This is Why He's Not Coaching

[cockhrnleghrn]

I think it started by trying to emulate Pat's formula for success, she was beating up on everyone and they all tried to copy what she was doing getting a stable of tall players, play hard man to man defense and rebound like crazy. TN generally was not a great shooting or passing team but they beat people up on the offensive boards and scored lots of put backs. That became the SEC style and not a lot of variety crept in until KY started their 40 minutes of dread. Pat succeeded because with few exceptions she out-recruited everybody else in the SEC and so had better talent.
Even now all these years later, it is still mostly a traditional post league with even the new coaches like Dawn basically running traditional offensives. Not sure what White will do at Vanderbilt yet, and LSU is a little different, but KY still stands out as an outsider in terms of style.

How many SEC Championships has Kentucky won in the last ten years?

 

[UcMiami]

How many SEC Championships has Kentucky won in the last ten years?

None of course, but they have been ranked and second or third in the SEC and successful in the NCAAs for most of the last decade. Not sure how good a coach Mitchell really is, but he has developed a style of play to suit his general lack of quality big players that has been very successful against the rest of the SEC.

And I would posit that playing against KY has been a benefit to the other SEC teams because they present different challenges than most of the rest of the league. One of the things that Geno used to talk about with the Big East was that because it was cobbled together from different leagues and kept pulling in new teams, playing the conference schedule exposed UConn to a wide variety of playing styles that prepared them for the NCAA better than had they all been clones of one another. I think that though has real validity - the more established P5 conferences all had a 'style' and when they played in the NCAAs they were suddenly faced with very different styles that they hadn't been exposed to and often struggled to adapt to. It is another reason that having a descent OOC can really help teams, and scheduling weak OOC can hurt.

 

[cockhrnleghrn]

None of course, but they have been ranked and second or third in the SEC and successful in the NCAAs for most of the last decade. Not sure how good a coach Mitchell really is, but he has developed a style of play to suit his general lack of quality big players that has been very successful against the rest of the SEC.

And I would posit that playing against KY has been a benefit to the other SEC teams because they present different challenges than most of the rest of the league. One of the things that Geno used to talk about with the Big East was that because it was cobbled together from different leagues and kept pulling in new teams, playing the conference schedule exposed UConn to a wide variety of playing styles that prepared them for the NCAA better than had they all been clones of one another. I think that though has real validity - the more established P5 conferences all had a 'style' and when they played in the NCAAs they were suddenly faced with very different styles that they hadn't been exposed to and often struggled to adapt to. It is another reason that having a descent OOC can really help teams, and scheduling weak OOC can hurt.

Playing a lot of different styles is helpful when you get to the NCAAT. It hurt us against Syracuse last season.