Holly Warlick's "Over The Top" RX To Loss

[MilfordHusky]

Tennessee Lady Vol Rennia Davis: 'I'm not losing in the second round ever again'

Goals and expectations in Knoxville are not what they once were.

Some interpretations:

(1) We’ll lose in the first round.

(2) We’ll make it to at least the third round of the WNIT;

(3) I’m transferring my butt out of here.

 

[JordyG]

All true. But this is sports, not the 'real world.' Can't I just hate Tennessee and feel good about it?

Of course. I hate the Yankees. Do you? Yet I could never hate Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Derek Jeter or a host of other Yankees. Why can't some people separate people from their institutions? They're not the same. I've even heard captured terrorists say they hate America but like individual Americans.

 

[DefenseBB]

Why are these choices bad? Mainly because there is a significant history of failure (part of the institutions history) that is being ignored or dismissed....
The note in part says: "Candace, I think I can help you on and off the court".
This is not much different than pitches that are made to recruits everywhere. What is vastly different is that Pat had the ability to deliver and Holly does not. When a parent or recruit chooses TN and actually falls for this pitch I have no issues saying they are guilty of making a bad choice and associating themselves with an institution that has not delivered (under Holly). To put it even more bluntly ever recruit that has signed with Holly had“hands down” infinitely better choices.

Ok, I have to take issue with how far or how much impunity is being directed at life skills vs. sport achievements.

On the sports level, the LVs are not an elite, player development program they once were. Them still having the same high expectations with no evidence to warrant those aspirations is one thing to mock and openly jeer the fans and the institution. A player chooses the school for two reasons- Basketball and an education. To deride the quality of basketball is fare but to deride, insult and bash whether Holly or anyone has not helped or failed to support the players off the court is blatant hogwash. While I laugh openly at Michelle Marciniaks comments as ludicrous that the players failed, Michelle has been VERY SUCCESSFUL in life ie off the court as have many LV who just like the UConn family, are very close and supportive of each other and the program.

So the team didn’t win as many games as they thought they could, that is a failure for all but 1 team each year. The institution has not failed them if they get a degree, leverage their relationships with former players and alumni and get a job and have fun and productive lives, while enjoying the friends and teammate s they made and had at UT.

That is what Mercedes meant and I laud her for that. I have been vocal that I felt Mercedes was done unjustly by a lack of coaching to not reach her SPORTS potential, but I am happy for her if she is happy as we all should be. We cannot act like we know they have failed in their young lives just because they lose more basketball gamesmanship than we think they should have.

Coco, I don’t think you were trying to deride these young ladies and all those that went before them on their life choices UT helped afford them vs. basketball skills that the program may have been underachieving their efforts on but it came off a bit too aggressive in my opinion.

 

[DefenseBB]

Of course. I hate the Yankees. Do you? Yet I could never hate Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Derek Jeter or a host of other Yankees. Why can't some people separate people from their institutions? They're not the same. I've even heard captured terrorists say they hate America but like individual Americans.

Jealous much?

 

[Plebe]

Tennessee Lady Vol Rennia Davis: 'I'm not losing in the second round ever again'

Translation: Tennessee will fail to advance to the second round for at least the next three years.

Ms. Davis should be careful what she wishes for, or at least how she words her wishes.

 

[j66kicker]

View attachment 29673

Of course. I hate the Yankees. Do you? Yet I could never hate Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Derek Jeter or a host of other Yankees. Why can't some people separate people from their institutions? They're not the same. I've even heard captured terrorists say they hate America but like individual Americans.

Just for the record, I'm a die-hard Yankee fan since I was 8 or 9 years old. Don't hate the Red Sox though. Well... I don't actually 'like' the Red Sox but, until fairly recently, they were just another mediocre wannabe team whose fans hated the Yankees. So I don't hate Ted Williams or Yaz or Carlton Fisk or Jim Rice (but none of them ever won anything, so who cares?). I don't even hate the juicers who did finally win - Big Papi, Manny Ramirez, etc. But, man, I do hate Tennessee.

But you're a New Yorker, aren't you? Who's your baseball team?

 

[CocoHusky]

Coco, I don’t think you were trying to deride these young ladies and all those that went before them on their life choices UT helped afford them vs. basketball skills that the program may have been underachieving their efforts on but it came off a bit too aggressive in my opinion.

I not even sure what that even means. I do not deride these young ladies, I deride the choice they make to attend and play basketball at the University of TN. If by "aggressive" you mean I'm extending that derision to the entire University I would not disagree with you too strongly because the University of TN is not that highly regarded an academic institution. To be blunt and now repetitive: The players that choose to go to TN ALL have several better choices for basketball development and academics! Is that aggressive enough for you?

 

[JordyG]

View attachment 29673
Just for the record, I'm a die-hard Yankee fan since I was 8 or 9 years old. Don't hate the Red Sox though. Well... I don't actually 'like' the Red Sox but, until fairly recently, they were just another mediocre wannabe team whose fans hated the Yankees. So I don't hate Ted Williams or Yaz or Carlton Fisk or Jim Rice (but none of them ever won anything, so who cares?). I don't even hate the juicers who did finally win - Big Papi, Manny Ramirez, etc. But, man, I do hate Tennessee.

But you're a New Yorker, aren't you? Who's your baseball team?

The rest of what I said still stands.

 

[DefenseBB]

I not even sure what that even means. I do not deride these young ladies, I deride the choice they make to attend and play basketball at the University of TN. If by "aggressive" you mean I'm extending that derision to the entire University I would not disagree with you too strongly because the University of TN is not that highly regarded an academic institution. To be blunt and now repetitive: The players that choose to go to TN ALL have several better choices for basketball development and academics! Is that aggressive enough for you?

Let me help you out-impune Holly’s coaching, deride their fans all you want but to belittle anyone who gets an education, participates in high level athletics, stays committed to that group and succeeds in life shows you to be a small person. Don’t get too high and mighty on UConn vs. other educational institutions. There are plenty of Harvard grads unemployed contributing nothing to life while many community school grads are doing wonderful things with their lives. Is that clear enough for you?

 

[CL82]

May they keep Holly as head coach forever... Amen!!!

 

[RSHERMVIKES]

I find the reveling in the distress of the young women who play for Tennessee to be distasteful in the extreme. Some of the LV fans, specifically the Tin Foil Hat Brigade over on the Summitt, deserve all the suffering they can get but most Tennessee fans are just like us - rooting for their team and hoping for the best for their players.

If people find the nastiness of a few of the LV fans so awful, why are they acting exactly like them? I had hopes we were above childish pettiness.

Nan- - -I know where you're coming from, but what TN Nation did was to take a sports rivalry to a level that no player, coach, fan, administrator, should ever go! They fabricated the meanest of lies to defend the belief that Pat Summitt couldn't understand that Maya Moore could chose Geno Auriemma/UCONN over Her/TN without having to cheat to do it! How could Maya Moore chose him over me! He had to have cheated!
Then to get back at Maya, Geno & UCONN they wrote up about 60 pages of out right lies and sent it to the NCAA to destroy UCONN! Luckily the NCAA finally had the good sense to verify that all the lies were wrong and unproven!
To accuse Geno of buying a house for Maya's Mom, and financing her business, of accusing Sue Bird & Diana Taurasi of meeting Maya at the airport, taking her to lunch, then driving her to the campus for her visit which Sue and DT proved false by showing they were in Moscow playing in a Euro Game at the exact time they were supposed to be in CT with Maya, that fans were blatantly involved in influencing Maya to come to UCONN, among other lies!
And the TN Nation continue these lies to this date, I can understand why many UCONN fans, including myself, will not forget or forgive TN! Again I don't revel in the misery of the current players who had no part in this fiasco, but for the majority of fans, the coaches, and the administrators I do enjoy THEIR misery!

 

[HuskyNan]

To explain a bit more about my op in this thread; there were posts, now deleted, where posters went a mile beyond fan “hate” of another team to openly mocking the young women themselves. I was appalled.

 

[meyers7]

The University of Tennessee as an unlanced boil. I had to give it a like. Funny is just funny.

Ladies and gentlemen meyers7. He'll be here all week. Please leave by the exits located in the back and side doors. Thank you and good evening.

Except Saturday, I'll be in Albany.

 

[meyers7]

I agree wholeheartedly they are guilty of bad choices. That is not now or has it ever been my position. My conceit is that it does not make them bad people.

It goes far beyond the "He who is without sin..." ideal, but the fact as humans we make 100's of mistakes a day. That is our nature. Yet here we are as fans: Not players, coaches or administrators. Fans of our beloved UConn continuing to pass judgement on the nature of people because of the one bad choice that we deem they've made. Geno has moved on, yet we who have even less at stake than he pretend we know better, or more, or have the right to take a higher ground. Yes, there seems to be a skip in my recording. But if some of us would just try to think back on our 15, 16 or 18 year old selves and remember the slew of bad choices we made that hindered us, hurt us or delayed our development, what would we see? It didn't make us evil or even tragically flawed. Just human. Yet looking back I'm sure we can see that at the time we also had infinitely better choices.

According to Jordy, just a mistake:

 

[CocoHusky]

Let me help you out-impune Holly’s coaching, deride their fans all you want but to belittle anyone who gets an education, participates in high level athletics, stays committed to that group and succeeds in life shows you to be a small person. Don’t get too high and mighty on UConn vs. other educational institutions. There are plenty of Harvard grads unemployed contributing nothing to life while many community school grads are doing wonderful things with their lives. Is that clear enough for you?

Crystal clear and very imaginative, especially the part about being high and mighty on UCONN vs. other educational institutions-clearly a product of your inner child!

 

[RockyMTblue2]

I think Holly is a career follower and was probably a really good assistant coach, but has not a clue as a head coach of how to teach players or coach on the sideline. And whether it is that she has no clue how to hire assistant coaches or she has no clue how to empower them, the assistant coaches have done nothing for the players either. It reminds me of my working career when I would often deal with really stupid mid-level executives and inevitably their assistants would prove to be even dumber as if they were worried to hire competent people who might expose their incompetence.

It has amazed me that in the last six years, no one on the TN staff seems to have a clue of how to play against a zone defense (it probably dates back much earlier, but I didn't notice it and I am not going back to check!) or at least has not been able to instill the fundamentals of zone offense to those teams. This is not dissimilar to Pat going to Harry to learn motion offense and then never really installing it, falling back on the chuck it and rebound that she was happy with. In both cases it comes down to TN getting by on superior athletes and stars, and when they come up against seriously coached teams that have good enough players they are in trouble.

While this whine from Holly is pretty bad, the one thing I think is probably true about it is that the TN message boards can be pretty terrible about specific players and that stuff is not being moderated out. If she has seen what does get posted (and I am sure stuff on twitter is likely no better) then complaining and defending players is not out of line - just a lot better to do it after a good win and not post-game of a disappointing season ending loss.

Mickey DeMoss was the brains. Holly was a clip board carrier with a watch and a stop watch reading what Pat put on that board.

 

[RockyMTblue2]

Crystal clear and very imaginative, especially the part about being high and mighty on UCONN vs. other educational institutions-clearly a product of your inner child!

I wish you two would kiss and make up.

 

[Fairfield Fan]

The problem with HW is that she was seen as the continuation of Pat Summit: HW had been coached by PS, had served many years as PS's assistant coach, and had imbibed the PS way. So it was rightly considered that she was part PS herself. So her struggles have disillusioned so many who believed that there should have been a much more seamless transition.

When in the years ahead Coach Geno retires, no one will hold his successor to anything. We all understand that The Coach is sui generis. He can't be replicated. So we'll root for UConn, and hope for success, though we will all understand that no coach could possibly go five full seasons and only lose two games.

When in years to come Coach Geno steps down, it will be the end of an era. Period.

 

[terif831]

Maybe you were looking for these words?

Haha! Maybe.....just a little bit.....

 

[HuskyNan]

The problem with HW is that she was seen as the continuation of Pat Summit: HW had been coached by PS, had served many years as PS's assistant coach, and had imbibed the PS way. So it was rightly considered that she was part PS herself. So her struggles have disillusioned so many who believed that there should have been a much more seamless transition.

When in the years ahead Coach Geno retires, no one will hold his successor to anything. We all understand that The Coach is sui generis. He can't be replicated. So we'll root for UConn, and hope for success, though we will all understand that no coach could possibly go five full seasons and only lose two games.

When in years to come Coach Geno steps down, it will be the end of an era. Period.

I think you put your finger on something important. PHS’s way worked for her largely because of her personality. Her stare was renowned for its fierceness, and rightly so. She could imbue her teams with that passion ad fire - Holly, not so much.

That’s why others that try to copy Geno can get only so far. His personality is on the court, usually conveyed through his point guard - Jen, Diana, Moriah, et al. It’s hard to duplicate the force of the coach’ personality

 

[UcMiami]

I think you put your finger on something important. PHS’s way worked for her largely because of her personality. Her stare was renowned for its fierceness, and rightly so. She could imbue her teams with that passion ad fire - Holly, not so much.

That’s why others that try to copy Geno can get only so far. His personality is on the court, usually conveyed through his point guard - Jen, Diana, Moriah, et al. It’s hard to duplicate the force of the coach’ personality

There was a really 'frightening' video of Holly the first or second year of her HCing gig where she talked about trying to do everything exactly as Pat had always done it, to saying something like I watched her for years and know exactly what she would do.

As soon as I saw that I knew TN was in trouble - most assistants try to take some of what they learn in each job on to the next job, but Holly didn't seem to have any ideas of her own beyond trying to do exactly what Pat had done. I have posted before this thought - I could see Holly with an office full of yearly binders that laid out exactly what had been done each day through the season for every year of her association with Pat, and her consulting those binders religiously each week to plan the following week's practice schedule: next Monday is day 15 of training camp ... that means we spend 30 minutes working on defensive stance, followed by 45 minutes of boxing out and rebounding work, followed by 20 minutes of offensive rebounding work.

 

[RockyMTblue2]

There was a really 'frightening' video of Holly the first or second year of her HCing gig where she talked about trying to do everything exactly as Pat had always done it, to saying something like I watched her for years and know exactly what she would do.

As soon as I saw that I knew TN was in trouble - most assistants try to take some of what they learn in each job on to the next job, but Holly didn't seem to have any ideas of her own beyond trying to do exactly what Pat had done. I have posted before this thought - I could see Holly with an office full of yearly binders that laid out exactly what had been done each day through the season for every year of her association with Pat, and her consulting those binders religiously each week to plan the following week's practice schedule: next Monday is day 15 of training camp ... that means we spend 30 minutes working on defensive stance, followed by 45 minutes of boxing out and rebounding work, followed by 20 minutes of offensive rebounding work.

28 years something had to rub off... Here it is:

 

[RockyMTblue2]

"To be fair, the bottom falling out of the program the way it has over the past two years is unacceptable. And the blame for that falls directly on Warlick.

But if a program is in decline, that’s bound to eventually happen. And the constant under-achieving in the tournament did begin to affect recruiting.

The Lady Vols failed to pick up a single recruit for its 2016 class, and it’s 2015 class was not even in the Top 10.

As a result, they operated this year with a very thin roster, especially when you consider on transfer and a season-ending injury.

So to get back to where they were, Warlick needs to show what she can do with top recruits and a deep roster again.

She has a good chance next year.

The Lady Vols are back on top with the No. 1 recruiting class again, and their top three players from this year are all juniors.

So Warlick deserves a shot to turn things around.

But if next season is like this one, then yes, it’s time to talk about a coaching change."

Article is one year old, so ....

Tennessee Lady Vols Decline Not All on Holly Warlick

Of course, it looks like she'll get another year, though we here are praying for a 5 year extension.

 

[Gus Mahler]

It's not about hating the players, it's about hating the program.
Heck, I hate the whole university.

 

[JordyG]

I wish you two would kiss and make up.

And maybe post photo's?