We all stand ready to eat our words if the Green Bay Phoenix men’s basketball program eventually does succeed under Doug Gottlieb.
So far, at least, it’s been a disaster.
While simultaneously continuing to host his weekday afternoon radio show, Gottlieb has coached Green Bay to an overall record of 2-23 and has yet to win a game in Horizon League play (0-14). As of Thursday, February 13, they are No. 340 in the KenPom rankings and boast the worst team record in Division I.
Throughout it all, Gottlieb has remained defiant. He battled with Adam Schefter on social media and recently said he wants “a mea culpa from every f*cking one of you” critics when his team finally starts winning. It’s also true that he took over a program with a severe dearth of experience and a slew of injuries that made winning a near-impossibility.
Still, even he knows that mistakes have been made.
Brian Hamilton profiled the radio host/head coach for The Athletic this week and got him to come clean about some of the things he’d do differently now, knowing how it all turned out. And before you ask, dropping the radio show is not one of them.
“Oh, a million of them,” Gottlieb told Hamilton when asked if he had regrets.
“He wishes he’d brought on both a personal assistant and “old head” staffer with knowledge of the Horizon League,” wrote Hamilton. “He spent the summer installing “no-middle” defensive principles and eventually scrapped them after deciding his group wasn’t athletic enough to play that way. He was too complex too soon with offensive concepts and verbiage before realizing players don’t necessarily understand what “usage rate” is, for example, unless you explain it to them. He says he probably should’ve texted Adam Schefter instead of creating a conflagration on X while he was driving home.”
One of Gottlieb’s biggest misfires was overscheduling, which put him and the team at a major disadvantage as they tried to figure things out.
“For a first-year coach to be playing the hardest or second-hardest schedule in the league, and to play no Division III (teams) and a really good Division II (team) that has all hometown kids that beats you – like, that’s stupid,” Gottlieb said, referencing the Michigan Tech team he referred to as “Nobody U” and promptly lost to.
“Say less,” he said, regarding how he could have avoided that own goal. However, that’s hard advice for a combative radio host to consider.
While Gottlieb remains outwardly defiant and convinced that this will work out in the end, he did admit to Hamilton that he has moments of doubt, though
“It’s not earth-shattering to (say) there are points in which you question, should I have done this?” Gottlieb said. “Like what am I doing? I could just be chilling, be an average person doing radio, collecting checks, working three hours a day… End of the day, I’m a head coach. I got a radio show. We got plenty of time to fix it. We’re all focused on the right things. We’re getting better. There will be better days.”
