Billboy1 Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 Sounds like he's more confused than the players. Is there a plan? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old guy Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 Oh, I do not know if he is confused or if he is just giving information for public consumption. I do not think the PD is the proper place to air your dirty laundry, and actions should speak louder than words. We will see what he does after the NCAA tournament is over. I am very interested in seeing if there are transfers or assistant coach changes, and I am equally interested in seeing who will depart and who the replacements will be, that is, assuming there will be some personnel changes at the end of this season. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DoctorB Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 Since it is so confusing to you, allow me to help: Yes, a plan exists. Minutes are earned. There was much inconsistency, especially among freshmen but also, and more disturbingly, among upperclassmen. The coach reduced the number of new schemes, since the team had trouble being consistent with simpler schemes. All things being equal, the freshmen got the minutes. Help-side defense and turnovers were the major culprit (duh!). So please, guys: help on defense and do not turn the ball over. All of it makes sense to me. some of the complaining on here stems from the turncoat nature of fandom: it's as if the many awards for coach of the year, not to mention decades of experience, simply dissolve into thin air; so impatient people overthink what is actually happening ("Crews has no plan, Crews is more confused than the players"). Read the book BLINK and you will see that, given the years of experience, Crews has forgotten much more about coaching basketball than a dozen people on here have ever learned, and that in a "blink" of an eye he is able to discern effort, learning, motivation, and so forth, among a group like this. And Old Guy is right: no dirty laundry in public, and I respect that. The knucklehead stuff will work itself out soon enough, and the guys who end up leaving will dramatically alter the team chemistry as well--mainly for the good, I suspect. signed, patient believer in the coach--and his system ( which worked just fine in recent history) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slufan13 Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 Put me in the group that gives both the players and coaches equal fault. I can say for a fact that the players were affected and really struggled with the quick "yank" and constantly changing lineups/rotations. I also think it's clear that the players continually made the sames mistakes. And I'm sure it happened in practice too. I do think we would have been better off just giving the guys more consistent minutes and letting them work through mistakes. I'm not talking about total game minutes, but stretches of minutes in a game. So basically no quick yank and then throw a lineup out there that doesn't look like it has a chance in hell to work. Crews is not the coach that won 2 coach of the year awards. He's been an average coach during his time. But coaches always get too much credit or too much blame depending on how the team is doing. You can fault him for not bringing in players that can/are willing to learn his system which is fair, but I think the issues with this team should be equally spread. Let's see what happens. If we make average improvement and the rest of the A10 does as well, we'll be battling it out for a bottom 4 A10 spot again. But as others have alluded to, we might have some addition by subtraction this offseason. We also have a couple guys in particular who are already putting extra hours in the gym. Get 5 or 6 guys to follow them similar to Kwamain, Jett, McCall, Conklin, etc and we have a chance to be decent or even good next year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brianstl Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 Starting to feel more and more like the end of the Sodie era. Fans turning on each other and losing the top spring target to Iowa. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slufan13 Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 I will add that the timing of this article seems weird. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billboy1 Posted March 17, 2015 Author Share Posted March 17, 2015 Doctor B- you bet your boots. This COY got those awards through not much of his coaching ability. Also, most of these young players did not show a lot of improvement. This has to do with fact and not the "turncoat nature of fandom." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kshoe Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 I will add that the timing of this article seems weird. Not to me. The world is focusing on college basketball yet there are no games to speak of for a few days. Why not have a mini season wrap-up article? The post can only write so many articles on the Cardinals every day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheeseman Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 I saw nothing wrong with the article and Crew's comments. He had to explain something or else people would really think him a dope. I thought it was interesting that he wanted to go to a zone but did not feel the kids could handle it. Given many have talked about us using a zone and thought it was as simple as turning on a light switch - seems to me that Crews did not think so. Anyway, the ball is in his court and it is up to him to right this ship - as always time will tell. By the way regardless of how much he knows about basketball or not you still have to be a teacher who can get your point across. I have known many very knowledgeable people in my time but they could not even come close to communicating that to others. My question about him always was could he recruit - I am still waiting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slufan13 Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 The post can only write so many articles on the Cardinals every day. I wouldn't challenge them on that Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Box and Won Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 Not to me. The world is focusing on college basketball yet there are no games to speak of for a few days. Why not have a mini season wrap-up article? The post can only write so many articles on the Cardinals every day. I heard Mark Reynolds had a nice, cleansing bowel movement this morning, so expect an article on that to displace the Crews article on STLToday within the hour. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slufan13 Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 My question is this: If there are so many things that we couldn't add to our team (zone, inbounds plays, etc) then what did we work on practice? Because I didn't see us look any better as a team as the season went on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brianstl Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 If the young players can't pick up on how to play zone defense during the season what does that say about the players we recruited? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taj79 Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 I'm with kshoe on this one in terms of "why now?" A down day in college basketball's most glorious moment(s). If we were playing, well, you know how that goes. But think about it ---------- not a single school to cover in all of Missouri or Illinois for this torunament. Missouir's five D1 schools (Mizzou, us, Mo State, UMKC, SEMO) all sitting at home and all 13 Illinois teams also taking a powder. Now that's amazing! (Shout out to Bay Area on that 13 factoid). This article reminds me of that old golf adage about practice and the driving range --- if you have a bad golf swing and you continually go to the range and reinforce it, what makes you think it will get any better results? Bad is bad. As for how that applies tothis team, I don't knowif its the coaching or the mental facultiesof our roster -- but like 13 I am inclined that blame can and should go to both places. The truth always lies somewhere in the middle. The next stage of this team is compartmentalized ---- weed out whatever you are going to weed out, replace that with what you can and what is available, and restart the process all over again this fall. This team now has a baseline. The only place to go is up. Evaluations and measurements can be taken with better analyicals avaiable, at least from comparison's sake. We can then look at the usual measuring poitns and go from there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pistol Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 Here's a link to the article, which somehow hasn't been added. Great job with the offseason thread starts, everybody. Anyway, I understand what Crews is trying to do, but how are guys supposed to play more consistently when every player's minutes are so inconsistent? It's at least somewhat a self-defeating strategy. I agree that the coaches and players share responsibility. I also remind everyone that Crews and his staff recruited most of these players, and that they have a responsibility to develop individual and collective abilities. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slu72 Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 Recall the UK team of 3 years ago, the team that lost to Robert Morris in the NIT. Supposedly Calipari did his usual fine job of restocking his cabinet of one and doners and their continued success was reassured. Despite all the talent that team was a disaster. The reason given was that team with all it's FR had no leader. Now, obviously, our FR can't be compared to UKs FR, but I think we may have suffered from the same problem this year. We should have looked to AM or AY to possibly be that guy but neither assumed that role. It helps a coach who's trying to get his message across to have a player or two in the locker room who reinforce the coach's lessons. Not saying this was the primary reason for this year's disaster, but it would have helped to have had a leader in the locker room. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moytoy12 Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 I can see the high-level plan and logically understand what Crews is saying about earning PT. However, Crews' inconsistency seems to be a major reason these kids didn't develop. Heck, look in the article, in one breath he says: “You have to earn things,” Crews said. “No one earned enough to do it consistently. If I say we’re going with these eight but they’re not consistently providing help-side defense or they’re turning the ball over, why keep doing that? You have to earn your minutes. We didn’t have enough consistency to earn minutes.” In the next, the author attributes the following to Crews: Crews said the one exception was junior guard Ash Yacoubou, who led the Billikens in minutes played. I actually think Ash will be a helluva player next year and he has loads of talent, but how can any objective observer identify AY as providing defensive help or maintaining control of the ball better than the next guy? How many times did AY pull a "milik" and go coast to coast only to miss or take an ill-advised shot outside the flow of the offense? If the plan was to sit guys for not giving proper effort, how in the hell did JM or TL ever see the court in the 2nd half of the season? I'd rather Crews play the walk-ons to prove a point. I suspect that AM and Crews had a falling out, but AM seemed to play more consistently than anyone on the team. We hung with VCU the first time thanks to AM. I never got the sense that AM dogged it on the court like JM or TL. I'm sorry, but I'm not 100% buying what Crews is selling here. He'll give one or two coach speak statements that puts blame on himself, but then he quickly turns on the kids. It's clear that the players and the staff both have a lot of fault for our issues this year, but Crews seems unwilling to be genuine about his role in this mess. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moytoy12 Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 My question is this: If there are so many things that we couldn't add to our team (zone, inbounds plays, etc) then what did we work on practice? Because I didn't see us look any better as a team as the season went on. Great question. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old guy Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 I heard Mark Reynolds had a nice, cleansing bowel movement this morning, so expect an article on that to displace the Crews article on STLToday within the hour. Must have been a hell of a BM if it made him change his name from the old Miles Reynolds to the new, after the cleansing BM, Mark Reynolds. A real life changing event, maybe even a Guiness book of records event? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
White Pelican Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 Must have been a hell of a BM if it made him change his name from the old Miles Reynolds to the new, after the cleansing BM, Mark Reynolds. A real life changing event, maybe even a Guiness book of records event? Sorry Old guy, but I think something flew right over your head again. Mark Reynolds is on the Cardinals and....oh, forget it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hsmith19 Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 Hopefully his bowel movements exceed his strikeout total this season. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
willie Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 If the young players can't pick up on how to play zone defense during the season what does that say about the players we recruited? I found the zone comment interesting. Duke had trouble guarding teams in the man to man so coach K starts playing some zone. I assumed Crews was philosophically opposed to playing zone but I guess not. When things aren't working don't you try something else? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slu72 fan Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 I thought we were improving until the last 5 or 6 games. The frosh hit the wall. They were asked to play more than anywhere thought prior to the season, including most on this board. The transition from high school to D-I, not just basketball but school, is huge, the kids died, physically and mentally. Add a lot of losses and you have the makings of an unhappy group. And that's what we got. This year was a perfect storm. Reasonable people knew it was going to be a challenging year. Losing GG and the sophs taking a long time to develop, TL unfortunately didn't, meant the frosh were forced to play. Look how much trouble we had in RM's first year and that was with 2 very good players able to compete every day.This group didn't have that luxury of Lisch or Liddell. How much better would this year have been if Kevin and Tommy played 32-35 minutes a game. Add a couple of pieces and this group can improve quickly. Taking the summer trip is always a big bonus. Add that to a summer of skill set improvement, added strength and a couple of good players and we'll be fine. Keep the faith!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SLU_Nick Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 A zone is not difficult to understand...my goodness. When you are 12 years old you learn how to play a zone in about an hour. These are D1 bball players... Is he really scared to install something when zero of our guards can say in front of their man. The man D wasn't working Jimmy... I am sorry but Crews needs to go. This program is a dumpster fire right now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cowboy Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 I can see the high-level plan and logically understand what Crews is saying about earning PT. However, Crews' inconsistency seems to be a major reason these kids didn't develop. Heck, look in the article, in one breath he says: “You have to earn things,” Crews said. “No one earned enough to do it consistently. If I say we’re going with these eight but they’re not consistently providing help-side defense or they’re turning the ball over, why keep doing that? You have to earn your minutes. We didn’t have enough consistency to earn minutes.” In the next, the author attributes the following to Crews: Crews said the one exception was junior guard Ash Yacoubou, who led the Billikens in minutes played. I actually think Ash will be a helluva player next year and he has loads of talent, but how can any objective observer identify AY as providing defensive help or maintaining control of the ball better than the next guy? How many times did AY pull a "milik" and go coast to coast only to miss or take an ill-advised shot outside the flow of the offense? If the plan was to sit guys for not giving proper effort, how in the hell did JM or TL ever see the court in the 2nd half of the season? I'd rather Crews play the walk-ons to prove a point. I suspect that AM and Crews had a falling out, but AM seemed to play more consistently than anyone on the team. We hung with VCU the first time thanks to AM. I never got the sense that AM dogged it on the court like JM or TL. I'm sorry, but I'm not 100% buying what Crews is selling here. He'll give one or two coach speak statements that puts blame on himself, but then he quickly turns on the kids. It's clear that the players and the staff both have a lot of fault for our issues this year, but Crews seems unwilling to be genuine about his role in this mess. -I agree with a bunch of what you are saying here -I like all of our players, they all showed things they could do but were not able to consistently bring those good things, how long until that consistency arrives? what factors helped drive the inconsistency? I know the knee-jerk is to say they were frosh, but other than DR I could not see any of them any better than they were in November, not a good sign -as to AY, his defense was not good from my seat and his turnover per 40 minutes is second highest on the team and he is getting this praise??? i don't get it -I would love to be fly on the wall when Crews and CMay have their end of season chat -I hope some answers to the many questions are found -the timing of the article makes perfect sense to me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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