To the people who say this is not about coaching | Page 2 | The Boneyard

To the people who say this is not about coaching

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UC990411 said:
Probably the best post in 4 years. Instead of looking at the facts, as you've done, people continue to defend Ollie. He can't coach.

Whoever said in 2012 that they would have signed up for this must have been a Providence fan.
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I'll take being 2 years removed from a NC.
 
uconngb said:
It absolutely is about coaching. Like it or not, the coaching staff is responsible for everything this program does.

Whose fault is it that Gibbs has been playing out of position and being asked to do things he is CLEARLY incapable of doing?
Whose fault is it that the same stupid decision making keeps happening over and over with no repurcussions?
Whose fault is it that game in and game out substitution patterns feel like they're being made after referencing the Magic 8 Ball?
Whose fault is it that lack of hustle and lack of energy are accepted instead of punished?
Whose fault is it that we haven't got ONE call all year while the refs keep running us over, backing up, and running us over again?
Whose fault is it that we have more shot clock violations this year than probably in the last 1o combined?

I'm not naive enough to not see that Purvis' inability to make a layup and Hamilton's lackadaisical D is on the players. But a coaching staff has the ability to create a situation where the sum of the parts are greater than the whole in many, many ways. In this case, while we definitely have deficiencies that are difficult to hide (neither Kemba nor Shabazz are walking through that door anytime soon), there is talent that if utilized properly would have us in much better position. I could deal with last year, we were coming off the loss of one of the two great individual performers in the history of UConn basketball. I CAN'T accept this year though....this team has not improved at all over the course of the year, and we are once again going to be a non-factor deep into March.

There is no escaping the cross we have to bear with this lousy conference. But I repeat what others have said, and I've said for the last few years....if this conference is so God-awful, why aren't we dominating it?? The next two years will decide whether we continue to be relevant, or go the way of St. John's. Has to start with the head man on down.

Whoever said you'd take this back in 2012....I guarantee you wouldn't have taken getting swept by Temple, Cincinnati and losing to Houston at home with our NCAA hopes on the line. I just don't see the energy, the passion.

And saying to the media "we need to get tougher".....that don't cut it either. I'd like to hear one story about having a hard practice after a lousy game like Calhoun used to do. Or someone getting in a fight at practice. Something that shows this team has a pulse. Certainly didn't see that today. We were having our way, got punched in the face, and then basically laid down. That's unacceptable if you ask me, and I'm far from an entitled UConn fan....I started following them in the mid-1970s.
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Jalen Adams yelled at someone in the locker room, if that counts.
 
People have a right to their opinion but the view that this teams lack of success is due to bad coaching is really nonsense. Yes, you can complain that Ollie hasn't done a good of enough job in recruiting. The talent level of this team is not high enough to make us a top 25 team. The lack of talent at the guard position, no real depth at any position, and a lack of a powerful inside player makes this team VERY average. People have short memories but Jim Calhoun had some teams that no matter what he did that team wasn't going anywhere. All of Jim's yelling and shoveling players in and out of games didn't overcome the talent issue. Donyell Marshall's first year (1993), the 2001 team and Kemba Walker's second year (2010) are teams that come to mind. Lets hope that next year's recruiting class is as good as advertised, otherwise there are going to be a lot of unhappy UConn fans.
 
upstater said:
You didn't watch the game. He pulled him less than 30 seconds into the 2nd half.
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WOW I said he pulled him out for a few minutes. And yeah I did watch the game twice on my dvr including a lot on slow motion because I couldnt believe how bad Hamilton played on defense the whole game and he played a majority of the second half inspite of the horrific lack of effort on defense. Jogging up the court, celebrating and chit chatting with the bench after he made a basket and despite his man making 3 after 3 being unguarded he still didn't feel the need to play him closer. Yeah KO took him out for a few minutes and put him back in and nothing changed.
upstater said:
You didn't watch the g.
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CTBballfan243 said:
It rarely is about the X's and O's, It's about the Jimmy's and the Joe's. It always comes down to talent on the floor. At the end of the day, gotta be able to make shots!!!!!
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So you think this team would have the exact same record overall, be 0-4 against Temple/Cincy, lack of any consistency to player rotations, players being given almost infinite leash to continue making the same mistakes over and over again, being steamrolled by refs, etc. If Calhoun were coaching this team? If you switched Calhoun and Calipari does Cal win 3 titles at UConn to Calhoun winning 1 in spite of having the #1 recruiting class most years?

I'm not saying this to try and hold KO to Calhoun standards right now, but nobody can watch this team throughout the season and think that KO has done anything but a terrible job this year. Gibbs hasn't been anything close to what he thought he would be, but you wouldn't know that by the way KO handles him. Maybe this team isn't talented enough to be a classic UConn team, but we also shouldn't be 20-9 and in 6th place in the AAC.
 
I think JC would eek out a few more wins on fire and brimstone alone but we'd still have significant structural deficiencies that would keep us from going the distance.
 
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PcketknfNiels said:
So you think this team would have the exact same record overall, be 0-4 against Temple/Cincy, lack of any consistency to player rotations, players being given almost infinite leash to continue making the same mistakes over and over again, being steamrolled by refs, etc. If Calhoun were coaching this team? If you switched Calhoun and Calipari does Cal win 3 titles at UConn to Calhoun winning 1 in spite of having the #1 recruiting class most years?

I'm not saying this to try and hold KO to Calhoun standards right now, but nobody can watch this team throughout the season and think that KO has done anything but a terrible job this year. Gibbs hasn't been anything close to what he thought he would be, but you wouldn't know that by the way KO handles him. Maybe this team isn't talented enough to be a classic UConn team, but we also shouldn't be 20-9 and in 6th place in the AAC.
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I don't think JC's style of coaching, the yelling, screaming, swearing, would work with today's student athlete. I don't have a problem with JC's style, but today's AAU players would struggle with his style. So no, I don't believe JC would have a better record coaching this team than Ollie.
 
There are a number of posters (myself included) who have probably been over the top and bit**y with their criticism of the coaching staff.

But there are also a number of posters who releatedly ridicule and belittle said posters without ever making a single counter argument as to why the coaching staff has done a good job this year and or isn't to blame.

I'm still waiting to hear someone explain to me and list a few reasons as to what exactly the coaching staff has done well.

I can list a number of examples of their failures: slow starts, giving up huge runs every game, lack of player development, failure to eliminate repeated simple mistakes, horrendous performance after timeouts (countless shot clock violations), horrendous end of game performance, horrendous performance on in bounds plays (have We scored one point off one yet?).

So here is your chance for those posters who constantly ridicule these posts. Explain to me how the coaching staff isn't to blame for This team being in 6th place in the American given the talent we have and considering the level of opposition we've played,
 
[QUOTE="uconngb, post: 1597767, member: 1708"

I CAN'T accept this year...[/QUOTE]

What exactly does this mean? You want your money back? You will stop being a fan? Random self-righteousness? And "the cross we have to bear"?

Really dramatic, Look. They are a team. Everyone is to blame including Ollie. They are struggling. But it is not like anyone is doing it to spite you. They feel worse than we do.
 
I don't understand all the barbs thrown at Ollie. He doesn't have the players yet to be the team he wants. Miller and Gibbs are transfers, Brimah and Facey along with Calhoun are from JC and Purvis is a 2nd year transfer. Hamilton and Adams are his only recruits as of now of any note. Next year will be more to his liking as he has a nice group of players coming in. the freshman won't knock our socks off, but they should improve as the year goes on. we have been held back from those sanctions and are just now making a comeback from it. I am confident that we will be a very competitive team next year. this year has been filled with stop gaps and we are frustrated with a ridiculous high ranking at the start of the year....18???
 
Huskygamble19 said:
I don't understand all the barbs thrown at Ollie. He doesn't have the players yet to be the team he wants. Miller and Gibbs are transfers, Brimah and Facey along with Calhoun are from JC and Purvis is a 2nd year transfer. Hamilton and Adams are his only recruits as of now of any note. Next year will be more to his liking as he has a nice group of players coming in. the freshman won't knock our socks off, but they should improve as the year goes on. we have been held back from those sanctions and are just now making a comeback from it. I am confident that we will be a very competitive team next year. this year has been filled with stop gaps and we are frustrated with a ridiculous high ranking at the start of the year....18???
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Interestingly enough most posters thought UConn was under ranked. It would be interesting to see how many of those injustice collectors
who lay the blame on Ollie for every failure were among those who had UConn ranked high.
 
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Marty Jackson said:
Wasn't that the year Dyson was hurt? I think the following year they missed the tourney.
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So with Dyson they don't make the Final Four, despite having had only 1 loss with him in the lineup?
 
CTBballfan243 said:
I don't think JC's style of coaching, the yelling, screaming, swearing, would work with today's student athlete. I don't have a problem with JC's style, but today's AAU players would struggle with his style. So no, I don't believe JC would have a better record coaching this team than Ollie.
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So you don't think AAU existed until 2013 then? Cal makes a living yelling at his guys, how does that work for him in today's era and wouldn't work for Calhoun?
 
CTMike said:
I think JC would eek out a few more wins on fire and brimstone alone but we'd still have significant structural deficiencies that would keep us from going the distance.
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I don't think so either, but if we were say 24-5 and had won some of those Maryland/Cuse/Gonzaga type games or at least gone 3-1 in the Temple/Cincy games I'm sure sentiment about this team would be totally different than it is now.
 
What I don't understand about these threads is that they don't actualy seem to have anything to do with the games being played. Do I understand some of the second guessing being done to KO? Of course I do. Do I think he's going to go home at the end of the season and think this was a great year for him? Of course not.

But the after the fact second guessing can't change two fundamental realities about this team. First, most of our losses come down to not having a single player who is "the guy" on the last possession, notwithstanding that on paper we should have a bunch of those guys. And no, playing Jalen Adams 32 minutes a game doesn' change that until he can hit a jump shot consistently.

And second, and more importantly as to Sunday's loss, the single reason we lost that game is that no one cared about playing transition defense. Since that was an "out of the blue" problem, that has nothing to do with the coaching unless you're dumb enough to think the coaches weren't pointing out the obvious during breaks. We lost Sunday because the roster didn't care enough about winning. And while Calhoun was a master at getting the most out of his player, you can't get wine out of water and comparing any other coach to Calhoun is just going to make every other coach a failure.
 
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Its amazing to me that he took an overmatched Uconn team to the finals against the great UK with how many NBA guys on the roster? And he at the time appeared to have out coached Cal and beat better talent on the UK squad. Everyone was afraid we'd be losing KO to the OKC or some other NBA team because he was in such high demand. Fast forward and now he's a horrible in game coach and i get the feeling that a bunch of Uconn fans want him gone!! All i can do is sit back and laugh.... If KO is ran out of town, i cant wait to see who is supposed to turn everything around and get us winning national championship yearly.
 
Huskygamble19 said:
I don't understand all the barbs thrown at Ollie. He doesn't have the players yet to be the team he wants. Miller and Gibbs are transfers, Brimah and Facey along with Calhoun are from JC and Purvis is a 2nd year transfer. Hamilton and Adams are his only recruits as of now of any note. Next year will be more to his liking as he has a nice group of players coming in. the freshman won't knock our socks off, but they should improve as the year goes on. we have been held back from those sanctions and are just now making a comeback from it. I am confident that we will be a very competitive team next year. this year has been filled with stop gaps and we are frustrated with a ridiculous high ranking at the start of the year....18???
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Not that this changes your overall argument, but Brimah was an Ollie recruit. He committed in January 2013 and JC wasn't recruiting him when he retired. Ollie said he liked Brimah's motor and potential. This one was all Ollie.

http://www.nhregister.com/general-news/20130114/amida-brimah-commits-to-uconn-2

Facey is in the same class but committed to UConn before JC retired.
 
businesslawyer said:
What I don't understand about these threads is that they don't actualy seem to have anything to do with the games being played. Do I understand some of the second guessing being done to KO? Of course I do. Do I think he's going to go home at the end of the season and think this was a great year for him? Of course not.

But the after the fact second guessing can't change two fundamental realities about this team. First, most of our losses come down to not having a single player who is "the guy" on the last possession, notwithstanding that on paper we should have a bunch of those guys. And no, playing Jalen Adams 32 minutes a game doesn' change that until he can hit a jump shot consistently.

And second, and more importantly as to Sunday's loss, the single reason we lost that game is that no one cared about playing transition defense. Since that was an "out of the blue" problem, that has nothing to do with the coaching unless you're dumb enough to think the coaches weren't pointing out the obvious during breaks. We lost Sunday because the roster didn't care enough about winning. And while Calhoun was a master at getting the most out of his player, you can't get wine out of water and comparing any other coach to Calhoun is just going to make every other coach a failure.
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The team didn't feel like playing transition defense..... because NO ONE CARED,really. Listen to you guys, WHO'S IN CHARGE? Based on what your saying KO has lost this team. Obviously they are not listening to him. They seem to be able to do whatever they want with no fear of repercussions. Whether it's a lack of discipline or it's just his coaching style , laid back, not an athoritarian figure head, religious ( as in no swearing), IT'S NOT WORKING. If and thats a big if they are in fact being told what to do during time outs and doing something completely different on the court, they sure as hell are not being held accountable. The lack of transition defense went on the entire second half. For someone who deals with businesses for a living (I own a few)," stuff" rolls down hill, it starts at the top. You guys are blaming the players ( blame them for missed shots or turnovers that's justified) but not this, this is on the coach. THANKS
 
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PcketknfNiels said:
So you don't think AAU existed until 2013 then? Cal makes a living yelling at his guys, how does that work for him in today's era and wouldn't work for Calhoun?
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Pitino is the same. Huggie. Cronin. Even K.
 
HooperScooper said:
Not that this changes your overall argument, but Brimah was an Ollie recruit. He committed in January 2013 and JC wasn't recruiting him when he retired. Ollie said he liked Brimah's motor and potential. This one was all Ollie.

http://www.nhregister.com/general-news/20130114/amida-brimah-commits-to-uconn-2

Facey is in the same class but committed to UConn before JC retired.
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At least Brimah turned out better than Okwandu Deng and Majok. Hopefully no one things Brimah was a bust or dud recruit.
 
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Coaches are only as good as the players performance on the floor. KO has no control over Gibbs/Purvis going 0-4 from 3 the last 5 mins. KO can only tell them to get back on D so many times. Its up to the players to make the plays. Its not a coincidence that all great coaches happen to also have great players when their teams are dominate.
 
No question the Houston game was the absolute low point of the season. UConn lost because they were outhustled and Houston wanted to win the game more. It may be the first time I've seen UConn's defense completely collapsed. While UConn missed some open 3s, it was the transition defense and poor defensive hustle which doomed us. For the 1st time this year UConn lost the game due to defense.

If you want to evaluate KO's coaching ability let watch how UConn comes out against SMU. Can KO get UConn re-focused? Will they play hard for him? Do they understand their lack of effort against Houston was the problem?

SMU has now become a much more important game for UConn. UConn has been running adds in Dallas hyping the game. This is SMU's final home game, it is senior night, and the end of SMU's season. For SMU the UConn game is their NCAA tournament. No doubt the arena will be rocking and SMU will be hungry to avenge their loss in Connecticut.

Which UConn team shows up will say a lot about KO's ability to inspire. I expect a much better UConn effort on Thursday. No judgment should be passed on a team or a coach until the season is over.
 
intlzncster said:
At least Brimah turned out better than Okwandu Deng and Majok. Hopefully no one things Brimah was a bust or dud recruit.
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Majok didn't get chance would have been a lot better if given the same time to make it happen.

Brimah is fine if you surround him with the right mix of players. But if mentally the players around him are his equal you kind of see what can happen.
 
Lefty2one said:
Brimah was a 3-star prospect, he has been much better than we could have hoped for. Hell, have we had a more productive 3-star recruit in the last 20 years?
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I am sure Jake wasn't a 4 or 5 so there's one to start with. Hilton was mentioned above and that's 2.
 
mauconnfan said:
I am sure Jake wasn't a 4 or 5 so there's one to start with. Hilton was mentioned above and that's 2.
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That's the thing, there's just not many of them. I agree you have to surround him with smart quality players. But you could kinda say that about most posts, outside of the Anthony Davis's of the world, no?
 
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