I don't know exactly what Alex is thinking. His dad a bat crap crazy. I don't wish Alex any ill will, but if he ends up spending a lot of his time seeing the floor from the bench watching younger and more talented kids play his position, maybe Daddy O will begin to realize it wasn't JC's fault after all.
I probably shouldn't bother chiming in yet again with the same point, but both JC and George both gave Alex plenty of opportunity to play and improve his game, but he flat out stunk this season, especially early on. It's not like JC taught him to foul his brains out every game, fumble the ball, get it knocked out of his hands, stand around confused, not box out, throw up wild off-balanced shots, etc., etc. As much as I rooted for Alex, he simply digressed this past season. IMO, he's a player who had deficiencies (bad hands and not a lot of lift) that could have more than made up for it with hard work, high motor and playing as if every rebound was his. If he had played anywhere close to what I just described, JC would have left him out there for longer minutes and would have put up solid numbers.
He and his father have no one to blame but himself. Now maybe, UConn needs to hire a proven big-man's coach. It does seem like our bigs have not been improving offensively lately, as far as their post game and rebounding is concerned. The lack of boxing out has bothered me for the last few years. I don't know if it's a matte of the coaches not teaching these things well or not keeping them accountable, or the players simply not learning and applying what they are taught. With that said, IMO, you can never blame a coach for players not making the effort type of plays, which IMO, Alex lacked big time.
If he goes somewhere else and plays like a mad-man getting double digit rebounds and double digit points even if they are effort (offensive rebounds, run the court, FTs, simply power moves, etc.) points, then good for him. Maybe another coach can do a better job of motivating Alex. I've seen JC really get into some players head and sometimes in a bad way, but that's not what I saw between JC and AO on a regular basis. JC often praised Alex. He tried a lot of different things to motivate him. People forget that there were mixed reports when he came to UConn. Some said he had a high motor and but a few reports said that he had a tendency to take plays off. I remember seeing him get outworked and positioned for RBs in that McD AA game. He simple turned around and waited for the rebound to come to him. Now you see a lot of that in these all-star games, but since he wasn't a big time run-and-jump type big, I thought he was the type that needed to use his effort and strength to beat you. Well IMO, he carried that same lack of effort and motor to make up for what he didn't have. If his next coach can figure out a way to motivate a high motor out of AO, then maybe he's making the right decision. If that happens, I still see no blame landing on JC for this.
Regardless to what Daddy-O tweets, I hope Alex takes responsibility for what took place and will take place on the court. Time we move on people!
