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Message: [QUOTE="LStudfellow, post: 4130644, member: 5436"] I will start this with a mention that I am thankful that Dan Hurley was hired as our coach almost 4 years ago. In this time he has changed the culture, brought back a winners mentality and family atmosphere reminiscent of the program under Jim Calhoun, put together one of the best coaching staffs in all of college basketball, and taken our recruiting back to a level like we had during our best years under JC. Overall he has proven to be the right man for the job of resurrecting our program, which was not a foregone conclusion when he was hired. However, it has become obvious that he struggles at several very important aspects of in-game coaching. And I do not understand why some of you feel it necessary to defend his obvious mistakes during games like last night by criticizing those who are pointing out that he still needs to improve in this critical area of his job. I have been around basketball since I was a kid. My father was a successful coach at the middle school level for the better part of 20 years (he coached the All-Star travel team). And even at that level he would have, within a possession or two, been able to recognize the switch that Huggins made when they went to a 1-3-1 defense and made an adjustment to his offense. IMMEDIATELY. And if the kids were not making the adjustments correctly he would have called timeout within a possession or two at most and walked through with them the adjustments they needed to make. Hurley did not do this. Unfortunately this has been a pattern with his coaching that has become more glaring over the last several years as our teams have become more competitive and found themselves in close games with good teams. - and for anyone who wants to defend Hurley on the "but WVU had not used a 1-3-1 defense all year" argument... if you know anything about Huggins' history you know he has often used that defensive scheme during his coaching career. These are the types of things you have to be prepared for in a game like this. That is an integral part of Hurley's job. In addition: - He should have not kept Cole out of the game until WVU had tied the game at 47 and more importantly taken back momentum. We have seen Hurley make this mistake on multiple occasions in other games as well. He struggles with making critical adjustments on the fly. - Our most effective offense all night was to have either one of the guards or AJ drive toward the middle while a cutter from the wing or baseline came from the other side. Man with the ball passes to the cutter who has a short jumper, lay up or dunk. This play sequence worked at least 4 or 5 times earlier in the game - yet we did not see it even once in the latter stages of the game. Why? We have seen this before, as well. We seem to tighten up late in close games and stop running any semblance of good offense. Yes, I know... for many of you this will be "tl;dr". But to not be willing to admit to the obvious and say that people are just whining when the facts of what we watched say otherwise is just sticking your head in the sand. Bottom line: overall I am very thankful for Hurley being chosen as the man to succeed Kevin Ollie and the disaster he left behind. On so many levels he has done a great job. However, it is also obvious that he needs to improve on several levels of his in-game coaching skills. And pointing out this obvious truth with multiple facts does NOT make me, or anyone else, a whiner. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach