I am emailing you because I am a concerned fan — concerned that we have the talent but not the coach, and I would like to see something done about it. I have been a Mizzou fan for a very long time, and I can handle losing, but I can’t handle losing when we have the kids to win. I follow most of the sports — football, baseball, softball, basketball and even wrestling (my personal favorite) — but the sport I am referring to in this email, specifically, is basketball.

I have not been a fan of hiring Frank Haith from the very beginning, and it has proven to be one of the biggest disappointments in Missouri coaching history. I am a huge sports enthusiast and understand the basics of most sports and though I am not claiming, by any means, to be a valuable option for coaching at the collegiate level, I just wanted to make it clear I am not a qualified coach, but I am a qualified fan.

I may be coming way out of left field here (sorry for the baseball analogy during a basketball crisis) but I was just wondering if anyone in the Mizzou family of fans has had any similar thoughts. I believe this basketball team has the talent to do great things this year, but it may be too late. I believe good players win good games against good teams, but coaching wins the tough games against the best teams, and Haith has failed us in that category. He has managed, actually not managed literally speaking, to lose basketball games that we had no reason to lose. Not changing defenses, sitting on timeouts during multiple point runs against us, changing lineups during crucial periods of the games giving the opposition better matchups, etc.

All I’m asking is that you just entertain the notion of possibly changing coaches this season or at least saying goodbye at the end of what should have been a near-championship season. Whether anything actually gets done, maybe it could spark a fire under Haith and maybe, just maybe, he’ll start coaching.

I hope I am not offending anyone in this message. That’s not my intentions. My intentions are simply to help these incredible basketball players have a fair shot at reaching their potential on the court.  Thanks for your time and have a great day. M-I-Z-Z-O-U!

Jonathon Woods

jonathondwoods@hotmail.com