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Message: [QUOTE="JoePgh, post: 3370594, member: 1131"] Reading the article, I thought that Holly had a surprising take on what she would have done differently if she could re-do her experience at Tennessee. She said that she and her assistants were overly obsessed with signing as many 5-star recruits as they could. She now feels that it would be better to sign two 5-stars per class, and then fill the other slots with "3-star recruits who would go through a wall for you". She said that the latter kind of player was hard to find these days. I have several reactions to this self-diagnosis of her coaching problems at Tennessee: [LIST=1] [*]I think she is wrong. Her problem was not that she signed too many 5-start recruits; her problem was that she did not give them 5-star coaching to improve their individual and team basketball skills. And I don't know how she would overcome that problem in a new coaching gig. [*]What she may be implying is that having 5-start recruits with attitude problems is no bargain. It's fairly easy to imagine who she may have in mind, but I think that she also had some talented recruits who are not known to have attitude problems (beyond normal adolescent laziness and lack of focus), and she didn't do much with them either. I think Evina Westbrook may be an example of that. [*]Are 3-star recruits who will go through walls really that hard to find? Those are the Kylas and Mollys of WCBB, and I believe Tennessee has had those kinds of players, some of whom transferred out (e.g., the player who returned to Iowa). [*]But at the same time, I don't think any coach including Geno is going to get to the Final Four on a regular basis if that kind of player is getting major minutes in games against ranked opponents. But the example of Maria Conlon proves that even that is not necessarily true. [/LIST] Holly's basic problem was that her players (at whatever level of skill they had when they entered) did not get better while they were in Knoxville. Mercedes Russell is the premier example of that. I don't think she has any idea that this was a problem, let alone what she would need to do to fix it. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach

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