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- Aug 26, 2011
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Aside from Ollie's baffling decision to bench Adams for the second half (he may have had a good reason, I wasn't there), I did not come away from Thursday's game with much to complain about in regards to coaching. In fact, quite the opposite - this coaching staff doesn't get nearly enough credit for the job they do scouting and game-planning. Our streak of holding opponents to 40% or less from the field can be attributed in large part to the fact that our players are so well versed in knowing the tendencies of opposing players. They know where the primary relieve valves are, who they can leave open, how they can navigate a particular screen, when to double the post, etc. In my opinion, it's one of the best scouting staffs in the country (the 2014 tournament is as finely scouted and planned a stretch as you will find), and frankly, Temple took the shots we wanted them to take. Sometimes, a player that is not a good shooter hits a string of shots. That happened with Dingle. And sometimes, a really good player hits difficult shots against tough defense. That happened with DeCosey. To explicate anything incriminating about the coaching staff on the basis of those events is incorrect, IMO.
I'm not typically the type that is going to assign romantic meaning to the solitary events of a basketball game, but if you want the truth, I question whether a few of the guys on this team have enough dog in them. I wonder if when it's time to raid the village, break some glass and take prisoners if a couple of the guys on the team have second thoughts. Rodney Purvis has the physical gifts, the work ethic, and the character to be a great college basketball player. He seems like a great kid, a great representative of the University, and obviously he's a huge part of the team. But there are recurring moments of amazement with him in which he has trouble doing some of the things that any basketball player past the age of ten should not have trouble doing. I've literally never seen a player double-dribble, in that spot, completely unguarded. I've never seen a player miss so many open layups and I've never seen a player step out of bounds so many times. Amida Brimah and Phil Nolan and, to a lesser extent, Daniel Hamilton are hardly exonerated in that respect, either.
I'm under no delusions that I'm any sort of couch titan in comparison. Playing on national TV, with your future professional fate in the balance, cannot be easy. Road games amplify that X3 and when it's crunch-time I don't even know how some of these kids breathe. You look at the current roster, though, and you don't see Shabazz Napier, Ryan Boatright, or Kemba Walker. It isn't just the player you don't see, it's the personality, the spirit that they were indestructible. And that's OK. A lot of players don't have that, but that's also the type of player this program has been built on, and the only current player that seems to have that demeanor is a freshman.
I'm not typically the type that is going to assign romantic meaning to the solitary events of a basketball game, but if you want the truth, I question whether a few of the guys on this team have enough dog in them. I wonder if when it's time to raid the village, break some glass and take prisoners if a couple of the guys on the team have second thoughts. Rodney Purvis has the physical gifts, the work ethic, and the character to be a great college basketball player. He seems like a great kid, a great representative of the University, and obviously he's a huge part of the team. But there are recurring moments of amazement with him in which he has trouble doing some of the things that any basketball player past the age of ten should not have trouble doing. I've literally never seen a player double-dribble, in that spot, completely unguarded. I've never seen a player miss so many open layups and I've never seen a player step out of bounds so many times. Amida Brimah and Phil Nolan and, to a lesser extent, Daniel Hamilton are hardly exonerated in that respect, either.
I'm under no delusions that I'm any sort of couch titan in comparison. Playing on national TV, with your future professional fate in the balance, cannot be easy. Road games amplify that X3 and when it's crunch-time I don't even know how some of these kids breathe. You look at the current roster, though, and you don't see Shabazz Napier, Ryan Boatright, or Kemba Walker. It isn't just the player you don't see, it's the personality, the spirit that they were indestructible. And that's OK. A lot of players don't have that, but that's also the type of player this program has been built on, and the only current player that seems to have that demeanor is a freshman.
