With San Jose State’s improvement this season, Fresno State coach Steve Cleveland has to be the Western Athletic Conference coach with smallest margin of error.

This is Cleveland’s third season leading the Bulldogs and, at 13-18, it’s hard to see any improvement.

Cleveland’s had a lot of talent to work with, too, which makes the Bulldogs lack of success all the more baffling. Granted, this season Cleveland’s dealt with a great deal of adversity with injuries and suspensions (Fresno State seems to struggle with off-court issues no matter who coaches the team).

But last season the Bulldogs boasted a lineup of Kevin Bell, JaVance Coleman, Dominic McGuire, Quinton Hosley and Hector Hernandez with Eddie Miller coming off the bench. From a pure talent standpoint, that lineup was as good as any in the conference. Yet the Bulldogs never truly made a competitive run at a conference title.

I think Cleveland gets at least one more year to prove his worth, but I don’t like the odds. The Bulldogs weren’t exactly young this season, either. Cleveland has to overcome the loss of six seniors, including Miller, Bell and Hernandez. It’s hard to imagine there will be enough talent to better what the Bulldogs have accomplished with their previous cast.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 8th, 2008 at 10:06 pm and is filed under Basketball, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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