With good reason, Dana Dimel has become the standard for bad offenses here at UTEP. I don't know how many times that I've read this season that Walden's offense is almost as bad as Dimel's. I counter that it may be worse. Below are the numbers comparing Walden's offense so far this year with Dimel's offenses year by year:
Walden. 320.7 ypg. 17 0 ppg
Dimel
2018. 307.7 ypg. 17.7 ppg
2019. 329.2 ypg. 19.6 ppg
2020. 348.1 ypg. 23.0 ppg
2021. 392.2 ypg. 29.8 ppg
2022. 348.8 ypg. 24.4 ppg
2023. 362.2 ypg. 19.9 ppg
To be fair to Scotty he is averaging slightly more yards per game than Dimel did in his first year: however, in the most important function of an offense, scoring, he is slightly behind. And he is behind the rest of Dimel's offenses. In my opinion Dimel had a bigger challenge to overcome his first season. Dana inherited a team that had gone winless, and the transfer portal back then wasn't what it is now, making it much harder for a team to reinvent itself in a single year. Walden took over a squad that wasn't quite as bad, winning three games last year, and the current transfer portal allows you to bring in transfers that don't have to sit for a season. Still, his offense can't manufacture as many ppg as Dimel's initial squad did.
To make things worse, after six painful years of enduring Dimel ball, Senter knew that fans wanted a more dynamic offense. That is what we were promised when Walden was hired. Yet we've been given an offense that's possibly worse than Dimel's. That should have been an easy bar to clear.
Now Walden deserves more time to try to build his team here. But in this early stage I see no signs of improvement over the previous regime.
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