Coaches are masters of rationalization. If you’re Cori Close or Dawn Staley, and you want your team to embrace the goal of pursuing a national championship next season, you have to rationalize getting blown out by 30+ by the Huskies.
The usual excuses of, “We weren’t ready” or “We didn’t execute well” just don’t cut it when you’re in the FF and preparation and execution fall on the HC. So Cori invented a novel excuse that UCLA lost a bunch of inches on screens, switches, rebounds, you name it.
When Sarah was knocking down 3’s from the arc with no UCLA defender within 10 feet of her, that’s 120 inches right there, on every shot. As you point out, it was a boatload of inches.
I wouldn’t call it rationalization. It’s more like a coach has to speak to several audiences at once, to her continuing players (and their parents), to potential recruits and transfers, to her AD, to fans, and so on.
I also think
the metaphor of ‘losing all the inches’ is a good one. It’s her way of saying they were out-hustled, which is exactly what happened. It also squares nicely with her remark about the problem of having too much talent, which is also a pretty accurate (if incomplete) description of her dilemma.
Cori recruited a great roster and wasn’t able to get them to do what was required to take home a ring. I hear this as a confession that she didn’t manage to mold them into a great team. That’s what she meant and it’s what all the audiences she was addressing will hear. When she described the team’s reaction at halftime — “Oh, that’s what you meant.” — that was spot on. This was a consistent message in all of her interviews and it rings true.
Her remarks about the portal’s impact on morale is the one moment where she seems to have failed to understand her own error. Yes, the timing of the portal was bad — we’ve all said this elsewhere — but it wouldn’t have impacted a well-coached team quite as ferociously. This didn’t happen to Geno or Dawn who each only lost one player in the same circumstances. Why? Because they’ve built programs that players (and their families) have bought into. Community and shared sacrifice are the essence of great programs and it’s exactly what they’ve focused on for decades. No one goes to either one and doesn’t know what to expect.
Cori failed to get her team to hustle harder and win all the “inches” and it wasn’t just because agents distracted her players. She says a roster of 10 will suit her better for next season, and she has a point. But this alone won’t suffice to get that extra hustle. She has to demand more from them and not merely offer them some ill-defined opportunity for playing time, NIL or draft status.
She has been a good coach for Lauren and may turn out to be for Sienna as well. But it remains to be seen if she can be one for the entire roster. Lauren arrived as a moody but motivated kid and she needed all of Cori’s kindness and generosity. But the rest of the roster seems to need something else, and this did not come across so clearly in the interview.
What I marvel at is how Geno sold KK on the idea of bringing in Kaitlyn last season and Kayleigh for next season. This must have required a good deal of blunt honesty from him as well as genuine insight into her personality. Could Cori have gotten Kiki to accept something similar with Leger-Walker? Or has she merely promised her playing time and NIL? Similarly, Dawn got Joyce and Tessa to accept limited roles even though they’d have started pretty much anywhere else. This is what a great and not merely good coach can do. It’s the sort of thing Cori needs to be able to do.
