Another Poll: Where is the Breakdown?

[hhcscott]

I voted talent because all-conference talent makes up for a lot of things, but the problem is that all three crop up in different games. Are we as talented as Northwestern? Did our talent have the right scheme to beat Northwestern? Was our execution why Northwestern beat us?

[brfrad]

It's something different every game.  One game the other team has better talent.  The next game they scheme better than us.  The next game we don't execute.  It's tough to pinpoint because it seems that we get a team with level talent, and we don't scheme or execute.  

 

I thought I saw this team starting to turn the corner since the first Rutgers game.   We played a very good Illinois team even for 36 of 40 minutes.  We played Indiana tough.  We played Wisconsin tough.  We led Rutgers for 38 1/2 minutes.  We played Michigan even on the road for 38 minutes.  Now, that is all thrown out the window because "we didn't show up"  I was going to commend this team for the fight they showed when really, we pretty much had nothing to play for.  Today, they looked like they didn't care.

 

Maybe, we just need to stop playing Saturday games that start before 3 pm.  We beat USD by 13.  We lose at Indiana by 13.  We lose to Auburn by 31.  We lose to Rutgers by 28.  We lose to Northwestern by 24.  Bright side is there are no more early Saturday games.

[busticket]

All three are bad but I’ll go with coaching.  Our players constantly revert to their bad habits during games and it absolutely kills us.  It is like our coaches don’t drill the kids into being disciplined in all the nuances of the game, as evidenced by the piss poor defense and sloppy ball handling.  Holding the players accountable is pretty lacking.  It seems Fred is being harder on Verge now but Bryce can do whatever he wants with no ramifications.  Taking care of the dang ball, playing disciplined defense, running the offense properly and holding players accountable is coaching.  
 

Obviously it would help a lot if Fred had recruited a strong rebounding big man and a real floor general.  But we had plenty of talent to beat Western Illinois.  Any system will fail if your guys make terrible decisions most of the game.

[Norm Peterson]

8 hours ago, busticket said:

All three are bad but I’ll go with coaching.  Our players constantly revert to their bad habits during games and it absolutely kills us.  It is like our coaches don’t drill the kids into being disciplined in all the nuances of the game, as evidenced by the piss poor defense and sloppy ball handling.  Holding the players accountable is pretty lacking.  It seems Fred is being harder on Verge now but Bryce can do whatever he wants with no ramifications.  Taking care of the dang ball, playing disciplined defense, running the offense properly and holding players accountable is coaching.  
 

Obviously it would help a lot if Fred had recruited a strong rebounding big man and a real floor general.  But we had plenty of talent to beat Western Illinois.  Any system will fail if your guys make terrible decisions most of the game.

 

Great point. Anyone who says it's talent by a wide margin needs to explain the loss to Western Illinois.

 

A couple of players freelanced a lot during that Western Illinois loss. The coach didn't do anything apparent to reign them in. And the same pattern repeated itself basically every game since then to varying degrees.

 

All last season we heard about the ball stopping in a certain player's hands. And that wasn't the philosophy of the offense (scheme). So, last year, the coach basically admits he's not getting the players to buy-in to his scheme.

 

And this year we see the exact same problem. Same damn thing. Just a different guy doing the "ball stopping in his hands" thing.

 

So, I don't know, seems to me like that's more "coach not being able to get his kids to execute the scheme" than anything else. And since it's a recurring theme, I don't see any reason to think it'll change in the future. Particularly when a player publicly calls out the coach for failing to hold the team accountable for not doing the little things.

 

Listen, I'm not defending the "let's give up a bunch of size and rebounding" scheme. Nor am I defending the "turn recruiting over to a guy who doesn't know crap about basketball" recruiting philosophy.

 

But it just seems like the very biggest shortcoming is not being able to lead/motivate/teach/inspire/cajole/coach the players you do have to execute the scheme you've selected in order to be successful. Ain't nothin' workin' well, but that there's the biggest problem.

[Ron Mexico]

To me the choice was obvious, #3.

All you have to ask yourself is what would the record be of any of our 3 previous coaches with this team.

This type of roster is actually an ideal TM roster. You have one "stud" player a couple of complimentary players and the rest role players.

 

We are playing the bottom half of the schedule down the stretch and our best hope of a win (we are not favored to win) is at home against the 13th placed team in the conference, who btw is coached by a former TM assistant.

 

[Norm Peterson]

On 2/4/2022 at 5:12 PM, NUdiehard said:

Pretty ironic that so many choose coaching and specifically reference how Doc Sadler got so much out of his "mighty mites" when Doc Sadler is literally on this staff right now. 

 

The answer is talent and its not even close.  Does anyone really believe Fred's "scheme/system" cannot work if it has the right collection of players to run it?  Seriously?

 

And as for coaching, apparently when Fred went to 4 straight NCAA appearances and a sweet sixteen that was purely by happenstance.  Fred's coaching had nothing to do with it.  In fact, those players got there in spite of Fred and his massive incompetence.  Amazing!

 

 

So, it doesn't look like "talent" was the issue.