Hurley coaching malpractice

[AntG168]

So if we are a similar team to St. John’s with Bouknight out, and Alexander is probably the best player between the two teams without Bouk, why are we acting as if this was some major letdown? They’ve been playing over their heads without Bouk. Polley turned into Klay Thompson for 2 1/2 games for crying out loud. We lost to a similarly talented team in conference. It happens. Readjust your expectations for this team minus Bouk. Unless you know polley is draining 6-7 threes a game at a 65% clip

 

[nelsonmuntz]

He played 2 guards, 2 forwards, and a center. We had 3 players over 6'6" over the final stretch. It was not a small lineup. It was a normal lineup. Our athletes allowed us to play a normal sized lineup against their small ball lineup, and we should have been able to guard them.

But Cole got burned by Posh, and they literally hit all their 3's in the last 12 minutes, and we fouled too much and went 11/14 from the FT line while we went 9/15.

Are we going to play semantics? This has been happening all season.

Adams is not a better player than Carlton, Sanogo or Whaley. So why is he playing more minutes than any of them?

When Bouknight was healthy, the Hurley Apologist argument was "play the 5 best players". That argument is impossible to make now. Either Hurley is playing favorites or he is panicking in game situations.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

So if we are a similar team to St. John’s with Bouknight out, and Alexander is probably the best player between the two teams without Bouk, why are we acting as if this was some major letdown? They’ve been playing over their heads without Bouk. Polley turned into Klay Thompson for 2 1/2 games for crying out loud. We lost to a similarly talented team in conference. It happens. Readjust your expectations for this team minus Bouk. Unless you know polley is draining 6-7 threes a game at a 65% clip

Everyone is saying Hurley blew the game because Hurley blew the game.

 

[djct1999]

Are we going to play semantics? This has been happening all season.

Adams is not a better player than Carlton, Sanogo or Whaley. So why is he playing more minutes than any of them?

When Bouknight was healthy, the Hurley Apologist argument was "play the 5 best players". That argument is impossible to make now. Either Hurley is playing favorites or he is panicking in game situations.

Huh?

 

[AntG168]

Everyone is saying Hurley blew the game because Hurley blew the game.

I disagree. Missing countless free throws in the clutch lost us the game, blowing lay up after layup last us the game, our defenders constantly getting blown by lost us the game. Adama MAYBE solves one of those problems. Some of you are suggesting Adama would’ve carried us to a win. I’m skeptical. Hurley made a call and traded offense for defense. It didn’t work, move on.

 

[3rdbass]

What the hell was that? Some of the worst in game coaching you'll see. Sanogo was the best player on both sides of the court. He took him out for what we thought was a 2 minute breather and he never sees the court again. The entire offense was being run through Sanogo. Loss is 100% on coach and that's how you could possibly lose a great young player.

It really showed when he tried to run the offense through whaley. Whaley is a nice player but should never be looked upon as the to to guy offensively especially when we need to run our offense though the post. Just a head scratcher from Hurley. Maybe we could have substituted offense for defense with Sanogo/Whaley at the endnof the game. Though Sanago was better on defense than Whaley this game too.

 

[Forte]

Not at all. St. John's looks like they are a team putting something together as the season goes along. Their guards are much better than what we had out there (Posh obviously). But they have limited size, which is why when we tried to take advantage of it with Sanogo, we started to dominate......then we played down to their size.

BINGO.... people are saying we couldn't keep up with their 5 guards... We should have thrown the ball down their throat down low if size was the issue. Why are we playing to their level with BA when we could have been destroying them on the post.

 

[aburks41]

I disagree. Missing countless free throws in the clutch lost us the game, blowing lay up after layup last us the game, our defenders constantly getting blown by lost us the game. Adama MAYBE solves one of those problems. Some of you are suggesting Adama would’ve carried us to a win. I’m skeptical. Hurley made a call and traded offense for defense. It didn’t work, move on.

Why didn't he realize it didn't work until the clock was 0:00? Any one of us with a brain saw this coming as soon as Sanogo went out with 12 minutes left

 

[AntG168]

Why didn't he realize it didn't work until the clock was 0:00? Any one of us with a brain saw this coming as soon as Sanogo went out with 12 minutes left

We lost the game on defense and at the free throw line. Which one of the problems does Sanogo solve for us?

 

[auror]

Are we going to play semantics? This has been happening all season.

Adams is not a better player than Carlton, Sanogo or Whaley. So why is he playing more minutes than any of them?

When Bouknight was healthy, the Hurley Apologist argument was "play the 5 best players". That argument is impossible to make now. Either Hurley is playing favorites or he is panicking in game situations.

If Adams doesn't play, we pretty much have to play Gaffney, because Polley can't guard guards and we needed Martin elsewhere. Gaffney was bad.

Regardless of you getting the details of the lineup wrong, your point is that Hurley adjusted to the opponent instead of playing to our strengths. It's a fine argument to make, but I see it differently.

My argument would be (and I edited a previous post but you replied before I did so) that we did play to our strengths. We're a really great defensive team. We put out our 4 best defenders at their respective positions in that stretch, plus the guy who carried us offensively the last few games (Polley).

And we got torched while missing a lot of makeable shots and free throws on the other end. I think on average they got better shot quality than us during those 12 minutes, despite our superior defensive lineup in. That's a problem, obviously.

One solution would have been to just try to outscore them ourselves, by putting Sanogo in. Another option is to trust our upperclassmen (Cole equivalent of senior, Adams junior, Polley senior, Martin junior, Whaley senior) to turn it around and pull it out. Hurley did the latter.

Didn't happen. Oh well. Could we won it if Hurley had made other choices? Yeah, maybe. Were his choices terrible? I don't think so, but you're free to think so.

 

[UConn990411]

Hurley is very good at a lot of things. In-game coaching ain’t one of them.

Coaches can improve on their skill sets just like players can, but he has some work to do. Today was a yikes moment.

 

[AntG168]

The reactions are truly amazing ??

I’m seeing words like troubling, disaster, malpractice, embarrassment, and devastating being used. Lmaoo. It’s peak boneyard

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Regardless of you getting the details wrong, your point is that Hurley adjusted to the opponent instead of playing to our strengths. It's a fine argument to make, but I see it differently.

My argument would be (and I edited a previous post but you replied before I did so) that we did play to our strengths. We're a really great defensive team. We put out our 4 best defenders at their respective positions in that stretch, plus the guy who carried us offensively the last few games (Polley).

And we got torched while missing a lot of makeable shots and free throws on the other end. I think on average they got better shot quality than us during those 12 minutes, despite our superior defensive lineup in.

One solution would have been to just try to outscore them ourselves, by putting Sanogo in. Another option is to trust our upperclassmen (Cole equivalent of senior, Adams junior, Polley senior, Martin junior, Whaley senior) to turn it around and pull it out. Hurley did the latter.

Didn't happen. Oh well. Could we won it if Hurley had made other choices? Yeah, maybe. Were his choices terrible? I don't think so, but you're free to think so.

We are a good defensive team because Creighton is the only really good offensive team we have played. Marquette and USC are decent, but both play big, so Hurley played our forwards more, and we won both games.

Wait until we get 3 more games like this into our stats, and we won't look as good.

 

[AntG168]

We are a good defensive team because Creighton is the only really good offensive team we have played. Marquette and USC are decent, but both play big, so Hurley played our forwards more, and we won both games.

Wait until we get 3 more games like this into our stats, and we won't look as good.

You do realize 3/4 of ncaa teams aren’t as good a creighton on offense. Who are these offensive juggernauts we’ll be facing sans nova?

 

[auror]

We are a good defensive team because Creighton is the only really good offensive team we have played. Marquette and USC are decent, but both play big, so Hurley played our forwards more, and we won both games.

Wait until we get 3 more games like this into our stats, and we won't look as good.

You're going with "UConn is secretly a bad defensive team"? Really?

 

[Husky1972]

We lost the game on defense and at the free throw line. Which one of the problems does Sanogo solve for us?

Both. His defense would have been an improvement, continues to provide an offensive option, so that it doesn't come down to the free throw line.

 

[AntG168]

You're going with "UConn is secretly a bad defensive team"? Really?

They feel obligated to be as negative as possible right now. You know to fit in

 

[AntG168]

Both. His defense would have been an improvement, continues to provide an offensive option, so that it doesn't come down to the free throw line.

Sanogo is not a defensive improvement over Whaley. Is isn’t nearly quick enough to cover the ground Whaley covers

 

[storrsroars]

We all know that in the BE there are simply times where there are bad matchups. It was that way pretty much the entire time we were in the OBE. This may be one of those times. It's entirely possible that UConn ends up with 5 losses in conference but gets swept by SJU.

That said, Sanogo should've seen more time. He and Whaley seemed the only ones able to get back on D somewhat regularly.

 

[superjohn]

Sanogo is not a defensive improvement over Whaley. Is isn’t nearly quick enough to cover the ground Whaley covers

You play them together, this really isn't that difficult.

 

[djct1999]

We are a good defensive team because Creighton is the only really good offensive team we have played. Marquette and USC are decent, but both play big, so Hurley played our forwards more, and we won both games.

Wait until we get 3 more games like this into our stats, and we won't look as good.

You remind me of that stock market pundit who has been calling for the Dow to crash since it hit 20,000 then one day after trading off 500 pts at 30,000 you pound your chest saying ‘I told you so’.

 

[HuskyHawk]

There’s no way we lose this game if we continued feeding Sanogo. They couldn’t stop him, even with a double.

And he was stopping their attempts to score at the rim on the other end. And swallowing the boards too. This was the most inexplicably awful decision making I have seen in a long time.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Anyone have the time and score of the game when he took Sanogo out? Was it with 12:46 left and UConn up 8?

And we had a 7-1 edge in fouls at that point too. They had no answer except fouling us. Once the rim was unprotected we had no answer but to foul them.

 

[Hankster]

What the hell was that? Some of the worst in game coaching you'll see. Sanogo was the best player on both sides of the court. He took him out for what we thought was a 2 minute breather and he never sees the court again. The entire offense was being run through Sanogo. Loss is 100% on coach and that's how you could possibly lose a great young player.

Wow, just got on. No need to voice my opinion on why Sonogo was not put in. That was inexcusable.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Maybe Hurley has been recruiting too big too slow. Looking at past programs we've had the most success with guard heavy programs. I'm looking at the roster and it looks like we have 3 centers on the roster with a 4th coming in


Hurley needs to recruit more ball handling guards. Its part of UConn's DNA. This has to be one of our worst teams in decades with regard to true ball handlers. Feels like Hurley is stocking the team up to be big and slow.

UConn lead the country in shot blocking how many years in a row? Calhoun never went small. Never played more than 3 guards. Because he’d rather die to a streaky hot shooting team than give up free layups over and over, which is what we did today. UConn has almost never played a 3 guard lineup, it is not our DNA.

I’d love to see our +/- today when we had Whaley and Sanogo both in and when we didn’t. I’d guess it was something like +16 with them playing together. Is Hurley saying that if he had Wilt Chamberlain and a team went 5 guards, he’d pull Wilt? This was a pathetic small team and the only strategy that made sense was to go big and exploit their weakness. Let them launch 3s. They aren’t a 50% shooting team from deep, so misses were coming.