Can't blame the coaching here

[Waquoit]

They have two losses to teams that they are clearly better than. This team should be undefeated...

How does the clearly better team get points? Points determined by independent analysts who lose money when they get it wrong. This is prime Fellowship material.

 

[ChocRaisins]

They broke the 1-3-1 pressure though the first time, Gaffney just didn't shoot it. He passed to Jackson on the baseline which led to a shot clock violation. Hawkins will be a great player but he had zero confidence by the end of the game. Even Polley was putting his head down after each miss. Cole was getting blitzed by 2 and forced to give up the ball. Despite critiques, the team was in a position to win the game. Box out a foul shot and hit a couple threes and its a W. This is isn't on Hurley. Onto the Bonnies.

 

[Fairfield_1st]

Martin is the bigger loss for sure. One of our best rebounders , plays great D , and gets double digit points. Also can take his guy off the dribble

I'd say after Cole he has the best handle on the team. Could have used a second handle last night. AJ, JG & JH are all pretty loose with the ball, especially at speed, not that TM isn't without fault as well. It's why I was hoping Diggins could work as a backup PG. We need depth for handling the ball.

 

[auror]

Last 4 minutes and especially commentary about the zone, starting score 51-48 us:

• Hawkins gets called for a ridiculous touch foul at half court that they get sent to the line for. Hawkins had one forearm on the guy for 1/4 second. They did that all game. Stupid anticipatory call by ref. They make 1 FT, get a long offensive rebound off a brick FT. Cole strips Sherman but he gets it back and makes a tough finish. 51-51.
• Gaffney gets tripped and they call out of bounds on us.
• Akok is fronting and they make a decent lob over top and we foul. They make 1/2. 51-52.
• WVU half court trap/ 1-3-1. Kick ball off them. Next possession Jackson makes a great skip pass over the zone. Akok wide open from 3. He pump fakes. Has Gaffney wide open from 3. Drives to his right for some reason, then finds Gaffney who has moved in to help. Gaffney attacks middle of the zone, gets ganged up by 3 guys. Threat of pass to Whaley draws 4th defender in. Gaffney makes good read and passes to wiiiide open Jackson with 2 seconds left on shot clock, but pass is a little low and Jackson is standing on 3pt line instead of behind it. He doesn't shoot immediately, instead goes directly to dribbling. Doesn't realize shot clock and we get a violation. We had 1 somewhat open and 1 wide open shot. This was just an awful, awful play by Jackson in a 1 point game with 2.5 minutes left.
• Good D by Cole to cut off baseline. Jackson gets caught a little flat-footed. His man gets space and finds a mildly contested guy for 3. He misses, Akok is behind his guy but several feet from the basket. As they come in to the area, Hawkins just moves out of the way and doesn't box out. Their guy is in best rebounding position, but Akok scraps and knocks away and we get the rebound.
• Jackson gets the rebound, goes coast to coast, a spin move at half court. WVU is back in man to man. Drives into the paint, puts his back to basket, offers the ball directly to WVU, but manage to get a pass off. Cole jacks up a contested, pull up 3 with 19 seconds left instead of running offense. WVU calls timeout, 2 minutes left.
• Jackson nice d, walls up inside without fouling. But then his man gets the ball back and he's in his grill 25 feet from the hoop and gets blown by. Akok saves the day with block at the rim.
• Timeout UConn with 1.5 minutes left. WVU back in zone. Another kick ball. 20 seconds. Some trapping, nice cut by Cole but good D by WVU to block him and then recover to Whaley after the pass out. Whaley slips a screen and they double Hawkins, just like we've seen before with Sanogo. Hawkins doesn't or can't due to trap find Whaley on the roll. Now less than 5 seconds and Hawkins has to jack up a 3. Good defense. We get a tip oreb and miss, then another oreb (punishing the zone), Cole gets an absolutely wide open 3 kickout, great rhythm, in-and-out. Jackson oreb, blocked (probably fouled). Polley oreb, hoists a 3 immediately. They finally rebound. 5 shots on 1 possession while down 1 with a minute left - 2 shots at the rim and 3 missed 3's (1 wide open, 1 semi-open, 1 contested). Still 51-52.
• Sherman draws a foul on Hawkins. Just a half step beat and Sherman is good at drawing fouls. Makes first, Misses 2nd 51-53, Akok doesn't box out and just goes up for rebound with position but instead ball takes extra bounce on rim, guy swoops in and is first to ball in the air. We have to foul. McNeil makes both 51-55.
• Polley puts up a quick corner 3 after a quick push, miss. Tip, miss. Whaley 2nd tip in. 53-55.
• We press, they get ball in to McNeil on textbook press break. He makes 1/2, 53-56.
• We have a shot, but out of timeouts. Cole gets a pretty good look, sudden stop probably draws a foul as defender hits him in body in the air, but they'd never call with 1 second left (but would in other times in game).

Not a lot to criticize on coaching. Couple bonehead Jackson plays, Cole missed three 3's, got the bad end of the whistle on the road, Akok didn't box out, and then we either didn't take or missed 5 open shots on the 2 zone possessions. In general had an open shot on every possession except the one Cole played hero ball.

 

[AntG168]

From what I saw tonight, I doubt this. But maybe I'm just underrating our defense.

I think you are. I mean no one has looked good against our defense this season. Auburn being the exception

 

[RichCTBB]

It wasn't all that reassuring in the post game when Hurley seemed blindsided by seeing a 1-3-1.

This….mixing up defenses in crunch time seems like a given. So much so that you’d think everyone would do it, and everyone would expect it.

 

[F101Voodoo]

They broke the 1-3-1 pressure though the first time, Gaffney just didn't shoot it. He passed to Jackson on the baseline which led to a shot clock violation. Hawkins will be a great player but he had zero confidence by the end of the game. Even Polley was putting his head down after each miss. Cole was getting blitzed by 2 and forced to give up the ball. Despite critiques, the team was in a position to win the game. Box out a foul shot and hit a couple threes and its a W. This is isn't on Hurley. Onto the Bonnies.

That lack of confidence seemed to just get more pervasive with Hawkins and Gaffney and the game progressed. The two UConn loses could have been victories. As I said elsewhere hope Hawkins finds the maturity elixir before February.

 

[Icehawk]

I think DH is improving - he TO'd around 1:50 or so where last year he wouldn't have. Was it effective? Maybe not but I'll take a baby step at least. I was a bit disappointed that it doesn't seem like he's prepared the team for these defensive changeups - a team going zone isn't some new-fangled thing invented last week, I'd think there should at least be a basic gameplan of what to do when you see your opponent changing it up.

I love our team but they make some silly mistakes that you can't directly blame the coach for - I mean he should be working on them not to do that stuff but he's not a puppeteer And those missed 3s? That's on our guys and WVU putting up some solid D.

With so little open 3s dropping it's a tough loss, but it's going to happen and while they hurt it is still a hell of a lot better than getting the doors blown off. I do think we got a bad missed call with Cole's final shot but c'est la vie, it's not like he's an absolute lock to 3/3 and the statistics gods swear it all evens out... eventually.

The one thing I didn't get was near the end there were at least two inbounds with 20s or less on the clock they sent to Cole who was pretty far in the backcourt - we can't afford the 5s to advance from there, I get Cole tends to be the distributor\advancer on most plays but this just seems bad? I think it was once WVU zoned UCONN seemed to revert to their old ways of dribbling around\passing until the shot clock was way too short. I wonder if the crowd noise is part of why they had a few issues near the end being aware of the clock.

Looking forward to the next one as always.

 

[Candyman]

Last 4 minutes and especially commentary about the zone, starting score 51-48 us:

• Hawkins gets called for a ridiculous touch foul at half court that they get sent to the line for. Hawkins had one forearm on the guy for 1/4 second. They did that all game. Stupid anticipatory call by ref. They make 1 FT, get a long offensive rebound off a brick FT. Cole strips Sherman but he gets it back and makes a tough finish. 51-51.
• Gaffney gets tripped and they call out of bounds on us.
• Akok is fronting and they make a decent lob over top and we foul. They make 1/2. 51-52.
• WVU half court trap/ 1-3-1. Kick ball off them. Next possession Jackson makes a great skip pass over the zone. Akok wide open from 3. He pump fakes. Has Gaffney wide open from 3. Drives to his right for some reason, then finds Gaffney who has moved in to help. Gaffney attacks middle of the zone, gets ganged up by 3 guys. Threat of pass to Whaley draws 4th defender in. Gaffney makes good read and passes to wiiiide open Jackson with 2 seconds left on shot clock, but pass is a little low and Jackson is standing on 3pt line instead of behind it. He doesn't shoot immediately, instead goes directly to dribbling. Doesn't realize shot clock and we get a violation. We had 1 somewhat open and 1 wide open shot. This was just an awful, awful play by Jackson in a 1 point game with 2.5 minutes left.
• Good D by Cole to cut off baseline. Jackson gets caught a little flat-footed. His man gets space and finds a mildly contested guy for 3. He misses, Akok is behind his guy but several feet from the basket. As they come in to the area, Hawkins just moves out of the way and doesn't box out. Their guy is in best rebounding position, but Akok scraps and knocks away and we get the rebound.
• Jackson gets the rebound, goes coast to coast, a spin move at half court. WVU is back in man to man. Drives into the paint, puts his back to basket, offers the ball directly to WVU, but manage to get a pass off. Cole jacks up a contested, pull up 3 with 19 seconds left instead of running offense. WVU calls timeout, 2 minutes left.
• Jackson nice d, walls up inside without fouling. But then his man gets the ball back and he's in his grill 25 feet from the hoop and gets blown by. Akok saves the day with block at the rim.
• Timeout UConn with 1.5 minutes left. WVU back in zone. Another kick ball. 20 seconds. Some trapping, nice cut by Cole but good D by WVU to block him and then recover to Whaley after the pass out. Whaley slips a screen and they double Hawkins, just like we've seen before with Sanogo. Hawkins doesn't or can't due to trap find Whaley on the roll. Now less than 5 seconds and Hawkins has to jack up a 3. Good defense. We get a tip oreb and miss, then another oreb (punishing the zone), Cole gets an absolutely wide open 3 kickout, great rhythm, in-and-out. Jackson oreb, blocked (probably fouled). Polley oreb, hoists a 3 immediately. They finally rebound. 5 shots on 1 possession while down 1 with a minute left - 2 shots at the rim and 3 missed 3's (1 wide open, 1 semi-open, 1 contested). Still 51-52.
• Sherman draws a foul on Hawkins. Just a half step beat and Sherman is good at drawing fouls. Makes first, Misses 2nd 51-53, Akok doesn't box out and just goes up for rebound with position but instead ball takes extra bounce on rim, guy swoops in and is first to ball in the air. We have to foul. McNeil makes both 51-55.
• Polley puts up a quick corner 3 after a quick push, miss. Tip, miss. Whaley 2nd tip in. 53-55.
• We press, they get ball in to McNeil on textbook press break. He makes 1/2, 53-56.
• We have a shot, but out of timeouts. Cole gets a pretty good look, sudden stop probably draws a foul as defender hits him in body in the air, but they'd never call with 1 second left (but would in other times in game).

Not a lot to criticize on coaching. Couple bonehead Jackson plays, Cole missed three 3's, got the bad end of the whistle on the road, Akok didn't box out, and then we either didn't take or missed 5 open shots on the 2 zone possessions. In general had an open shot on every possession except the one Cole played hero ball.

This is so spot in. Nice work, no way was I typing all that lol.

Everyone saying we didn’t run offense blah blah blah didn’t see us miss 5 shots on one possession. Cole open three missed. What else do you want? Hurley can’t shoot for Cole in that situation.

 

[Griffman]

They make 1 FT, get a long offensive rebound off a brick FT. Cole strips Sherman but he gets it back and makes a tough finish. 51-51

Both Gaffney and Hawkins pinched on the shot resulting in nobody boxing out the shooter. If one of them called shooter before the free throw it would have been an easy defensive rebound. This is basic fundamental basketball.

This play and Akok not even putting a body on the WV player were both crucial mistakes that could have been avoided. Totally unacceptable at this level.

 

[Chasm64]

Last 4 minutes and especially commentary about the zone, starting score 51-48 us:

• Hawkins gets called for a ridiculous touch foul at half court that they get sent to the line for. Hawkins had one forearm on the guy for 1/4 second. They did that all game. Stupid anticipatory call by ref. They make 1 FT, get a long offensive rebound off a brick FT. Cole strips Sherman but he gets it back and makes a tough finish. 51-51.
• Gaffney gets tripped and they call out of bounds on us.
• Akok is fronting and they make a decent lob over top and we foul. They make 1/2. 51-52.
• WVU half court trap/ 1-3-1. Kick ball off them. Next possession Jackson makes a great skip pass over the zone. Akok wide open from 3. He pump fakes. Has Gaffney wide open from 3. Drives to his right for some reason, then finds Gaffney who has moved in to help. Gaffney attacks middle of the zone, gets ganged up by 3 guys. Threat of pass to Whaley draws 4th defender in. Gaffney makes good read and passes to wiiiide open Jackson with 2 seconds left on shot clock, but pass is a little low and Jackson is standing on 3pt line instead of behind it. He doesn't shoot immediately, instead goes directly to dribbling. Doesn't realize shot clock and we get a violation. We had 1 somewhat open and 1 wide open shot. This was just an awful, awful play by Jackson in a 1 point game with 2.5 minutes left.
• Good D by Cole to cut off baseline. Jackson gets caught a little flat-footed. His man gets space and finds a mildly contested guy for 3. He misses, Akok is behind his guy but several feet from the basket. As they come in to the area, Hawkins just moves out of the way and doesn't box out. Their guy is in best rebounding position, but Akok scraps and knocks away and we get the rebound.
• Jackson gets the rebound, goes coast to coast, a spin move at half court. WVU is back in man to man. Drives into the paint, puts his back to basket, offers the ball directly to WVU, but manage to get a pass off. Cole jacks up a contested, pull up 3 with 19 seconds left instead of running offense. WVU calls timeout, 2 minutes left.
• Jackson nice d, walls up inside without fouling. But then his man gets the ball back and he's in his grill 25 feet from the hoop and gets blown by. Akok saves the day with block at the rim.
• Timeout UConn with 1.5 minutes left. WVU back in zone. Another kick ball. 20 seconds. Some trapping, nice cut by Cole but good D by WVU to block him and then recover to Whaley after the pass out. Whaley slips a screen and they double Hawkins, just like we've seen before with Sanogo. Hawkins doesn't or can't due to trap find Whaley on the roll. Now less than 5 seconds and Hawkins has to jack up a 3. Good defense. We get a tip oreb and miss, then another oreb (punishing the zone), Cole gets an absolutely wide open 3 kickout, great rhythm, in-and-out. Jackson oreb, blocked (probably fouled). Polley oreb, hoists a 3 immediately. They finally rebound. 5 shots on 1 possession while down 1 with a minute left - 2 shots at the rim and 3 missed 3's (1 wide open, 1 semi-open, 1 contested). Still 51-52.
• Sherman draws a foul on Hawkins. Just a half step beat and Sherman is good at drawing fouls. Makes first, Misses 2nd 51-53, Akok doesn't box out and just goes up for rebound with position but instead ball takes extra bounce on rim, guy swoops in and is first to ball in the air. We have to foul. McNeil makes both 51-55.
• Polley puts up a quick corner 3 after a quick push, miss. Tip, miss. Whaley 2nd tip in. 53-55.
• We press, they get ball in to McNeil on textbook press break. He makes 1/2, 53-56.
• We have a shot, but out of timeouts. Cole gets a pretty good look, sudden stop probably draws a foul as defender hits him in body in the air, but they'd never call with 1 second left (but would in other times in game).

Not a lot to criticize on coaching. Couple bonehead Jackson plays, Cole missed three 3's, got the bad end of the whistle on the road, Akok didn't box out, and then we either didn't take or missed 5 open shots on the 2 zone possessions. In general had an open shot on every possession except the one Cole played hero ball.

Nice synopsis, must be Hurley’s fault.

 

[mauconnfan]

The point was sometimes teams have bad shooting nights. Had we hit a couple and won, half the whiners on here would be celebrating an undermanned victory over WVU.

Yeah whiners how dare anyone be unhappy losing to a mediocre team who missed 15 FTs because our guys gagged again? Please stop with the whining. As crappy as most played if you watched that game and won by 1 you’d still be nervous about many of the things that happened. Win or lose it was scary that’s not whining that’s the truth.

 

[mauconnfan]

Both Gaffney and Hawkins pinched on the shot resulting in nobody boxing out the shooter. If one of them called shooter before the free throw it would have been an easy defensive rebound. This is basic fundamental basketball.

This play and Akok not even putting a body on the WV player were both crucial mistakes that could have been avoided. Totally unacceptable at this level.

Akoks was huge. Got 10 rebounds but didn’t do his job on the most critical one. Killer!

 

[Hans Sprungfeld]

Do I have to be the first one to say that Hurley got here by getting lesser programs to overachieve through passion and will, and that’s not enough to win at high levels at the top of D1 competition? Like, the 6/10 guy throwing himself at every chick in Torrington and getting laid here and there, moving on to New York and falling on his face?

I acknowledge that might be a little hot of a take

Hot take? Not if you were the Torrington guy, in which case it's admirable self-deprecating humor.

 

[Hans Sprungfeld]

Leadership is sorely lacking on this team. No one on the court or bench is willing to get in to the grill of players when they screw up. No one holds the players accountable. No Bazz grabbing Boat.

Whaley has earned status to be that guy by being smart and reliable.

He flashed it two years ago, when the same question was asked, and there were no good answers, but it was clear that he made fewer stupid plays than anyone else (by a long shot). Bouknight & Vital notably played better as the season progressed and late game victories finally occurred. We had reason to be excited about the possibility of going to the Tourney before everything shut down.

 

[USNavyDog]

Not concerned. Great learning experience for the young kids. Martin and Sanogo would be our two most important players on the floor in a game against that specific roster in that style of play. Lots of playground-style ball. Martin, specifically, excels at that kind of game.

I agree with you on this but I want add that if Sanogo and Martin were in this game, Uconn wins it handily. West Virginia depends heavily on Taz Sherman's scoring...without him that team would be offensively weak. This team is is being forced to make adjustments quickly following our current injuries to our two top performers.

 

[Hans Sprungfeld]

... seasoned coaches seem to be better prepared late game than us. They also know how to exploit our weaknesses.

Earlier, I admitted to a laziness around looking it up, but I now know that Dan Hurley at Wagner coached a true road victory over #15 Pitt in 2011. However, Pitt finished Jamie Dixon's 9th season 5-13 in the Big East, by far Jamie Dixon's worst year.

Next, while coaching Rhode Island, Hurley bested Johnny Jones coaching LSU in Baton Rouge in his second season (14-18). This has been his ONLY true road victory over a P5 school to date. LSU was a 19-12 team that went 9-9 in the SEC in 2013-14.

As such, it would have been a big deal to beat Huggins in Morgantown last night.

 

[gtcam]

Anyone who thinks that bad coaching had nothing to do with yesterday’s loss and other head scratching decisions since his inception is either DH himself, his family or someone crying for attention.
Was it the only reason, hell no , the players had a definite involvement, but UConn pays a ton of money for a coach who recruits extremely well (his family name opens doors but he does close the deal) but seems to be a deer in the headlights during crucial moments and does not make adjustments on the run.
While I feel UConn wins with Martin at the least and for sure with both injured starters, this was a winnable game but not getting Cole in when Pitt started to turn the tide late and playing some horrendous offensive lineups sealed the deal.
Everyone has blame in this but the buck stops at the top. Period.

 

[SubbaBub]

I blame it on three things:

1. Whaley picking up his 4th foul
2. AJ handling the ball in the open floor or in the paint
3. Akok is just not a substitute for either Sanogo or Whaley.

Poor three point shooting aside, any one of the above was worth at least the margin of victory. There were other things, but I consider that noise and variance from a team down two starters and play freshmen more than is optimal in a tough road environment.

 

[Jimdish255]

Agree. Think that Martin is the much bigger loss to the team than Sanogo at this point, and realize I'll take flak for it

Not from me. He's a big boy amongst a bunch of fragile psyches.

And back to the OP. Everything we're seeing now was determined when our coach who is being paid well to diagnose and address deficiencies, decided it was unnecessary to go after transfers who could shoot the rock.

 

[Huskyforlife]

…

Thank the man above someone said it. Every time someone tries to preface their Hurley criticism with their irrelevant connections to basketball, a small part of me dies. Just say you know more than the coach of a top 10 program and move on.

 

[Huskyforlife]

Last 4 minutes and especially commentary about the zone, starting score 51-48 us:

• Hawkins gets called for a ridiculous touch foul at half court that they get sent to the line for. Hawkins had one forearm on the guy for 1/4 second. They did that all game. Stupid anticipatory call by ref. They make 1 FT, get a long offensive rebound off a brick FT. Cole strips Sherman but he gets it back and makes a tough finish. 51-51.
• Gaffney gets tripped and they call out of bounds on us.
• Akok is fronting and they make a decent lob over top and we foul. They make 1/2. 51-52.
• WVU half court trap/ 1-3-1. Kick ball off them. Next possession Jackson makes a great skip pass over the zone. Akok wide open from 3. He pump fakes. Has Gaffney wide open from 3. Drives to his right for some reason, then finds Gaffney who has moved in to help. Gaffney attacks middle of the zone, gets ganged up by 3 guys. Threat of pass to Whaley draws 4th defender in. Gaffney makes good read and passes to wiiiide open Jackson with 2 seconds left on shot clock, but pass is a little low and Jackson is standing on 3pt line instead of behind it. He doesn't shoot immediately, instead goes directly to dribbling. Doesn't realize shot clock and we get a violation. We had 1 somewhat open and 1 wide open shot. This was just an awful, awful play by Jackson in a 1 point game with 2.5 minutes left.
• Good D by Cole to cut off baseline. Jackson gets caught a little flat-footed. His man gets space and finds a mildly contested guy for 3. He misses, Akok is behind his guy but several feet from the basket. As they come in to the area, Hawkins just moves out of the way and doesn't box out. Their guy is in best rebounding position, but Akok scraps and knocks away and we get the rebound.
• Jackson gets the rebound, goes coast to coast, a spin move at half court. WVU is back in man to man. Drives into the paint, puts his back to basket, offers the ball directly to WVU, but manage to get a pass off. Cole jacks up a contested, pull up 3 with 19 seconds left instead of running offense. WVU calls timeout, 2 minutes left.
• Jackson nice d, walls up inside without fouling. But then his man gets the ball back and he's in his grill 25 feet from the hoop and gets blown by. Akok saves the day with block at the rim.
• Timeout UConn with 1.5 minutes left. WVU back in zone. Another kick ball. 20 seconds. Some trapping, nice cut by Cole but good D by WVU to block him and then recover to Whaley after the pass out. Whaley slips a screen and they double Hawkins, just like we've seen before with Sanogo. Hawkins doesn't or can't due to trap find Whaley on the roll. Now less than 5 seconds and Hawkins has to jack up a 3. Good defense. We get a tip oreb and miss, then another oreb (punishing the zone), Cole gets an absolutely wide open 3 kickout, great rhythm, in-and-out. Jackson oreb, blocked (probably fouled). Polley oreb, hoists a 3 immediately. They finally rebound. 5 shots on 1 possession while down 1 with a minute left - 2 shots at the rim and 3 missed 3's (1 wide open, 1 semi-open, 1 contested). Still 51-52.
• Sherman draws a foul on Hawkins. Just a half step beat and Sherman is good at drawing fouls. Makes first, Misses 2nd 51-53, Akok doesn't box out and just goes up for rebound with position but instead ball takes extra bounce on rim, guy swoops in and is first to ball in the air. We have to foul. McNeil makes both 51-55.
• Polley puts up a quick corner 3 after a quick push, miss. Tip, miss. Whaley 2nd tip in. 53-55.
• We press, they get ball in to McNeil on textbook press break. He makes 1/2, 53-56.
• We have a shot, but out of timeouts. Cole gets a pretty good look, sudden stop probably draws a foul as defender hits him in body in the air, but they'd never call with 1 second left (but would in other times in game).

Not a lot to criticize on coaching. Couple bonehead Jackson plays, Cole missed three 3's, got the bad end of the whistle on the road, Akok didn't box out, and then we either didn't take or missed 5 open shots on the 2 zone possessions. In general had an open shot on every possession except the one Cole played hero ball.

It's the least surprising thing ever that everyone blaming Dan is choosing to ignore your post. Maybe he can put Coles jersey on after a timeout and go make the shots for his team too. Or put some puppet strings on Akok so he'll be forced to box out. Great stuff.

 

[Umami Zen]

At the end of the day.. The players have to perform on the court to make winning plays and finish games. In two games this year. They lost winnable games against teams that were coached by HOF coaches and are probably playing in the Tournament.

Could DH/staff have done things differently to affect outcomes. Sure

But if the ball isn't going in the hoop and the kids aren't using their BB IQ to finish games. You're going to lose some games.

Let's see if they learned something in practice this week so they can start closing games out when they have leads with five minutes to go.

 

[mauconnfan]

It's the least surprising thing ever that everyone blaming Dan is choosing to ignore your post. Maybe he can put Coles jersey on after a timeout and go make the shots for his team too. Or put some puppet strings on Akok so he'll be forced to box out. Great stuff.

I hope not everyone is “blaming” the coach for the loss, completely. I mean so many things happened by the players no doubt as well as some calls to make it a tough game for coach to adjust to. Akok as I said in another thread, totally missed that assignment and it was huge. We had multiple out of control 3 on 1, 4 on 2 fast breaks we didn’t finish because guys try to make it prettier than it needs to be. They shot like a group of free masons.

But he’s part of it and to deny he’s not is crazy. The pattern even in wins against the better teams is the same. 5-7 point leads down the stretch only to go to overtime in one game, get lucky against VCU and lose to MSU. It’s not just this year either it happened last year often. This team needs to figure out a way to take leads in the last 3-4 minutes and extend them not puke them away. Does he need playmakers and shooters, yep obviously not enough as we speak. But no matter this isn’t just a player issue he as well as Gaff, Polley, Hawk, AJ has to get better at the end of the game.

 

[Kitaman]

Can we look at the opposition?

What did Huggins do to (strategies, adjustments, countering, substitution, etc.) to snatch our victory from us?

Its not like they were shooting lights out, in fact they missed way too many free throws. I'm no coach but it does appear Huggins beat Hurley late in the 2nd half.

Its a curious coaching question.