tournament appearance, and they got slaughtered by Iowa State. This is not the record of a good coach at a Big Ten school. This is the record of a middling coach in Conference USA.

2) He's a horrible coach.
Notice how much better Gonzaga has become since Monson ditched Spokane? The only smart thing he did in six years was hiring Jim Molinari to be an assistant coach. Molinari finally taught some defense and some rebounding, and the Gophers made the NCAA tournament. Without Molinari, Monson's teams always played abysmal defense and rebounded like a team of leather-allergic midget asthmatics.

3) He couldn't recruit any of Minnesota's top players even if they weren't allowed to leave Hennepin County.
They'd probably end up at Normandale CC. Well, they'd commit to Normandale, and then Monson would kick it into high gear and end up stealing them, unwanted by their original commitment, for a year or two.

4) Everyone hates him.
I am not so old. For my entire childhood, you could not get Gopher basketball tickets. I remember calling the Gopher ticket office at the age of 11 to explore my Gopher sporting options; I was informed that Gopher hockey had separated singles available, and that Gopher basketball was sold out and I might as well set my money on fire for all the good it would do me in that way. Now, they are practically giving single-game tickets away with frozen pizza. Average attendance went from about 13,700 per game to 10,500 under Monson. That's absolutely extraordinary - the most loyal fan base in Minnesota sports (and the oldest) ditched the Barn on Wednesday nights and Saturday afternoons, because they'd lost all hope that another important mid-February game might ever be played there again.

5) He used the Gangelhoff Scandal as an excuse for five solid years.
Monson's only coaching move for most of his years was simple: throw one little-used player off the team every year for academic problems. It gives the impression you're cleaning up the program, long after everyone's forgotten Miles Tarver's name.

And then we come to the good side of the ledger:

....

There's nothing. Not a thing. I guess we'll always have the memory of the Dan Monson look - eyes wide, mouth hanging open like a perch, arms flung wide as he protested a mildly questionable call in a thirty-point loss. That was always fun.

I'm looking forward to next season. It doesn't matter who they get as the new coach. I personally have always hoped for Flip Saunders, but I suppose he'll be busy winning NBA championships with the Pistons. Pat Reusse suggests the rather odd candidate list of Rick Majerus, Steve Lavin, and Bobby Knight, despite the fact that the first retired, the second failed at UCLA and has hair like an oil spill, and the third has absolutely no reason to come here whatsoever except perhaps to hang out with Sid Hartman.

I'd like to kick Monson in the can on his way out of the state. I suppose I'll have to settle for buying season tickets. Would it be funny, or criminal, to take a picture of myself with my tickets and mail it to Monson, possibly with my middle finger upraised?

It's a good day for all of those, like me, who remember a time when Gopher basketball was important, and belive it could be again. The sun is coming out from behind the clouds. Goodbye, Dan Monson. Please let the Barn door hit you on the way out.