Basketball Murphy at Cherokee
- Thread starter Mont1963
- Start date
Yep. Never seen a Murphy team quite this bad. They might just want to forfeit the Hayesville game!!
One of the worst efforts I've seen from Murphy seems the coach has lost this team. I want to say they might have scored 5 points the whole half. Like you guys have said way to many athletes to be like this ..
Girls game was very fast paced I didn't expect Murphy to hang around that much but they had a couple good players. Our young girls are really starting to come along.
Girls game was very fast paced I didn't expect Murphy to hang around that much but they had a couple good players. Our young girls are really starting to come along.
There's a real good chance Murphy boys go winless this season. I didn't think things could get much worse than last year but I was wrong. This has evolved from an embarassment to just plain sad. This whole thing is a very poor reflection of Murphy athletics. If the athletic department won't relieve Payne of his duties, then he needs to do the right thing and resign at the end of the season.
I hate to say I told ya so, but I saw this coming for a long time. I was one of the only people critical of the coaching job being done back when Murphy was winning 3 conference championships and 4 conference tournaments in a row. Even then the player rotation, the in game adjustments (lack of) were awful. You can thank an unreal amount of talent by SMC standards for that 3-4 year run but they were still held back from reaching their full potential by coaching. You put a Cottrell or Johnson on the bench and that group goes to 3 straight regionals and wins a state title.
Now just look at things the last few years without that level of talent to work with. And lack of talent isn't a valid excuse for what's happening. Because a lack of talent on the team is partially down to the fact that some of the kids with actual talent won't play for him anymore. Bottom line, there should never be a time at Murphy High (even in the most down years) that they aren't at least mediocre. There's just too many athletes walking the halls for what's happening this year to ever happen at this school.
I hate to say I told ya so, but I saw this coming for a long time. I was one of the only people critical of the coaching job being done back when Murphy was winning 3 conference championships and 4 conference tournaments in a row. Even then the player rotation, the in game adjustments (lack of) were awful. You can thank an unreal amount of talent by SMC standards for that 3-4 year run but they were still held back from reaching their full potential by coaching. You put a Cottrell or Johnson on the bench and that group goes to 3 straight regionals and wins a state title.
Now just look at things the last few years without that level of talent to work with. And lack of talent isn't a valid excuse for what's happening. Because a lack of talent on the team is partially down to the fact that some of the kids with actual talent won't play for him anymore. Bottom line, there should never be a time at Murphy High (even in the most down years) that they aren't at least mediocre. There's just too many athletes walking the halls for what's happening this year to ever happen at this school.
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Most JV teams could score more than 6 points in a half against a varsity opponent.
The weird thing about that run of talent was that Murphy's only regional appearance was maybe the least talented team of that run. I don't want that to be misconstrued--the 2011 team had a great starting 5--but the few years before that they were much deeper and bigger. I think the 2010 team's second string might have finished 2nd in the conference that year.
Agree completely with all of the above, the 2011 group was the least talented of those teams and the only one of the three to lose to a superior team. The 2010 team was the most talented overall of the three and probably the deepest team to ever come through the SMC. I believe the 2009 team was the one that should've won state though, as they had the easiest road to a state title of the three and were the most talented 1A team that year in my opinion. The 2010 team would've had to have gotten past a very good Monroe team, it would've been possible but by no means a guarantee.
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Winning a state title takes a lot of luck in drawing the right match ups, but I agree they would have had a good shot at Regionals that year. One of the rare years that Prep went out in sectionals and regionals were wide open. 2010 was maybe more talented, but it didn't seem they had the same chemistry...they had a lot of the core of the 09 team back, plus a jv team that had killed everybody the year before coming up, plus a 6-5 transfer that had been a star at his last school...and it just seemed like it never meshed.
Who was it that we lost to in the playoffs at mhs a few years back. We had a 10 pt lead with like a minute or 2 left. We went to "stall" ball and the lead evaporated. Player from the other team stole the ball and hit a game winning layup with no time remaining. That was a complete meltdown in coaching imo
Sounds like the Starmount game from 03 sectional finals. Don't know how much further that Murphy would have gone, because Mount Airy and Thomasville were both loaded that year, but they were certainly talented enough to get to go to Regionals.
It's a coaches job to mesh talent together, to mix and match to get the most out of it. He failed in doing so and that team went out early because of it. It will probably be another 15 years before Murphy has a run of basketball talent like that again and it was squandered. Murphy basketball has always been under-served, the coaching prior to Payne was even worse than it is now. The Shields team with Kent, R Gutierrez, B Oliver, the Lithuanian kid and the transfer PG from Atlanta should've easily won a state title but were beaten by a one man team in the regional finals.
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To be fair, that one man that beat the 96 Bulldogs did play on three Final Four teams at UNC (even if he did spend 4 years backing up Ed Cota).
As for where the team is now, it's bad. But there are a lot of differences between Murphy's good years and now that go beyond coaching. A lot of the kids that played when Murphy won 3 or 4 conference titles in a row played travel ball together all summer and you'd see them playing pickup ball any time a gym was open in Cherokee County (or Clay County, for that matter). That's not really the case now, though you could argue that enthusiasm for the game traces back to coaching.
There in lies the problem. Have you ever tried to find a gym open to let your kids play? There is no opportunity other than the outdoor court at the park in Murphy. The people in charge of the gyms hold onto the keys as if they are guarding Fort Knox. None of the coaches are opening up to let kids play. The current group of 6th, 7th, and 8th graders have a chance to be unbelievably talented at baseball, basketball, and football. The question is whether or not anyone cares enough to help them reach their potential. My opinion, someone needs to figure out how to get Ray Gutierrez back to Murphy and how to get Erik Laney back into coaching period.
Ray definitely needs to be back at Murphy, but I don't see it happening as long as the current people are in charge. Is Travis McCracken's boy still at Murphy? I heard from people that know the game, that young McCracken had a chance to be the best PG Murphy has ever had.
He (Peyton) is at Carolina Christian Academy in Hayesville, but is supposed to start at Murphy Middle next fall. He is FAST. My son's rec team scrimmaged them last week and he has a gear that most kids don't. He is just an all-around great athlete and exceptional kid.
With a good coach, you should never have a bad year! A down year at Hayesville is coming in 3rd place in the SMC!! ( and I can't remember the last time that happened!!)
Roll Jackets Roll !!!!!!!
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