What I find surprising is that it is not just the head coach that is the issue - I think Holly is a good 'manager' - it is the role she played successfully for Pat for years, but in a basketball sense is overmatched in knowledge and understanding, and I suspect doesn't 'see' what is important in a basketball sense. Geno and most good coaches can look at five minutes of game action and give a solid critique of all the players on the court, what they are doing well as a team, and where they need work, and what each players strengths and weaknesses are, and how to start correcting them. I think Holly looks at that same five minutes and needs to check the box score to figure out which team is better and which team rebounds better. And even with that, she could be a decent HC if she had good assistants who can see those things she can't and were empowered to make changes and coach the players. I think there are some pretty successful coaches who are better managers than coaches, but they recognize their own weaknesses and surround themselves with very talented and motivated assistants. And that is where I think Holly has really failed - I don't see any signs that any of the assistants is doing anything more than punching a clock an cashing their paycheck.
I was really surprised when leaving my theater career and going into a B to B service career, when we went to visit F500 companies and fairly high level managers were completely incompetent - private business is always touted as this efficient machine, but these folks would have been ejected from a theater business in seconds. And what was always interesting was that you could bet that the staff these incompetents had hired below them were even dimmer bulbs - they didn't want to be challenged from below in their little fiefdoms. I bring this little personal history up because that is the way I view the TN coaching staff. I don't see Holly as a good coach or teacher, and it just seems she has surrounded herself with assistants that are if anything worse, or who have lost any fire they had and are just playing out the string until they get their pension. As others note, the lack of appreciable development for the talent TN continues to get is glaring. Which assistant works with guards and can't teach Massingale or Simmons what a good shot looks like in four years, who worked with Graves who may have been the most talented player coming into TN of any of their bigs, and succeeds in extinguishing that talent. Those issues fall squarely on the assistants as well as on the HC.
I agree with --if she had good assistants who know the game and how to make "in game' corrections she'd be a great coach--but why would an assistant that good want to work with Holly?? She should have hired Kenny Brooks two years ago and offered him 200,000 per year and he'd have jumped--.
Any Head Coach worth his or her pay knows that ---the total responsibility for her/his team belongs to the HC--if the assistants don't do the job--that's on the HC--but that assumes the HC knows what to do.
Smart managers/coaches/ hire subordinates who know the job, are innovative, and intelligent--knowing they'll stay only for a short time--but you milk them while you can--and department/team looks great. Insecure managers--avoid them.
You look at a number of other programs and think the HC is somewhat limited, or that they win in spite of their HC, but those same programs that have success have a steady stream of high quality assistants cycling through - or better still find those assistants and make it comfortable for them to stay for longer stints.
