Dr. V
PhD Student
Posts: 1539
Reg: 11-21-04
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03-05-18 04:21 PM - Post#250942
A coach is the most publicly visible representative of a team's performance and fortunes, and there are very few occupations in which a person's daily choices and decisions are as open to review, analysis and criticism as that of a coach. It is, thus, unsurprising that we fans tend to focus our frustrations on him/her when we're unhappy with how a season or even a single game may have turned out. But even though we often operate with fairly superficial information and limited knowledge, that doesn't stop us from leaping to all kinds of generalizations and conclusions about a coach's abilities or likelihood of success. And often those generalizations and conclusions are based on the unstated assumption that a coach is a puppeteer who, if only he really knew what he/she was doing, would have pulled the right strings to achieve success.
The other team for which I root and the other league that I follow are Michigan and the Big Ten. There were two examples from the Big Ten that are strongly suggestive of what actually influences success and failure. Last year Ohio St.'s coach half retired because of a health issue and was half pushed out. The team's record last year was 18-15 and OSU was not happy. This year the team improved significantly to 24-8 and was in first place in the league for much of the season. So the new coach was a genius, or at least better than the old coach, right? Not quite. OSU this year was led by a junior who was the Big Ten POY. He had missed all of last year with an injury.
Nebraska has had the same coach for 6 years. Last year the team won 12 games. This year it won 22! So the coach must have gotten much smarter over the summer, right? I presume that coaches, like any of us, learn things each year that we do something, but it's much more likely that the 10-game improvement had something to do with Nebraska getting two very good transfers, one of whom made first team all Big Ten.
So what happened with us and where are we? I believe that the most important factor in our case was bad luck with injuries and illnesses, but there was also one quite unexpected regression. We missed Kyle Castlin for half a season, and he didn't round into full playing shape until the end of the season. That was a huge loss b/c he was a senior, a good defender and a good rebounder. We lost Meisner for a while, earlier with an injury and then in the next to last game with the flu. We lost Killingsworth, who had started 14 games as a first year, for the entire season with some physical issue. And we lost C.J. Davis for the entire year also with some physical issue. What stood out for me was that both Killingsworth and Davis had positive assist/TO rates last year: Killingsworth had 26 assists to 16 TOs and Davis had 34 assists to 24 TOs. They also had pretty decent FG %s: Killingsworth shot 398% and Davis shot 444%.
On the team that we did have left we had a PG who at times could do wonderful things but whose 3 point % dropped significantly from 382% to this year's 308%. This may have been due to his simply having had to do more, but whatever the reason, that was not an insignificant drop. And as various posters have noted during the season, the fact that both our 1 and our 2 were undersized was a liability, probably more on D than on O, but probably also on O. Smith is listed as 5'11" and Adlesh as 6'.
Aside from the injuries/illnesses referred to above, there were two unexpected developments from last year. One player improved notably and one regressed. Adlesh significantly improved his game overall and in particular his shooting. He put more arc on his jumper and raised his % from 402% to 442%, which is a very large jump, particularly since after the season got going it became clear to opponents that he was our top sharpshooter. The other surprise was Hickman. We needed him on the court because he has some size at 6'4" and often because he was the only guard on the court for us who could defend at least some of the bigger wings that our opponents had when we were playing our smaller guards and who also had the size and strength to drive to the basket and pick up some FTs. But, for whatever mysterious reason, his shooting % took a dive from last year's 398% to this year's 367%, and, perhaps even more perplexing, his three point % dropped from last year's 355% to this year's 295%. And, his assist to TO ratio was not helpful at 38 assists to 43 TOs. That's a very tough ratio for a guard, and even more so for a senior guard.
Our two 5s, Tape and Faulds, were basically playing for the first year, Faulds is literally a first year and this was Tape's first year of any significantly playing time as a second year. We missed not having wings with size who could shoot from beyond the arc. We were not deep to begin with, and then we had the injuries discussed, so we really missed Killingsworth's and Castlin's offense. Some of other players simply didn't demonstrate that they could generate any offense at all. We started the season with a murderous away schedule, part of which was due to past years' home and home agreements.
None of this is to suggest that we couldn't or shouldn't have performed better in some games, but as to the question whether we had quite a bit of talent and underperformed or whether we were quite thin and over performed so as to be close in many or most games, and to win a few against teams with more talent, I am in the latter camp.
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