Editor’s Note: After more than 20 years as a television and radio broadcaster, Doug Gottlieb, a former point guard at Oklahoma State, has taken his first college coaching job as the head coach at Green Bay. Gottlieb is coaching the Phoenix while also continuing his duties as a Fox Sports Radio host. Gottlieb is writing a recurring journal for Hoops HQ to document the 2024-25 season. This is his fifth installment; click here to read all of them.
Hello again, Hoops HQ readers!
You probably know this by now, especially if you’ve been keeping up with these diaries, but my world is like the Super Bowl halftime show: best show ever or worst show ever, nothing in between. And lately, as my team’s losing streak has grown, it is certainly being painted as the worst show ever.
I can take all the shots from people in the media and on social media, but if you’re going to say negative things about our program, you should at least add context. If you’re going to write columns or hit pieces about us, know what you’re talking about. Watch our games and do your research.
Let’s start with the Super Bowl. Yes, I was down in New Orleans on Wednesday and Thursday ahead of the game. This was a pre-planned trip that everyone in our program knew about. When I started at Green Bay, I asked Fox Sports Radio which events I would have to cover during the basketball season. And there was only one: the Super Bowl.
I checked our conference schedule to figure out the best way to make it work. We played Detroit Mercy on Saturday, February 1, then had a week off before facing Purdue Fort Wayne the day before the Super Bowl. In between those games, we needed to give the players two days off. We ended up going with Sunday and Wednesday, which meant I would only be missing Thursday. I arranged for my assistant coaches to run that practice.
I never want to be the head coach who doesn’t let their assistant coaches, well, coach. Plus, all of the guys on my staff want to be head coaches one day. When I got the job at Green Bay, I took less money so that I could hire a staff that is especially competent. Over the summer, I had each coach run at least two practices so they could get experience and I could evaluate them. Purdue Fort Wayne was Jordan McCabe’s scout, so he was in charge of Thursday’s practice along with veteran coach Damon Archibald. Everything went smoothly, but the media made a huge fuss of me not being there because of our losing streak. Of course, if we were on a 19-game winning streak, I still would have been at the Super Bowl. I’m not a moody guy, even with all the losing, but I’ll admit that I came back from New Orleans in a slightly tense mood because I couldn’t believe this was a big enough deal to people that I had to answer questions about it.
Doug Gottlieb’s Diary: Why I’m Still Optimistic Despite a Long Losing Streak
The Green Bay head coach is confident his team is trending in the right direction
While at the Super Bowl, I was also working to promote Green Bay. We’re doing a gigantic fundraiser for our program at the NFL Draft, so I was in recruiting mode. I spoke to Barry Sanders, Joe Thomas, Dan Orlovsky, Brian Belichick and others. I also spent time picking the brains of successful coaches like Ron Rivera and Mike Smith, who shared insight about how to build a strong culture. It was almost like a midseason symposium where I was able to get all these pointers from tremendous leaders in the sports world.
As for our losing streak, the guys have continued to play hard in the face of a lot of adversity. We just haven’t been able to close out games. Injuries have really plagued us, beginning with Anthony Roy, who was leading the nation in scoring at 25.7 points per game, going down in December. Over the past month, Yonatan Levy, Jeremiah Johnson and Marcus Hall (three starters) have all missed games.
Still, we have had plenty of chances to end the skid. We had a 17-point first-half lead against Robert Morris before things unraveled. We were up 10 with nine minutes to go against Youngstown State. We trailed by just two with five minutes left at Cleveland State, the top team in the Horizon. We were tied at halftime at Oakland. For various reasons — injuries, foul trouble, missed layups, sloppy turnovers — the losses have just continued to pile up.
Along the way, the heckling has grown louder and more outrageous. At Cleveland State, the fans started mentioning my daughter in chants. I had to walk over to the student section during halftime and calmly tell the kids that if they said my daughter’s name again, I was going to have them escorted out of the arena. So in the second half, they pivoted to my nephew. He’s a high school senior and he actually got a kick out of the whole thing. “I finally made it!” he told me.
After our loss to Detroit Mercy two weeks ago, which was our 19th consecutive L, I reached out to Kansas head coach Bill Self, who like me is an Oklahoma State alum. During Self’s first season at Oral Roberts, he suffered an 18-game losing streak. “Hey. Got ya beat. 19. Feels really shitty,” I texted him. And Self just encouraged me to keep going and to figure out who I want in the foxhole with me going forward. “They didn’t hire you for your first year,” he said. “First years are miserable.”
I’m certainly not asking for anyone’s sympathy. I have a great opportunity, I’m going to build this program and we’re going to win. And we’re going to do it the right way.
No, I would not have thought this would be our record 25 games into the season, but the players are giving me everything they’ve got and I’m giving them everything I’ve got. If you came to one of our practices and saw our team’s spirit, you definitely would not think that we were 2-23. It hasn’t been the year that we expected, but I promise you it is far from the worst show ever.
