[quote="Logen" post=333531][quote="mjmaherjr" post=333521][quote="Logen" post=333168][quote="ErickTheRed" post=333160]Great kids, put in no win situation by staff.[/quote]
I am in no way defending this staff, horrible job, no question, but these are not CYO level players who need to be walked around by the hand to be shown what intelligent BB play is. IMO, they were given a “system” that will never work at the college level because it requires a level of maturity that these players did not have. Decent playground players know a good shot from a bad one, and know what a real level of commitment is needed to play winning ball. I will shed no tears when we change coaches again, IMO, it should happen, but I hold the players accountable for the underachieving season just as much as the coaches. I played low level college ball and in good leagues until well into my 40’s and never had to be “inspired” by coaches to play hard. They were given too much freedom and took advantage of it IMO. Sorry to say, but a failed experiment I guess, with enough blame to go around for both coaches and players for an extremely disappointing season.[/quote]
Agree and totally understand what you are saying. Curious and this isnt a trick question or anything just looking for your input. How would you rate the staffs ability to develop the players this year ? I see no improvement in individual players from beginning of the year to end of the year except maybe Fig ( talking about the top 5 or 6 guys )
I see players who had better years last year than this year. If it was just one player then I'd say it's on the player but this was a lot of guys in my opinion at least[/quote]
The easy answer is I would rate them pretty low. Having said that, I think his flaws as a coach go far beyond player development.
I used the term “failed experiment” in my earlier post for a reason. Bringing Mullin in as coach was a huge gamble for obvious reasons but IMO also for a reason not so obvious. True, he had no experience as a coach but the non-playing experience he did have was administrative, in large part, a delegator. In some ways, I think he approaches coaching from that aspect, Coupled with his extensive exposure to the pro game, far removed from the college one, he came in married to a system of play really not adaptable to the college game. And he has proved to be very inflexible; The wrinkle deployed in the DePaul BE tournament game of having Ponds play the one man zone in the middle of the lane was the only one I can remember in the 4 years he has been here.
I hate the offensive “approach” for obvious reasons, the single most weakness of this team was by far the poor shot selection, the sometimes ridiculous one man drives to the basket against multiple defenders. The refusal of all his players to truly share the ball. Taking the first shot that shows and sometimes forcing that first shot early in the shot clock killed this team on offense.
But I equally hate the constant switching on defense. It smacks of lazy, no digging in and fighting over picks, working hard at shuffling of the feet, etc. IMO it also takes away one of the basic tenets of man to man defense, namely the pride in stopping YOUR man. In reality, no one has a “man” when you switch at every cross.
To sum up, IMO, Lavin had to go but Mullin has proven to be a poor choice to replace him, for reasons far more basic even than the ability to develop players.[/quote]
I'll slightly piggyback this post.... Do you know where the wrinkle in the DePaul game (in the Big East Tournament) came from? Creighton employed it against DePaul (a Bluejays win) in the last game of the regular season.
Our staff gets kudos for "stealing" the same game plan, but I have doubts they would've came up with the same plan if they hadn't seen it used days before.
