Dean Smith

First, you can't be competitive in the Big 10 with "decent instate guys." If there is one that is substantially better than decent, then NU should make a run at them. Second, 30% of a roster is 4.5. Since you can't have 1/2 a player and you said "at least" 30% that rounds up to 5 players on the roster. That seems kind of high unless you count the walk-ones and then we were at 20% instate players this past season.

Granted it was the beginning of last season but when I saw him play he was wasn't solid NAIA material.

You got to find a way to get Shields into your starting lineup. Pitchford is probably the best bet.

What I was questioning was your choice of words at this time.

I never questioned his character. I don't know anything about his character or what is going on behind the curtain. I'm just a fan. What I questioned was the timing of the phrase, "team first" used on someone who just announced he's leaving his team.

I don't know anything about them or their situation. Sometimes the best thing for everyone is to move on. And sometimes you can't worry about what's best for everyone and just need to do what's best for you. That's the truth in sports and life. I don't have any special insight into why these transfers took place at Nebraska. It just seemed odd to me to call someone who just left his team as a team first player.

Except for the fact that he just left his team?

I would say I hate to knitpick but that's kind of my thing. If Jordy wears the tread on his heals smooth doing pivots, he's probably going to tear something in his knees. The pivot needs to be on the balls of his feet with his heel not touching the ground. I actually had someone step on my foot as I was pivoting once and I tore my MCL.

Money

And nothing was worse than the brand new, fresh out of the box, super slick balls the state made us use when you played districts, regionals and state tournament with. I remember every year hearing the state tournament play-by-play guy saying after every ball that went through someone's hands, or a mis-dribble, or just an ugly shot, "Just a case of the nerves." And I would yell at the TV (I was more high-strung back then), "It's not nerves! It's the freaking slick ball they just took out of the box.

Trust me - you wouldn't

Sarcasm? The landing is not what makes a Euro step.

His shell rotation doesn't cause any turnovers as it only comes in to play on baseline drives. Everyone else has the bottom helpside come over to stop the baseline drive and then the weakside top drops down to help the helper. He leaves his helpside bottom on the bottom and has the weakside top rotate down diagonally to help stop the drive. He says that is one less man to screw up a rotation. As well, the normal bottom man is usually a post. That means you have a big man trying to stop a drive and usually a gaurd dropping down to replace him which leads to weakside offensive rebounds. This way you only have one rotating and now you have a guard who should be better at stopping drives coming and your big man stays in weakside rebounding position. If there is a ballside post (he guards the posts with a front) their defender stays and does not leave their post. The diagonally dropping gaurd comes down and traps the driver along with the original defender who gave up the drive in the first place. The defensive post only steps out at the last moment if the weakside rotation is late. If that happens the man dropping down and over would then dive in front of the offensive post to replace the helping defensive post. This is the opposite of what NC does as they want the fronting defensive post to be the first man to step out, stop the drive and then trap the ball. The bottom helpside man rotating over would then pick up ballside post. In his M-4-M he wants to create a box for his players to guard and to try to continually shrink that box. This can lead to turnovers. The box is determined by the helpline and the depth of the ball off the baseline. You force the point out of the middle and don't deny any pass as long as it goes the same direction. So you don't deny the wing pass and if the wing wants to pass to the corner you allow that as well. The deeper the ball, the smaller the box you are guarding. Every player should be no more than one big step away from the box. Once the offense has shrunk their box, you keep it there. That means you deny hard the pass from the wing back to the point and the pass from the corner back to the wing. Both of those passes are back in the opposite direction and are making your box bigger, meaning you have more area to cover and guard. Its a a lot easier to draw these up than to try to explain them with words .

My question is still half or full court. There is nothing really unique about the full court trapping they do, but the way he runs his 1/2 court man is quite different from most. His basic shell rotation doesn't require the posts to move most times which should dispel those worries about Jordy because post rotations are easier than in a "normal" m-4-m.

Are you referring to his only one man help rotation out of shell and his "box" concept in the half court or just that they press a lot?

Billy Tubbs was in his first year at OU when he was asked what playing style he hoped to put in the floor. His answer, "This year we're going to run and shoot. And next year we hope to run and make a few."

Do you have any evidence of "mind games" or is just a hunch? Do you have any idea about what went on in the off-season to develope Tai as a player? I know boards like this are for people's opinions and speculation but reality should matter (at least in sports if not in politics). There just seems to be a lot of people (you on the other hand stated yours as an opinion from the beginning) ) that state an opinion and then go forward acting as if it is cannon law.

Not to rub salt in the wound and I know it's not the next level, but Aurora had no one who could guard him. I know he gets his shots off but I thought he did a much better job if not forcing things as opposed to the Elkhorn South kid or the Aurora boys.

I don't understand what you mean by, "doesn't look like he's shooting with the momentum of his jump." He's not shooting on the way down and he's going slightly forward on the jump. Looks to me like he's using the jump correctly.

That's called the dip. Other players who dipped: Ray Allen, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, etc. Some call it the pro shot shooting method. Not all of them use every part of the method but they all dip, get their shooting shoulder directly in line with the basket, shoulders back on the shot and follow through with the index finger down and all the others up. There is lots of good video on this on YouTube - Pro Sot Shootomg Method. I don't like every part of that method but I agree with a lot. When talking to another coach about how I taught shooting now he said that sounds a lot like the pro shot method and told me to watch video on YouTube. I do know if you go to Duke or North Carolina, that's how they teach you to shoot.

It's just a set play. We could run more set plays. I would like to see a secondary break like UNC runs into motion and then something Calipari does (I think I've mentioned it before) is go into your set play with 12 or so seconds left. If you run your play first and get nothing, most of the time you end up with a 1 v 1 at the end of the shot clock. Run the secondary into motion to keep the pressure on and then run the set play at the end of the shot clock to increase your chance at a higher percentage shot. The difficulty with this concept is you don't know where everyone is going to end up when you run motion, so every player needs to be able to run every play from every position.

You're right about his shooting percentage dropping but there's more to the game than that. I don't want to get into a pissing match and maybe I'm just bitter about the way things ended and I'm taking it out on you, but your comment - wow. So now I'm taking my negative attitude into hibernation before I piss off the entire board. Maybe I'll check back with the board this summer. Alright now now you've edited your post and it says something different. Minutes in the blowouts might have been a time to sit Tai, let him rest and somebody else get some minutes. So that I agree with. If you read this post before I edited it you know why I need to stay off the board for awhile.

It was clear he was't adding anything? If that's what you saw I have to say you don't really get this basketball thing do you?

I think your are missing other things that make a coach. The most important is Big Picture, Vision, whatever you want to call it. What I mean by that is what is your team trying to do year after year. Many people will refer to this as knowing your x's and o's. You talk about player development which is the technical, but you also have to have an understanding of what it is you want to accomplish tactically. And how you teach your technical skills need to fit into the overall tactical vision. You have to have a cohesive offensive and defensive package. There are "styles" of offense and defense that don't fit together or don't fit together as well as others. The need to be fundamentally and structurally sound. I've seen coaches run some things that have a fundamental flaw that will always have a certain weakness or be susceptible to particular countermeasures. Another thing you missed that I think Miles is good at is game planning. How are you going to take away or reduce the effects of the team's or individual players; strengths. They don't always work but I have seen other teams try to copy his game plan at times. Lots of people tried to play Purdue the way we did. One of the biggest underestimated "must haves" of a successful coach has to be player relations. At this level you also have to be able to create positive relations with the administration and with the public. Then there are by definition the undefinable intangibles. I could go on but I just think that you oversimplified the measurements of what it takes to be a good coach.

I thought someone would have already posted this. Sorry if I missed and and this is redundant. http://www.omaha.com/huskers/blogs/tai-webster-named-second-team-all-big-ten-by-media/article_7fc9f8ea-02ba-11e7-a38a-07fc10731f53.html