3star_recruit

Successful teams come in all shapes and sizes. The problem isn't the size of the guards. The problem is the collective skill set of Coach Ford's teams. You can press with a small team but you need ball hawks. We are in short supply. You can counter length with good passing. We're the worst passing team the conference. You can win on the road but your leaders need to be road warriors. We don't have that either. Even if Meadows would have been healthy all season, his career stats say he's not the 5-6 apg guy we need at the position. Dalger is an effort guy but he's not a ball hawk. Our underclassmen are probably our best defenders but they are our worst offensive players. Jimerson and Hargrove's performance in road games make it almost impossible for us to win against good teams in their building. This season is all about making a run in February when we have some winnable road games. That's all it's ever been about ever since Parker went down 4 games into the season. We have too many weaknesses in the roster that can't be masked against good teams. It's nice that Coach Ford is addressing these weaknesses with recent offers but damn it he should have done a better job of addressing them in the off season.

Gibson Jimerson Home: 43.8 FG% 44.0 3P% 20.4 PPG Away: 34.7 FG% 29.3 3P% 12.0 PPG Terrence Hargrove Home: 52.1 FG% 52.8 3P% 15.2 PPG Away: 47.3 FG% 20.0 3P% 9.9 PPG It's hard to win on the road when the splits for your leaders are that drastic. Something has to change.

We officially extended an offer to Brody Robinson after he played his most complete game of the year yesterday: 26 points, 11 assists and 4 steals in a blowout win over Dodge City. He shot 6/7 from three.

I get the impression that this is the closest Big Brad has been to being in shape his entire basketball career. He certainly wasn't at Georgetown. But the main issue is that he's an average defender at best. Getting him to a level we've grown accustomed to at the center position will be a long-term project. Hargrove never had a conditioning issue yet it took him several years just to become average on defense.

I wish I could talk hockey but I can't. I do know a little baseball. Big Brad is the basketball version of Ryan Klesko.

Best offensive big we've had in a long time. He's also the worst defensive big we've had in a long time. Conditioning will fix some of that.

The fact that we hung around all game with Parker on a minute restriction bodes well for this team going forward. I gave a best case scenario a couple of weeks back and I think we're right on track: QUALITY OF PLAY Early Jan: C+ (With a healthy Meadows and Hughes) Mid Jan: B- (With a 75% Parker in the lineup and a healthy Thames) Early Feb: B (With a 85% Parker in the lineup) Late Feb: B+ (With a 95% Parker in the lineup and the freshmen playing like sophomores)

Unfortunately their poor decision making was killing us at that stage of the game, on both sides of the ball. We didn't have an answer for Homes but at least TJ did enough to help cut into the deficit.

The guys managed to pull off option one tonight. We were nothing special but we did enough to hang around. That's the key to success going forward. We need to play passable defense to give Parker and Jimerson a chance to close out ball games. I understand why the coaching staff went with the senior down the stretch but Meadows decision-making the second half was disappointing. If he plays a little bit better this ball game goes down to the wire. Parker moved very well tonight. We may see the old Parker in 2 weeks rather than 4.

The college basketball environment changed drastically over the last 3 years. Some of the OGs decided to retire so they didn't have to deal with it. Some of the coaches who were leading top 25 teams before NIL are struggling to make the tournament now. If the BOT wants an established name all they have to do is wait a year. The list will just get longer. Any search firm that claims that they can pick a winner in this new environment is lying. It's the Wild Wild West out here.

I thought the point of this thread was to discuss a list of coaches that our conservative BOT would actually sign off on? Meanwhile back in reality, the coaches at Ohio St and Michigan are fighting for their jobs. Since they are not officially on the market yet I guess an Ahearn subreddit is the best we can do.

Play average defense and and shoot over 40% from three and we hang around until the end. Play our typical defense and this game is over by halftime.

Dayton is a consistent team that has been winning on defense and timely offense. Their first three conference opponents have not managed to break 62 points and the Flyers themselves have not scored over 72. We have been a consistently weak road team and poor defensively. If we could just manage to play average defense for one game, we can hang around.

Grant was an assistant coach at Florida for 10 years before taking his first head coaching job at VCU.

Hiring NBA assistants sounds good in theory. They know how to get to where the players want to go. And they've had some success as coaches already. So let's look at the real life examples over the past decade: Rex Walters, Dan Majerle, Mike Dunlap, Jerry Stackhouse, Juwan Howard. Why isn't the theory holding up in reality?

We can see that Mizzou 0-3 in conference. We were close to going 0-3 to start the conference as well. Why are the two teams struggling? Mizzou can't score (failed to break 70 in 2 of their first 3 games) and we can't stop anybody. At least we have the potential to offset poor defense with an injection of offense from a healthy Parker. Mizzou's roster is set. Sucks to be them.

We haven't offered yet but if he keeps playing like this I understand the interest. I just question whether he's an upgrade over Medley. Put Medley on a juco team where he's allowed to be a volume shooter and I'm sure he would put up numbers too. To upgrade the position, we'll have to land somebody from the portal.

Those are some impressive stats for a 5'10 guard. He plays like the mid-major version of Travis Ford. I will be curious to see where he ends up.

Exactly. And the coach he would replace -- in this example, Chris Holtmann -- would be a guy we would have a legitimate shot at.

The number of blue chippers on the Zags' roster has been cut in half since last year. Looks like they will have to be satisfied with being a perennial top 25 team rather than a perennial top 5 team.

If you're below .500 at a bluebood, the claws come out. UCLA has a NET ranking of 209 with blue chippers up and down the roster. Historically bad start to the season but Cronin has earned a mulligan for putting UCLA back on the map.

No doubt. There were also a lot of players on Majerus teams who could pass the ball, from small to big. They didn't just suddenly develop that skill when they got to SLU. It was reflected in their high school numbers. The only guy we have with good assist numbers before he got here is Medley. Majerus was basically doing the basketball equivalent of Moneyball player evaluations. Wise men reduce the amount of coaching that they have to do so they can laser focus on what's important.

Coach Majerus brought in a lot of players who were already fundamentally sound on offense. Note that players like Mitchell, Evans, Jett, Cassity and McCall also had had good defensive reputations. Majerus got on McCall's case because he took shortcuts on defense, not because he couldn't create turnovers. When you have a good defensive core then the job is turning those guys into a great defensive core. His teams didn't have to score that much because they routinely held the other team to under 65 points. That's one way of winning but it's not the only way. We see other programs roll out a Big Three, play good defense and go to the tournament all the time. That 23-8 team that was on a five game winning streak prior to COVID canceling the season was the closest we've seen to that ideal. Coach Ford has been trying to replicate that team ever since but hasn't been able to pull it off.

I keep it simple. Would we be averaging 80 points game with a healthy Parker and Big Brad in the lineup? Yes. Can we hit that number in February if Parker returns to health? Yes. Can we improve marginally on defense by then? Sure, because we're atrocious now. Do those two things and a run is inevitable.

We've never had a point guard who shoots 90% from the line. He and Jimerson are a problem for teams who need to foul at the end of the game.