It’s about being rational.
It's not at all about being rational. It's about being completely illogical. If I say A is bad, the reply B was worse doesn't prove anything about A where B is irrelevant to A. Let's try, shall we?
The scungilli I had at Chez Mike last night, it was awful.
Oh yeah, well the scungilli I had at Mullino's last year was worse.
Therefore ... what? The scungilli I had last night was delicious? No. Both dishes could have been awful. Or both could have been delicious and neither of us know enough about food to judge.
But instead of logic we get rationality like "Anderson isn’t perfect...but he’s better than Mullin."
Muscular dytrophy isn't perfect ... but it's better than pancreatic cancer.
Pol Pot wasn't perfect ... but he was better than Stalin.
Tsunamis aren't perfect ... but they're better than sweet meteors of death.
Mullin went 1-17 his first year, I don’t recall reading how poorly coached the team was. Why? Not because they weren’t poorly coached but because it wasn’t a good roster. It makes sense to be patient b4 we began labeling him.
An interesting thought experiment would be Coach Home Run's many fans defending his performance without referencing his predecessor's failures. Personally I don't think you can or even care to.
Fast forward to Anderson’s first year, the roster is bad. However, I often only hear that our record is due to poor coaching. This man has a proven track record of success. I just would like to see how we perform with a improved roster before I throw out that label that Anderson is a bad coach. He may very well be, but I think once he gets his players in here we’ll like the results.
Yes, the roster is not particularly good. That it would have been better had the prior staff been retained is irrelevant, so I won't mention that. On the other hand, it was good enough to go up on Georgetown by 17 in the first half, which after a pep talk by Coach Home Run it was bad enough for them to get outscored by double digits in the second. Not to mention the other five games where they blew large or late leads. Fortunately for CHR he's not what his record says he is and whinging about half time adjustments are a thing of the past.
"This man"'s success is in the main front loaded. That is, he made the tournament six times in his first nine years and three times the following eight. That's the opposite of what should happen: you should get better as you get more experienced. Instead, as he moved up the coaching ranks his winning percentage shrank, and it shrank with every vertical move: it was highest at UAB and lowest at Arkansas. ( I will not mention that Chris Mullin's coaching record got better every year, because that would not be relevant.) That shrinkage suggests a flaw. (Do women know about shrinkage?) Moreover my observations of him jibe with the complaints of Arkansas fans, who were happy to see him go. His half court offense and defense stink; his system means that better players play less than they would otherwise; and seem to be a lackadaisical recruiter, which is I think because he's so enamored of his system that he thinks it's more important that the talent he gets.
I don't see this ending well. I just don't. Because this guy is nothing that any of his predecessors could have become. Even poor Norm Roberts.