I'll play devil's advocate on Ollie

[champs99and04]

Four days ago I wrote a post that included the words, to paraphrase, "to say that I'm glad to have Ollie is an understatement" that was liked by 47 people. There were a lot of other words in that post and people probably liked it for different reasons, their pity for my livelihood being among them. But nonetheless, 47 people are not liking a post that includes those words today no matter what they're prefaced with. The euphoria of the victory over Oregon made it very easy to ignore the mounting presence of conflicting evidence.

Now I would not consider myself an "Ollie apologist" (tangentially, if there anything worse than the people who post the 'I told you so' threads after a game like that?), but my angst with him - or at least that which I expressed - dates back about a year. I certainly wasn't the first to lose patience with him and one poster in particular seemed to sense that things were awry long before anyone, but I was also surprised at the resistance I got to the assertion that he did a really bad job with last years team. I've been in a weird place where I've simultaneously been arguing against his performance and for his long term viability, and at a time like this, I'm certainly not looking for credit. I've hedged my bets enough where I won't look like the biggest idiot here but probably won't be making a living as a gambler either.

But as I said in another thread yesterday, it's OK to admit to being really confused. That doesn't mean you're confused about what you saw in the last game or the last season or the last three seasons, it just means that they confuse your ability to predict the future. Trust me I would know, as I was ready to anoint him as the greatest coach to ever live a few years ago. And if we were confused eighteen months ago, when hardly anybody objected to his extension, then what is to prohibit us from being confused again?

The idea that we can't predict the future is obvious. The idea that recency bias might be invading our ability to assess the situation might not be. It's why the anti-Ollie sentiment seemed to grow tamer and tamer as the off-season progressed until it had just about sputtered out by halftime of the Michigan State game. It's why the prevailing narrative following the Michigan State game - and I actually argued post game that people were giving the team too much credit - was that we were heading in the right direction.

My ultimate point, then, is that our opinions on these things don't derive from conviction, they derive from the fear that we are somehow being duped, that all of these games and possessions warrant an omniscient narration that enlightens us, retroactively, to all of the warning signs. Nobody wants to think that these games are merely limited samples of data that progressively and in a very linear way enlighten us to the truth. Otherwise, the totality of an entire career - and the inherent worth of our players - wouldn't have swayed so dramatically with literally one game. That's what happens when a particular subject matters to us. Our conviction is not rooted in the opinion itself, our conviction is rooted in the emotion. On this topic, a topic that matters to all of us, our opinions resonate strongly not from a lack of evidence, but from the presence of competing evidence. That's why one game and seven KenPom slots represent the difference between Kevin Ollie taking this program forward and not - because we are really confused. One game absolutely lends credibility to the (building) idea that he should be out, it just shouldn't be the singular pivot point from which the degree of separation is formed. It only seems that way because we're at the line that at some point has to become binary.

If nothing else, pay attention not to what the narrative is, but to how much it changes, how fast. See how fast a CBI bound team with a sunken coach becomes a tournament team. See how fast a win over Syracuse takes this from "hopeless" to something else. See how the win over Oregon becomes a resume builder again, how Michigan State becomes the best team in the county that beat UNC more thoroughly than us, how those poor kids had to play a consolation game 3,000 miles from home after emptying the tank to beat Oregon and MSU and of course they had nothing less. Nobody will make those excuses faster than us. Nobody. Nobody will reduce this disaster of epic proportions to "three bad halves" faster than us IF WE NEED TO.

We're a team that went from 69 to 65 to 72. We might be at 55 in two weeks or we might be at 94. I have no damn idea.

 

[superjohn]

What a load of nonsense.

 

[whaler11]

Anyone got the cliff notes?

If the season gets turned around the same people who have been critical the last few days will reinvent a narrative around what happened.

Also you can’t predict the future. So you are confused.

For those who have BY access but not to the rest of the internet - Wisconsin scored 37 against Virginia tonight.

 

[Penfield]

I don't think I read an actual defense of Ollie in there. What is devil's advocate about this?

One thing that isn't making Ollie's job any easier is that college basketball players aren't professionals

 

[Fishy]

If I could give one piece of advice to people trying to give advice it would be that brevity is your friend.

What he meant to say was ‘hey, let’s see how the next week plays out.’

 

[cowboysnation]

The main issue I have with Kevin Ollie is player development. Forget wins and losses, conference, TV exposure, etc....If recruits see that other players aren't getting better than they won't come here. Even when Calhoun had bad years ie 01, 07, 1o. You still saw the players on the team get better over time. I'm just not seeing that from Ollie. Under calhoun you saw massive transformation not only in basketball skill but also in strength and conditioning ie Hilton Armstrong, Caron Butler, Richard Hamilton, Kemba. I'm just not seeing that from Ollie. Larrier seems like the same high volume shooter, one dimensional player he was under Shaka. Same with purvis. How much did Brimah develop in 4 years. Look at Jalen Adams body, he clearly doesn't have a NBA body....why is that??

The off the court work just isn't getting done. Players are not developing and improving their games. And that is the biggest issue for this program. Even if the quality of recruits has gone done, we should still see improvement over time. It is not happening.

Player development is what destroys programs or brings them back to relevancy. Players don't care about wins and losses or conference play if they believe the coach can improve their game and get them ready for the next level. We just don't have that right now.

 

[pj]

If I could give one piece of advice to people trying to give advice it would be that brevity is your friend.

What he meant to say was ‘hey, let’s see how the next week plays out.’

Brevity is not Champ's friend. In fact brevity is a stranger to him. They socialize in different circles.

 

[Sphinx]

Before we cashier KO (and we'd better have a cashier's check ready) let us remember that he is among the most resilient individuals who ever lived. He parlayed a pedestrian basketball talent into a 13-year NBA career, then turned a sit-and-watch coaching philosophy into a national title and what is now approaching $25 million in remuneration paid and owed. He is today the most visible spokesperson of a major university despite an inability to speak his native language at a 4th grade level. He is a man unhampered by his shortcomings -- and unembarrassed by them. In a word, he is a force unto himself, answerable to no common standard. He is a man for whom the Brimahs of the world make unlikely 3-point plays and the Adamses heave 60-foot buzzer-beaters. Before we cut him loose, it might be prudent to wonder what his next logic-defying feat might be. We might wish to be part of it.

 

[Dove]

UCONN = Lunch

Syracuse = A hungry sumbich

 

[Hans Sprungfeld]

If I could give one piece of advice to people trying to give advice it would be that brevity is your friend.

What he meant to say was ‘hey, let’s see how the next week plays out.’

Indeed, brevity is the soul of wit.

But that doesn't mean that I can't sometimes be charmed by a mini-think piece that wades around in emotional affect, behavioral psychology, uncertainty, and man's need for meaning-making.

Bonus: no need or request for Jeff Goodman to fact-check.

 

[Wordbomar]

Jeff Jacobs: Shabazz Napier's Message Is There Are No Shortcuts


Shabazz backs KO still..... I
Mean I guess we would expect him too but still

 

[Walker11]

Before we cashier KO (and we'd better have a cashier's check ready) let us remember that he is among the most resilient individuals who ever lived. He parlayed a pedestrian basketball talent into a 13-year NBA career, then turned a sit-and-watch coaching philosophy into a national title and what is now approaching $25 million in remuneration paid and owed. He is today the most visible spokesperson of a major university despite an inability to speak his native language at a 4th grade level. He is a man unhampered by his shortcomings -- and unembarrassed by them. In a word, he is a force unto himself, answerable to no common standard. He is a man for whom the Brimahs of the world make unlikely 3-point plays and the Adamses heave 60-foot buzzer-beaters. Before we cut him loose, it might be prudent to wonder what his next logic-defying feat might be. We might wish to be part of it.

Phishing for likes by copy and pastings this meme is more egregious than KO's offense.

 

[Tex-Lager93]

Before we cashier KO (and we'd better have a cashier's check ready) let us remember that he is among the most resilient individuals who ever lived. He parlayed a pedestrian basketball talent into a 13-year NBA career, then turned a sit-and-watch coaching philosophy into a national title and what is now approaching $25 million in remuneration paid and owed. He is today the most visible spokesperson of a major university despite an inability to speak his native language at a 4th grade level. He is a man unhampered by his shortcomings -- and unembarrassed by them. In a word, he is a force unto himself, answerable to no common standard. He is a man for whom the Brimahs of the world make unlikely 3-point plays and the Adamses heave 60-foot buzzer-beaters. Before we cut him loose, it might be prudent to wonder what his next logic-defying feat might be. We might wish to be part of it.

Ultimately, this sums up the most frustrating aspect in the current state of affairs to me. You would think that a leader who had to claw and scratch his way to a decent college career and then a 13 year journeyman NBA career that exceeded any and all expectations would create that same culture of fight, desire and want more than competition in his team. I hate to use the term hungry huskies - but that's what I want to see...a group of guys willing to go above and beyond, to will their way to victory - to exceed expectations and prove that they belong on the floor with anyone at any time. Unfortunately, that culture has not permeated this program as it should.

When I saw his gameplan against Florida in our 2014 run, where Deandre Daniels was running the baseline against the 1-3-1 and picking apart their weakness...I thought it was genius. We're going to be that team that exploits the opponents weaknesses through our strengths. But, I don't see that game planning on a regular basis - we just put the same group of starters on the floor and hope that the pick and roll at the top and 1 x 1 basketball will work - rather than exploiting weaknesses. Against a team like Arkansas, we should have started 4 guards and pressured them from the get go - get them out of their comfort zone by doing to them what they like to do best - turn you over and run. I just don't see that basketball genius rising to the surface as often as it should. As we learned the hard way last year - every game matters. I just don't see the urgency...

 

[Deepster]

Four days ago I wrote a post that included the words, to paraphrase, "to say that I'm glad to have Ollie is an understatement" that was liked by 47 people. There were a lot of other words in that post and people probably liked it for different reasons, their pity for my livelihood being among them. But nonetheless, 47 people are not liking a post that includes those words today no matter what they're prefaced with. The euphoria of the victory over Oregon made it very easy to ignore the mounting presence of conflicting evidence.

Now I would not consider myself an "Ollie apologist" (tangentially, if there anything worse than the people who post the 'I told you so' threads after a game like that?), but my angst with him - or at least that which I expressed - dates back about a year. I certainly wasn't the first to lose patience with him and one poster in particular seemed to sense that things were awry long before anyone, but I was also surprised at the resistance I got to the assertion that he did a really bad job with last years team. I've been in a weird place where I've simultaneously been arguing against his performance and for his long term viability, and at a time like this, I'm certainly not looking for credit. I've hedged my bets enough where I won't look like the biggest idiot here but probably won't be making a living as a gambler either.

But as I said in another thread yesterday, it's OK to admit to being really confused. That doesn't mean you're confused about what you saw in the last game or the last season or the last three seasons, it just means that they confuse your ability to predict the future. Trust me I would know, as I was ready to anoint him as the greatest coach to ever live a few years ago. And if we were confused eighteen months ago, when hardly anybody objected to his extension, then what is to prohibit us from being confused again?

The idea that we can't predict the future is obvious. The idea that recency bias might be invading our ability to assess the situation might not be. It's why the anti-Ollie sentiment seemed to grow tamer and tamer as the off-season progressed until it had just about sputtered out by halftime of the Michigan State game. It's why the prevailing narrative following the Michigan State game - and I actually argued post game that people were giving the team too much credit - was that we were heading in the right direction.

My ultimate point, then, is that our opinions on these things don't derive from conviction, they derive from the fear that we are somehow being duped, that all of these games and possessions warrant an omniscient narration that enlightens us, retroactively, to all of the warning signs. Nobody wants to think that these games are merely limited samples of data that progressively and in a very linear way enlighten us to the truth. Otherwise, the totality of an entire career - and the inherent worth of our players - wouldn't have swayed so dramatically with literally one game. That's what happens when a particular subject matters to us. Our conviction is not rooted in the opinion itself, our conviction is rooted in the emotion. On this topic, a topic that matters to all of us, our opinions resonate strongly not from a lack of evidence, but from the presence of competing evidence. That's why one game and seven KenPom slots represent the difference between Kevin Ollie taking this program forward and not - because we are really confused. One game absolutely lends credibility to the (building) idea that he should be out, it just shouldn't be the singular pivot point from which the degree of separation is formed. It only seems that way because we're at the line that at some point has to become binary.

If nothing else, pay attention not to what the narrative is, but to how much it changes, how fast. See how fast a CBI bound team with a sunken coach becomes a tournament team. See how fast a win over Syracuse takes this from "hopeless" to something else. See how the win over Oregon becomes a resume builder again, how Michigan State becomes the best team in the county that beat UNC more thoroughly than us, how those poor kids had to play a consolation game 3,000 miles from home after emptying the tank to beat Oregon and MSU and of course they had nothing less. Nobody will make those excuses faster than us. Nobody. Nobody will reduce this disaster of epic proportions to "three bad halves" faster than us IF WE NEED TO.

We're a team that went from 69 to 65 to 72. We might be at 55 in two weeks or we might be at 94. I have no damn idea.

Dogmania?!?! Is that you???

 

[Palatine]

There is no defense for that performance against Oklahoma. None. Take your medicine and all the insults and move on.

The only proper response is on the court. If... there is to be any response at all.

 

[8893]

Dogmania?!?! Is that you???

Poor guy never recovered from your Haiku sentence.

 

[QDOG5]

UConn should start 6 guards. That would allow for more perimeter dribbling and late in the clock 3 chucking. And the TO/asst. ratio should increase.

 

[8893]

There is no defense for that performance against Oklahoma.

Spot on.

 

[Dream Jobbed 2.0]

I’d say from my observation that KO feels like he’s put in the hard work in his life already and has grown complacent. Also, as talked about at nauseam here, his divorce has emotionally handicapped him.

 

[awfuldan]

I agree with some parts of the original post, for sure.

I felt so good about this team and the program after that Oregon win. Better than I've felt since the Colorado win in 2016, maybe.

It's insane that just 3 days later, I'm feeling like we are doomed. It just isn't true.

I believe this team will bounce back. Gotta take care of business the next couple weeks. We played some great teams in Portland, and we have more great ones coming up.

What's really important right now is our guys get healthy, stay healthy, and continue to have a positive, productive mindset. Hopefully the staff can get them there. A good, solid win over Columbia will help us all.

 

[freescooter]

I’d say from my observation that KO feels like he’s put in the hard work in his life already and has grown complacent. Also, as talked about at nauseam here, his divorce has emotionally handicapped him.

If those are indeed the situation then Ollie should just go. He is not doing anyone any good. Hell, if some administrative assistant claimed that her 3 year old divorce was causing he to fail to perform at acceptable levels she’d be told to get counseling and if that didn’t help she’d be cashiered. Someone send Kevin the EAP contact for UConn

 

[HuskyHawk]

I'm not sure what to say here. I'll try to be more brief and use bullets.

• Ollie did a crappy job getting the team prepared to play last year.
• Ollie did a reasonably good job getting the team to rally together after the devastating injuries
• Ollie obviously has some stuff going on in his life that have distracted him from this job over the last few years. He is pretty clearly not the man he was pre-divorce. It's really impossible to deny this.
• Ollie talked a good game about bringing in the right kids and changing the culture in the offseason. He did pretty well filling out the roster.
• I don't see much evidence of an actual culture shift so far. It's not just about Arkansas. The team appears rudderless and leaderless, and Ollie seems disinclined to force the issue. He reminds me of Diaco in some ways.
• His offensive system, which is based on JCs, is feast or famine. It can work brilliantly against the right opponent or defense, and when the players are on and get calls. But it is an epic disaster when defended appropriately or if the guys go cold or don't get the calls. In short, it isn't something that can easily be adjusted when the refs are letting a Cinci or Lousiville clobber our penetrating guards. We've seen this for years, and last weekend was a great example. Super tight game vs. Oregon, they couldn't stop us. First half vs. MSU, worked well. Second half, they packed in and got physical and crushed us. Arkansas simply used that blueprint the whole game.

 

[Palatine]

Calhoun should be helping Ollie and not St. Joe's. We need his wisdom.

 

[jibsey]

Four days ago I wrote a post that included the words, to paraphrase, "to say that I'm glad to have Ollie is an understatement" that was liked by 47 people. There were a lot of other words in that post and people probably liked it for different reasons, their pity for my livelihood being among them. But nonetheless, 47 people are not liking a post that includes those words today no matter what they're prefaced with. The euphoria of the victory over Oregon made it very easy to ignore the mounting presence of conflicting evidence.

Now I would not consider myself an "Ollie apologist" (tangentially, if there anything worse than the people who post the 'I told you so' threads after a game like that?), but my angst with him - or at least that which I expressed - dates back about a year. I certainly wasn't the first to lose patience with him and one poster in particular seemed to sense that things were awry long before anyone, but I was also surprised at the resistance I got to the assertion that he did a really bad job with last years team. I've been in a weird place where I've simultaneously been arguing against his performance and for his long term viability, and at a time like this, I'm certainly not looking for credit. I've hedged my bets enough where I won't look like the biggest idiot here but probably won't be making a living as a gambler either.

But as I said in another thread yesterday, it's OK to admit to being really confused. That doesn't mean you're confused about what you saw in the last game or the last season or the last three seasons, it just means that they confuse your ability to predict the future. Trust me I would know, as I was ready to anoint him as the greatest coach to ever live a few years ago. And if we were confused eighteen months ago, when hardly anybody objected to his extension, then what is to prohibit us from being confused again?

The idea that we can't predict the future is obvious. The idea that recency bias might be invading our ability to assess the situation might not be. It's why the anti-Ollie sentiment seemed to grow tamer and tamer as the off-season progressed until it had just about sputtered out by halftime of the Michigan State game. It's why the prevailing narrative following the Michigan State game - and I actually argued post game that people were giving the team too much credit - was that we were heading in the right direction.

My ultimate point, then, is that our opinions on these things don't derive from conviction, they derive from the fear that we are somehow being duped, that all of these games and possessions warrant an omniscient narration that enlightens us, retroactively, to all of the warning signs. Nobody wants to think that these games are merely limited samples of data that progressively and in a very linear way enlighten us to the truth. Otherwise, the totality of an entire career - and the inherent worth of our players - wouldn't have swayed so dramatically with literally one game. That's what happens when a particular subject matters to us. Our conviction is not rooted in the opinion itself, our conviction is rooted in the emotion. On this topic, a topic that matters to all of us, our opinions resonate strongly not from a lack of evidence, but from the presence of competing evidence. That's why one game and seven KenPom slots represent the difference between Kevin Ollie taking this program forward and not - because we are really confused. One game absolutely lends credibility to the (building) idea that he should be out, it just shouldn't be the singular pivot point from which the degree of separation is formed. It only seems that way because we're at the line that at some point has to become binary.

If nothing else, pay attention not to what the narrative is, but to how much it changes, how fast. See how fast a CBI bound team with a sunken coach becomes a tournament team. See how fast a win over Syracuse takes this from "hopeless" to something else. See how the win over Oregon becomes a resume builder again, how Michigan State becomes the best team in the county that beat UNC more thoroughly than us, how those poor kids had to play a consolation game 3,000 miles from home after emptying the tank to beat Oregon and MSU and of course they had nothing less. Nobody will make those excuses faster than us. Nobody. Nobody will reduce this disaster of epic proportions to "three bad halves" faster than us IF WE NEED TO.

We're a team that went from 69 to 65 to 72. We might be at 55 in two weeks or we might be at 94. I have no damn idea.

Arkansas didn’t have to fly to Oregon? I agree beating Syracuse gives us a life again, but have you seen their front line? Thy’re tall, long, get rebounds and putbacks.

 

[NielsisGood]

If I could give one piece of advice to people trying to give advice it would be that brevity is your friend.

What he meant to say was ‘hey, let’s see how the next week plays out.’

Was not disappointed in the length of the OP considering who the poster is.