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Message: [QUOTE="JoePgh, post: 5179151, member: 1131"] OK, I'm glad you prodded me into reading this. (Maybe I could tell you were exasperated, aka angry, and that got me to respond to your coaching as you hoped and expected that I would.) Now that I've read the article and one of Geno's quotes, I think he said something very important that I hadn't heard before from him or anyone else. He said that at a previous point in his career (I'm thinking maybe in the Lobo / Rizzotti era), he could tell a player that she was terrible and she would react by thinking he was a jerk, and she would be determined to prove him wrong -- which is the reaction that he wanted and was counting on. But now, with 11 NC's and a Hall of Fame membership among many other honors under his belt, if he tells a player that she is terrible she will be devastated because this icon of the game has such a negative view of her basketball skills. So the player reacts by "crawling into a hole" -- the opposite of the defiant reaction that he was trying to provoke. He says it took a while for him to figure that out, and I also will bet that some recent alumnae (Napheesa? Morgan Tuck?) had to explain that to him before he understood. The mere fact that he is an actual grandfather and is seen by his players in a quasi-grandfatherly role also influences how they would process harsh feedback from him -- far different than when he was a 30-something brash young coach with an ego. So maybe he has gotten "softer" as he approaches the end of his career, but it is by design rather than because of an energy loss. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach

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