I'll say it again. It's not the offense as much as it is the fact that we are still missing certain parts of the offense. The biggest think we are missing is a low post scorer. A guy like Gathers that Lavin was trying to land was supposed to be in that mold. Now we are also without Sanchez which compounds the issue. The other thing we don't have a shooters beside D'Angelo. One last thing is that we haven't had Branch ie. a PG until now. He will be good at the PG spot, but is just getting his feet wet.
1) new PG
2). Very young team with limited shooters
3) no low-post scoring threat
All three things are surefire recipe for stalled offense. Why is there not as much motion in the offense as we'd like? Simple. Everybody besides D'Angelo is afraid to shoot. Nobody wants to come off a screen and shoot because they know they'll have to if the ball comes to them. Jakarr doesn't mind shooting but he has become very hesitant and lost his mojo a bit.
I think people complicate the issues. Lavin had success with this offense with Norm's guys because we had s lot of upperclassmen but we also had guys that could do the things we are missing now. It took adding JC players like hardy and brownlee to do it. We had several guys like hardy, Horne, brownlee and DJ who could hit shots and developed their game over 4 years. We could play hi-low with Burrell, Evans and Brownlee.
We might not have had as much overall talent but we had a few years of experience under our belts as well as added players to the mix like Lavin will undoubtedly do over next 2 years. Need our personnel to get experience over the next few and add some shooters and low post guys.
It's more fun to just say Lavin can't coach and is an idiot with no plan.
If we have no post players, and no shooters .. What does that tell you about the recruiting job coach did?
Those aren't missing pieces..., that's a huge chunk of your team!
A third wr in football might be a missing piece, but literally no one who can play with their back to the basket, or score (besides Dangelo) .... Perimeter scorers and post players are basically the whole freaking team in basketball, how do we have none?
I agree with you that all our problems aren't strategic coaching decisions, that's being overblown. Do I like our defense? No. and I haven't made up my mine on the offense, I could take it or leave it at this point. But I'll agree the reason were not winning is not all coaching. Certainly not.
But I can't be giving coach a pat on the back right now for 2 reason:
1) some of our troubles are coaching related. Not playing Branch at the end of Villanova, not having a better play than Phil dribbling at the end of Nova, or Dangelos isolation 3 at the end of Rutgers? Those are coaching decisions. Bad ones in my mind.
And 2) he recruited these guys and they are woefully deficient in some areas of the game. Mcn you say we're a few pieces short, that makes it sound like we need supplemental pieces, but only 5 guys can play at a time. If we're missing scoring and post play than that means we need at least 2 starters who currently aren't here.
Missing 2/5s of a team is shitty composition of a team.
Remember Noah's ark? How we were going to get two of everything? Where's that second center? Where's that second point guard? Is there a real second power forward behind Jakarr? How come none of our shooting guards or forwards can score?
You can't argue that coach did a great job assembling this team AND has done a good job coaching them. If that we're the case we'd be winning. I lean more towards criticizing how this team was assembled. I think the coaching is being overrated (although there clearly are things an observer could rationally criticize).
While I agree with you that the team is not ideally assembled right now, I think the difference between us is that I'm not killing coach for it because I understand why we're in this situation. I think it's unreasonable to have expected Lavin to have kick-ass team in year 2. And If you're going to bring up quotes from Lavin, how about the one where he said this was going to be a 3-4 year process?
Sure, you can nit-pick calls here and there from each loss, but you can literally do that with any team who has lost a game in college basketball this year. "If [insert coach's name here] had done this we woulda won that game." I too question decisions but I think I would do that with any coach.
You are absolutely right that you can point to in-game decisions gone wrong for every coach, and some of it is Monday morning quarterbacking for sure. And like I've said, I'm not trying to kill coach Lavin, his coaching hasn't been nearly as bad as some make it out to be. However, I don't think you can let coach Lavin off the hook entirely for his X's and O's though, because to me there are two areas of the game where it's easy to identify well-coached teams; coming out of a timeout, and at the end of games. Those are situations you drill until the guys know the play inside and out. And I think we do a pretty good job on inbounds plays. We have that curl play for Dangelo, and more often than not we look like we know what we're doing. Same for defending coming out of a timeout. With the rare exception aside, we look pretty good in those situations.
I do not think we look as good as we should at the end of the half or the end of games, though.
Coming out of timeouts we looked completely lost at the end of the Nova and Rutgers games. And why coach burned two timeouts at once against Rutgers is bizarre.
So I think we agree on a lot more than we realize. I'm not trying to kill coach, and some of the criticism is ridiculous... He can't make guys better foul shooters over night. Obviously they practice them.
But, at the same time.. In certain situations I want us to look better coached. I really don't think that's asking too much.
The makeup of the team is another issue entirely, and I'm of the mind now that I'll wait and see who we sign and who leaves before I comment on his recruiting decisions anymore. Because truthfully, coach knows more than I do about dangelos intentions, our shot with Lawrence or Jordan, gifts role etc etc. maybe there is a plan that we can't fully see yet.
But - our offensive execution in set plays scenarios has to improve. That's as clear an indicator of good coaching as there is.