Now before I begin let me state that I understand that we only have 6 and a half players. I also understand that we are young and very small. Furthermore I fully understand we have the worst shooting team in the nation. With all that being said our offense is embarrassing. Now I know coach Lavin has to sign off on everything, but who exactly nominated Dunlap as some kind of genius? Norm Roberts offense was better than this! Now I understand the concept of limiting the opponents attempts in order for the team to try not to lose by 30. But the idea of running down the shot clock is to have movement and try and at least get off a good shot. Princeton used to run the clock down than get back door layups or threes off penetration. Even Norm's offense was designed to have his two"best players" Mase and Geno have the ball as the clock wound down. Under Dunlap whoever has the ball with 2 seconds left is shooting a really bad shot. We have to lead the nation in shot clock violations. So in short if my life depended on it I would have more faith in Geno or Mase firing away from three than have Stith trying to shoot over anyone taller than Peter Dinklage. I think instead of worrying about Lavin's health becoming a problem for recruiting, we should be more worried about our offense. If any kid watches us play they would certainly choose anyone else. In fact I am starting to get afraid we might lose the people we have. It is no coincidence that we played better in the 2nd half of the last two games when we scrapped the shot clock violation offense. I mean it is really basic. We have enough trouble scoring w/o letting the defense rest until there is 5 seconds left on the shot clock.
First of all before you all start your triads on Dunlap, understand that this year, just like last year, dunlap is the main x and o guy. so dont go off giving lav all the credit for last year when in fact dunlap deserves most of the on court credit from last year. lav deserves credit for putting together a top notch staff and for recruiting. by the way, dunlap won the D2 championship as a head coach before he arrived at stj.
as to your ideas about why we are struggling this year, i blame the players i dont blame dunlap. as someone who as been in practices and witnessed what dunlap is trying to teach, it is clear that all have the players havent bought into it. thats why nurideen transfered. these kids didnt even expect to be playing for dunlap they thought they would be playing for lav. on the court they are acting like young kids, who were the best players in their hs or prep school, and now they have to adjust to D1 play. these kids need to mature very quickly if theres any hope for stj this year. they need to start buying into their interim coaches philosophy, if not we will continue to see inconsistent play. frankly im surprised and pleased that we are 8-8 right now and 2-3 in the big east. this is actually better than where i expected us to be at this point, considering the circumstances. I just hope we can finish with winning half of our big east games this year, or at least somewhere close to 50%.