I can be wrong. I am allowed that luxury. For instance, a few weeks ago, when I said the Marquette men's soccer team was on the verge of improvement, I was wrong.

My measure of improvement — and at some point it becomes (or at least it should) everyone's measure of improvement — is winning. After my statement in the Tribune's Oct. 7 edition, the Golden Eagles went 1-5-1, and were outscored 8-2 over their last three games.

With the season ending on a 4-2 loss at the hands of Georgetown Saturday, the Golden Eagles finished the season 3-10-4 and 1-8-2 in the Big East. While these are his best marks of his tenure at Marquette, they still leave a lot to be desired.

"Louis Bennett has gone three straight years with a losing record," said Duncan Silvert-Noftle, a former player under Bennett at Marquette, in an e-mail interview. "It would be one thing if he was right below .500, but the guy has only won six games in his whole career at Marquette."

"Let's say this happened to the basketball team, you think the coach would be here three years?" said another former player that played under Bennett at Marquette, who wished to remain anonymous. "No, he'd be here for a year, maybe, and as soon as the second year started, if they lost half those games (he would be fired) . After three years, I don't think it's the players."

Others, however, measure success differently. To former assistant coach Khaled El-Ahmad, winning isn't everything.

"Obviously the wins are very important," El-Ahmad said. "People don't really know, when I was part of it, what we took over. You don't see us really talk about it, the training, the non-winning culture, and you have to build the program."

Bennett certainly had a winning culture at Wisconsin-Milwaukee — he led the Panthers to five-straight Horizon League championships. The problem is that Bennett's predecessor at Marquette, Steve Adlard, had left after a five-win season — only one less win than Bennett has strung together through three seasons.

But El-Ahmad points to the Panther's struggles before the five-straight conference championships.

El-Ahmad said what no one understands is it took Bennett a number of years to put together that "winning culture," and once he did, success soon followed.

If you have read anything on the Marquette men's soccer team then you know that Bennett often talks about building a foundation for the future. But what El-Ahmad said is Bennett is going to win with his people.

"Louis has very, very high standards. Right or wrong, there is one winning way . that he believes in," he said.

Where Bennett has met opposition is in his definition of his "winning way," which has driven off a number of talented players.

"The people we had, we were doing the drills and everything, but there were no results," the former player said. "How many players left the team? I think that speaks for itself. People were just not having fun, you know?"

Losing can do that.

Success can be subjective. It can be defined differently by different people. To El-Ahmad, success is defined as improvement by the players within the system.

While I agree, I also feel strongly that no one should get away winning only six games in three seasons — not Bennett, not Buzz Williams, not Terri Mitchell. And I am not alone.

"Louis always tells his players 'We treat you like professionals,' "

Silvert-Noftle said. "Well, in the professional world of soccer, any coach who averages two wins per season isn't coaching anymore."

I couldn't have said it better myself.