Mathis to Rutgers

[Mr. French]

Since you have no substantive rebuttal just a personal attack, I take that as a compliment. Thanks Mr. French Kiss.

No substance is needed to refute the idea that a head coach during a season where the high level D-1 basketball program won a national championship had absolutely nothing to do with the winning except letting his players play.

That idea is so completely insane the only substance needed in my reply is "you clearly know very little about basketball if you think that."

Btw, that's nowhere near a personal attack. You're on a basketball message board discussing basketball in an illogical way. That indicates you don't have much knowledge in the topic, it's not in any way a personal attack.

So even that response was nonsensical.

Give me something to respond to with some substance, and I bet I do.

 

[champs99and04]

Ok who oversaw the recruitment of Shabazz, Giffey, Boatright and Daniels? Who oversaw their development once they came to Storrs? Who sat right behind the bench the whole time during the 2014 NCAA tournament? Duh

Fast forward to 2017, who fired his best assistant coach, who had three promising big men leave the program almost all at once, plus a decommit? Who of late cannot recruit for sh. .t?

This is some amazing revisionist history. If you had asked the board how much Shabazz, Boat, Giffey, and Daniels had "developed" the year before Ollie took over, they'd have been Luke-warm at best.

 

[champs99and04]

From all I have heard from my sources the staff definitely believes there was some negative, dirty recruiting in the final days from the RU staff...Also hearing that our staff is not completely giving up on Mathis until he signs is LOI, because they think he may flip back to UConn. Don't shoot the messenger, just passing on what I've heard.

I buy this. I think there's a 1000% chance he flips back to UConn if we have a good season and Rutgers continues to be Rutgers.

Vital is legit, but he's not the reason Mathis backed out. They would play together.

 

[Tenspro2002]

No substance is needed to refute the idea that a head coach during a season where the high level D-1 basketball program won a national championship had absolutely nothing to do with the winning except letting his players play.

That idea is so completely insane the only substance needed in my reply is "you clearly know very little about basketball if you think that."

Btw, that's nowhere near a personal attack. You're on a basketball message board discussing basketball in an illogical way. That indicates you don't have much knowledge in the topic, it's not in any way a personal attack.

So even that response was nonsensical.

Give me something to respond to with some substance, and I bet I do.

KO deserves credit for developing those players and their cohesion as a team. But coaching college basketball is more than that. It's a multi-step process of:

1) Identifying and luring players with the right mix of skills, work ethic, toughness, etc.
2) Developing those players as individuals and as a team
3) Correctly implementing those players in game situations

In parts of 2013 and 2014, KO succeeded at #2 and #3 spectacularly, most notably in the 2014 NCAA Tournament. But JC was responsible for step #1 for that cycle.

Since then, KO has a mediocre-to-bad track record with #1 (albeit with some restrictions that were JC's fault):
- He's usually gotten his #1 guard target (e.g. Adams) and hit on a few grad transfers and lower-rated guys (e.g. Vital), but...
- Several high-profile recruiting misses
- Daniel Hamilton, arguably his signature recruit, was lacking in intangibles and desire to be here
- Numerous transfers out of the program and a few high-profile de-commits

He's had mixed success at #2:
- Guards have generally developed (e.g. Boat as a senior was very impressive, Adams is coming along, but Purvis never improved outside of FTs), but...
- Bigs development has been awful (Facey too little too late, Brimah only minor improvement, Enoch)

And inconsistent results at #3:
- Team defense has generally been strong, e.g. 2016
- But offense has generally been awful
- Over-utilizing Brimah on offense (exacerbated by failures at #2)
- Using Gibbs instead of Adams as primary ballhandler

Basically, KO has never demonstrated an ability to succeed at an entire team-building cycle. He may learn and improve as he goes along, but it needs to happen faster than the rate at which he's driving the program into the ground.

 

[Mr. French]

KO deserves credit for developing those players and their cohesion as a team. But coaching college basketball is more than that. It's a multi-step process of:

1) Identifying and luring players with the right mix of skills, work ethic, toughness, etc.
2) Developing those players as individuals and as a team
3) Correctly implementing those players in game situations

In parts of 2013 and 2014, KO succeeded at #2 and #3 spectacularly, most notably in the 2014 NCAA Tournament. But JC was responsible for step #1 for that cycle.

Since then, KO has a mediocre-to-bad track record with #1 (albeit with some restrictions that were JC's fault):
- He's usually gotten his #1 guard target (e.g. Adams) and hit on a few grad transfers and lower-rated guys (e.g. Vital), but...
- Several high-profile recruiting misses
- Daniel Hamilton, arguably his signature recruit, was lacking in intangibles and desire to be here
- Numerous transfers out of the program and a few high-profile de-commits

He's had mixed success at #2:
- Guards have generally developed (e.g. Boat as a senior was very impressive, Adams is coming along, but Purvis never improved outside of FTs), but...
- Bigs development has been awful (Facey too little too late, Brimah only minor improvement, Enoch)

And inconsistent results at #3:
- Team defense has generally been strong, e.g. 2016
- But offense has generally been awful
- Over-utilizing Brimah on offense (exacerbated by failures at #2)
- Using Gibbs instead of Adams as primary ballhandler

Basically, KO has never demonstrated an ability to succeed at an entire team-building cycle. He may learn and improve as he goes along, but it needs to happen faster than the rate at which he's driving the program into the ground.

That's all fine.

I may even agree with a lot of it.

It has very little in the way of proving his statement correct, which is that Ollie had nothing to do with helping us win a title as the coach.

If you think it is EVEN POSSIBLE for a team at this level to win a national championship without the coach having some positive aspect on the team, you know very little about playing and coaching the sport.

That was my only point. He made a vastly over simplistic generalization that is not only those things, it's also wrong.

 

[Mr. French]

Ok who oversaw the recruitment of Shabazz, Giffey, Boatright and Daniels? Who oversaw their development once they came to Storrs? Who sat right behind the bench the whole time during the 2014 NCAA tournament? Duh

Fast forward to 2017, who fired his best assistant coach, who had three promising big men leave the program almost all at once, plus a decommit? Who of late cannot recruit for sh. .t?

Where are you proving your insane comment correct in this response?

Isn't that the goal? To respond to someone's critique of your point by proving it with evidence and facts?

You responded by mentioning nothing that indicates the coach in 2014 was useless to our ultimate result and no bearing on it one way or the other.

I'll make it even simpler: That's virtually impossible, at virtually any level of the sport.

So explain to me how it happened here in 2014, and I'll respond accordingly.

The guy has a laundry list of problems since then ... So explain how that proves your original point, please.

Ohhhhh, I missed the point where Calhoun sat behind the bench for the games, that means he's the sole reason for all good in those players, and Ollie is all bad. How did I miss that ?!?!

 

[huskyrob1]

Where are you proving your insane comment correct in this response?

Isn't that the goal? To respond to someone's critique of your point by proving it with evidence and facts?

You responded by mentioning nothing that indicates the coach in 2014 was useless to our ultimate result and no bearing on it one way or the other.

I'll make it even simpler: That's virtually impossible, at virtually any level of the sport.

So explain to me how it happened here in 2014, and I'll respond accordingly.

The guy has a laundry list of problems since then ... So explain how that proves your original point, please.

Ohhhhh, I missed the point where Calhoun sat behind the bench for the games, that means he's the sole reason for all good in those players, and Ollie is all bad. How did I miss that ?!?!

Mr French,

Where are you proving your insane comment correct in this response?

Isn't that the goal? To respond to someone's critique of your point by proving it with evidence and facts?

You responded by mentioning nothing that indicates the coach in 2014 was useless to our ultimate result and no bearing on it one way or the other.

I'll make it even simpler: That's virtually impossible, at virtually any level of the sport.

So explain to me how it happened here in 2014, and I'll respond accordingly.

The guy has a laundry list of problems since then ... So explain how that proves your original point, please.

Ohhhhh, I missed the point where Calhoun sat behind the bench for the games, that means he's the sole reason for all good in those players, and Ollie is all bad. How did I miss that ?!?!

Quod est ultimum tempus posuit vos got

 

[upstater]

This is some amazing revisionist history. If you had asked the board how much Shabazz, Boat, Giffey, and Daniels had "developed" the year before Ollie took over, they'd have been Luke-warm at best.

I bet you can go back to pre-season 2013 and read his posts about Shabazz's lack of development. Or 2014 blasting Daniels midseason,

 

[Mr. French]

Mr French,


Quod est ultimum tempus posuit vos got

Cool, I like Latin.

Thanks for responding.