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Yes, I'm serious - although certainly your point has merit. The thing is that whether or not the coaching staff has a ton of experience or not, there's an art to the whole process of a) the advance scouting and film study b) formulating a game plan off that information and c) getting the team to understand the game plan and execute it. It takes time to develop that whole process. Part a is left to an assistant in the early stages and the head coach will usually make his own evaluations and amend as necessary (a step that might be skipped at this stage of KO's career, at least in these quick turnaround games - I don't know). Part b is done with full coaching staff meetings. Part c is done in practice - or in this case, probably a walk through in a hotel ballroom and a cram session of film study - and then of course at game time on the fly.
Part a and part b are where KO gets a major benefit from an experienced staff - he doesn't have to cover for an inexperienced scout and can rely on their expertise to come to a consensus. By the time you get to part c, though, the voice of the head coach is usually the filter from which the players get most of their information, especially when game time comes. It's what separates being a terrific scouting assistant and being a terrific coach (that and motivation techniques, of course). You can put together a genious game plan, but if the players don't grasp it and don't execute it, it's just a nice piece of paper for a doctoral thesis.
We had lots of time to prepare for Michigan State and everything went perfect, pretty much (they had good coaches too, so we weren't going to run them out of the gym (or off the base) the whole game). If it didn't go well for New Mexico - maybe there were things that KO could have done better as the head coach on part c. Or maybe he actually was fine, and we were a little too tired, or just simply lost to a team a little better than us right now - without being a fly on the wall at Gampel, we'll never be privy to what the staff really thinks.
Part a and part b are where KO gets a major benefit from an experienced staff - he doesn't have to cover for an inexperienced scout and can rely on their expertise to come to a consensus. By the time you get to part c, though, the voice of the head coach is usually the filter from which the players get most of their information, especially when game time comes. It's what separates being a terrific scouting assistant and being a terrific coach (that and motivation techniques, of course). You can put together a genious game plan, but if the players don't grasp it and don't execute it, it's just a nice piece of paper for a doctoral thesis.
We had lots of time to prepare for Michigan State and everything went perfect, pretty much (they had good coaches too, so we weren't going to run them out of the gym (or off the base) the whole game). If it didn't go well for New Mexico - maybe there were things that KO could have done better as the head coach on part c. Or maybe he actually was fine, and we were a little too tired, or just simply lost to a team a little better than us right now - without being a fly on the wall at Gampel, we'll never be privy to what the staff really thinks.