Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="sun, post: 4125237, member: 11664"] There's politics involved with coaching too. Geno tends to deflect when he cryptically criticizes team performance by calling them stubborn without being specific about who or what actions that he's talking about. We don't know who is stubborn or what anyone did that was stubborn, what he told them or her to do that they didn't do that was stubborn. A fan can only laugh it off that he's putting an exclamation point on a vague statement that "they lost big time" even though UConn has all the same starters from last year. He's predictable in that he's basically committed to playing the seniors & the upper classmen, and he's not going to take chances on putting in experimental sub packages in a game that's getting out of hand. Whether he should have an emergency backup plan in the event that the team falls behind because of an offensive meltdown with 6 minutes left in game is almost radical. We can only speculate why he doesn't have a plan to insert some package that would force the other team to only shoot from the outside, which they were making all of their shots anyway. Can Olivia and Pliath be inserted with Dorka or Edwards at the same time to control the boards for 3-4minutes to change the flow of the game? That's radical speculation but UConn wasn't fouling them either. Can those bigs handle making passes to our outside shooters? Can they draw or make a few fouls on the inside that we can afford to give in order to get possession without us falling further behind? There's experimentation that can happen in a BE blow out game that would give Geno some new sub packages that might work against a good team, where we need to have a radical response team, or a SWAT package to come in to remedy a game that's starting to get out of hand. If such a configuration were possible to implement, Geno may be called crazy, and he's not a big risk taker at this early juncture of the season. But there's eventualities that I'm sure Geno can envision where he could justify trying anything to alter the course of a game. I'm not pretending that I know what I'm talking about. But I do have a sincere belief that any player who is sitting on the UConn bench can be a potential savior of a game by making a key play or contribution. Do I think that Geno thinks the same way about all of his bench players? No I do not. I don't like cryptic messages and I don't believe that SC is necessarily a better team. If people think it's about controlling the boards then the UConn bench could provide an answer to that. Can UConn make enough 3's to overcome their bigs? Sure, if that's the package of subs that we need to have in the game. Can Olivia sink some hook shots? Sure she could, but does she or another big ever try? Geno just needs to be willing to experiment, but we all know that he won't because it's not conventional. And it doesn't make for good politics because if it didn't work the blame would be on him. But if he doesn't do it then the team gets the blame for losing because they're the stubborn ones. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach

Forum statistics

Threads: 164,432

Messages: 4,396,105

Members: 10,209

Latest member: gemini*trvl