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Message: [QUOTE="TeamFirst!, post: 4278732, member: 11538"] It is a total shame that some of the players may feel that it is a failure to end up #2. Making it to the final 4 twice in a row is a total victory for the sophomores for example. They had a fantastic year. Beat NC State AND Stanford on the way to the finals. They are fantastic in my book. My concern is that culturally we may not be able to recruit many of the players who will end up winning most of the time going forward. Let me be frank. A coach of color and a woman may well have a cultural advantage with a lot of the top women's players of today. Have you heard one of Staley's coaching sessions? It's like a black church with everyone interrupting constantly with amens and all sorts of interactivity. Her team is made up of a lot of Janiah Barker types. Constant banter and you don't see that in Geno's teams. It's like night and day. Can we relate to the top athletes any more if they culturally feel more comfortable in Dawn's environment? Is uconn too much of a pressure cooker? If you watch Staley coach it looks like a pressure cooker there as well but it's a matter of degrees. Maybe with Dawn it's just her rather than the entire media environment nationwide. I for one think Geno needs to find a way to lighten this up. Make the pressure cooker deflate. Spend a lot more time deflating expectations. It's going to hurt his program if he doesn't. He can still make the final 4 but he's going to struggle to win it all unless he finds a way to attract and retain the top basketball talents out there. And before you say "well we got 3 #1 prospects just recently", may I remind you we haven't won in 5 years now. The consensus number 1's are not always the real #1. The difference makers. The ones which can make plays against top competition. The ones that can play defense and rebound. For example, this past year South Carolina's recruiting wasn't rated at the top but the talent she recruited may well end up the best if you watched the Macdonald's all american game. I'm happy for the girls and congratulate them but I think Geno has his work cut out for him. To a point where I wonder if maybe even a coaching change should happen in the next few years. We need to relate to the modern player. What worked even 20 years ago probably is not going to keep working forever. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach