Tnice, the "in spite of him" in your post is speculation and opinion. It could just as easily be "because of him." None of us can really know. What seems bizarre to us may, in fact, work. I never understood why any kid would be motivated to play for coaches like Bob Knight or Woody Hayes, yet they won. Lavin is no Coach K, on that much we can all agree. Maybe his motivational tactics are what works for his coaching style. This year has been eerily similar to 2010-11. That is the reason I was never in panic mode when things were going badly. We just went through this a few years back and now we all wax poetic about how great a year that was. I remember walking out of the Fordham gym after blowing an 18 point lead, thinking that group was going nowhere and looking forward to Lavin's recruits turning things around. Then we saw the transformation/development of that team. Now we're seeing it happen again.
When I said they were winning in spite of Lavin, I wasn't referring only to his motivational tactics, but his overall basketball smarts as well. You chose two poor analogies; Hayes and Knight were generally regarded as master tacticians in their sport. Lavin, to put it kindly, is not.
Your statement that "none of us can really know" what influence Lavin has on the teams success or failure isn't true. There may not be any objective, one plus one equals two proof, but there is enough of a body of work to judge the man subjectively. At UCLA he was regarded as a master recruiter and a substandard coach, a bit of a used car salesman and a flake who did crazy stuff with lineups and rotations whose teams underperformed. All of those things have proven true here. Last season, after Dunlap but before Whitesell, was one of the worst coaching jobs I've ever seen...a mess of a team with zero clue on defense and an offense unbecoming a CYO team. The offense, game management, and rotations were so bad earlier this year that I can only imagine they changed because of a coaching intervention. Thankfully Lavin has shown an inclination to listen to those who know more than him. That's the biggest turning point in the season IMHO.
I don't want to kill the buzz or hijack a thread about the best win we've had in years. We have great talent and they're finally playing well. I'm stoked about that and leaving last nights game I felt the best I've felt about this team in a while. But lets not get all "see, everybody was wrong about Lavin" over this little streak. The deficiencies are still there, we're just working around them while playing the easier part of our schedule, which is fine. Just because I think Lavin is a phony and kind of a dope doesn't mean I wont be at our first round game in the NCAA tourney.