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Bill, I think there’s a difference between being a leader on the floor and a team leader among players. Some guys lead quietly and by example. Some are in your face. Some don’t get much floor time but serve as mentors and help others better execute or accept a role. I don’t know much about these men’s high school careers, but just because you’re The Guy in high school, I don’t think that equates to leadership.
I don’t get the point of your question about coaches. For the long haul, Bennett is a no brainer, but I also think Williams will be successful eventually at vt. Lots of older coaches in the league. Right now, i’d rank our guy in the middle third, but he’s straddling that line to bottom third.
Seriously, rank ACC coaches. Where do we stand relative to our peers?
I don’t know if they print it anymore, but I always bought a copy of the ACC Handbook years ago. At some point, they started including the anonymous comments of opposing teams coaches. And they we’re candid. Wonder what the rest of the league would say about our players, staff, team?
Orgs have personnel in place to train and teach and yes, cultivate, nurture, and reward performance and development of leadership skills of workers. In a sports org, among 18-23 year olds, performance and leadership ain’t necessarily to be found in the same workers. I’d say old Norman dale knew how to find his leaders.
Wufpup, I generally don’t buy the missing team leader argument in sports. It’s an assumption offered up to explain woes.
I’ve known many a team with great leaders that had poor results. Team leadership may win a few points off the court, and occasionally might propel you to overcome a few game obstacles, but it’s a relatively minor factor.
And it certainly cannot overcome what xphoenix astutely observes. When you’re mediocre, there’s more missing than team leadership.
I do believe that leadership can be cultivated, and comes in all forms.
^Ryebread gets it. The premise which the article began with–that this team hasn’t improved, and it’s primarily because we have individual parts and no team or floor leadership–is flawed. That same excuse was the one offered up by countless posters on this board when we underwhelmed in Gott’s Year 2. We missed the SR leadership of CJ Williams and Alex Johnson, and we missed DeShawn Painter, an upperclassman. Hogwash. When exactly have we ever shown team improvement? Individual improvement, undoubtedly from year to year, but only time I can remember, during the second half of conference play in Gott’s Year 1, was there team improvement. That team really amped up its defensive intensity and rebounding, which largely accounted for its run.
Truth. There are constants. To predict future performance, look at past results. Not only this year, but in years past.
If you want to run the UCLA high post, you probably need to heavily recruit some European bigs, or bigs with far more skill than we have on the roster. As an NCAA coach at a place like NCSU, you simply cannot expect to have a few years off to season your players. That’s just being real. What’s changed, imo, is that conference expansion and the rise of several other programs who made stronger hires have relegated us to the middle of the pack, or lower third of conference.
I’m thankful pack baseball throws out the first pitch next week. No matter how any times avent leaves me scratching my head, I enjoy and appreciate the game. Not so with the winter sport. I find poorly played and coached round ball upsets my innards.
I’ll continue to pull,often unenthusiastically, for coach and pack basketball. But the pragmatist in me says, we all know which way this is headed, and it’s painful to see. I believe in second and third chances. I also believe in performance and accountability. I know a sunk cost when I see one.
Not knocking the methodology at all but a 10 point swing isn’t that much in today’s game. What stands out to me in the results is that about 1/2 those games are against dogs. Who knows, maybe this squad is another version of the cardiac pack
Thanks for this analysis. I wouldn’t use the UNC vs. Louisville game as a good example of this being a trend across the land. It’s fairly easy to hazard a guess why this happens to us so frequently.
We tend to be pretty good on offense, and occasionally just plain unstoppable. But shooting 50-70% from the floor isn’t usually sustainable. We’re not a good defensive team, so when the opponent starts hitting, and we slow down, the leads dwindle. Throw in poor rebounding, not getting to the line and poor free throw shooting, an unforced turnover here or there, you get blown leads. More than anything, poor defense makes it difficult to weather dry spells on offense and survive hot streaks by other teams. When you can’t get stops,you can’t come back no matter how good you are with the ball, and you can’t sustain leads.
^Sendek had some big warning signs when he was hired. That was when everyone wanted a Pitino protégé come hell or high water. His small body of work as a head coach at Miami (OH) wasn’t really enough to gauge his talent, but his resume should’ve clearly said to those evaluating that he was very different than Pitino in several key respects. Sendek preferred man defense to zone. He didn’t press much. And his offense was fairly stagnant. He had Szerbiak and some other guy who could play at Miami, and they bailed him out a great deal.
My point that there are other Marshall’s out there should’ve been clearer. I’m not suggesting that there are tons of coaches on that level. I am suggesting that there are up-and-comers that can be identified using the same criteria that should’ve been used to identify a guy like Marshall in the early 2000s.
1. Did you build a program and consistently win? Or did you inherit a program that was already successfully? I want the former.
2. Are you tops among your conference or peers? A must.
3. Have you shown the ability to teach players and for them to show improvement? Easily gauged metric.
4. Have you shown the ability to compete against larger schools, with more resources, and more talent? Again, easy to measure.
Notice no where on my list is recruiting. It’s the most overrated of the coaching qualities, and it was the big reason many people had questions about Marshall while at Winthrop, along with his “reputation” or personality, which was a pile of bunk. If you can coach, you can coach anybody.
It’s tougher to identify the assistant coaches who’ll have big impacts if they haven’t had smaller head coaching gigs, which is why I don’t go there. I also don’t go the alum route because I think there’s the potential for cloudy judgment. And I acknowledge that my criteria eliminates a lot of folks who are darn good coaches.
18-22 year olds respond to getting their butts worked and put on the pine if they don’t work and follow directions. Encouraged and rewarded when they do what they’re asked, and the team benefits. In place from Day 1, from the time you set foot on campus, through preseason, and into season. No such thing as good “players coaches” at this level.
I reached the point a few games I seemingly do every year where I no longer watch live. If I watch at all, it’s record and watch later, that way I don’t feel like I’ve wasted as much time. Haven’t seen a second today, but judging by the box score, we’re getting crushed on the boards. Hope they can pull it out. At least glad AB decided to take a few 3’s. He is serviceable from the arc, he just doesn’t take enough. If he can take and make that shot 35%, it will improve his penetrate and dish game tremendously and open up much more on offense. But we’ll still likely suck.
Think the Marshall ship has likely sailed, but if a long term offer was made, and a genuine apology tendered, who knows. He wanted this job twice.
There are other Marshall’s out there. I’m not convinced on Archie, and think we’ve probably got our guy for a few more years unless ticket sales and attendance really take a dive or there’s an off the court incident that brings unwanted attention.
You have to understand, Marshall has turned down multiple acc and sec gigs that I know of, and that was before the final 4 run. He’s a smart guy and requires a different approach. I don’t think he’ll be at Wichita state forever, but he can pretty well pick and choose terms and timing at this point.
Just so I’m clear, yow went after Shaka, who had in fact beaten Marshall in the first round of the NCAA that year, in a round 1 game that never should’ve been. Both teams were probably under seeded. Think it was a 5 vs 12 match. Smart was the new coaching darling, but Marshall’s resume was far better. We went after the fresh face. Didn’t work out as retold above. Marshall didn’t like being second fiddle. The $ and anything gw may have said had little impact.
Pretty well established that it was turgeon who curtsied to the boys in blue. I’m also fairly certain that dy, who I like and respect, was saving face with the Gary Williams comment. I have no doubt he wasn’t a good reference, but I’m also certain that wasn’t the straw that broke the camel’s back. Marshall wasn’t the first choice, and he knew it.
I should’ve prefaced my comments by saying that my personal dislike of Gott, admittedly based on a few chance encounters at non-NCSU related events, doesn’t impact my not so valuable opinion of him as a coach. I work and do business with plenty of folks I don’t particularly care for, and vice versa, but if those character traits interfere with job execution, then we have a problem.
Arrogance, stubbornness, and whatever shenanigans you’re pulling don’t bother me if you win, and do so in a manner that reflects positively on the school. If you don’t, and you keep feeding me a pile of crap…then we have a problem. DY doesn’t strike me as someone who suffers fools, and when you can’t or don’t show what exactly you learned in your time away from the game, and how it applies to coaching, and more important, how it leads to W’s, then all it is is coach speak. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it’s a duck.
Id have thrown a boatload at Marshall with a long-term contract and many performance bonuses.
If we start looking next year, I go there first. Then I want young, fresh, hardworking coaches who have built programs, can teach, motivate, and win. I don’t even look at guys who’ve inherited successful gigs and squads. It’s like wealth, some who inherit it have the it factor. But you’ll find many a pretender if you go that route.
Miami and Norte dame beat us again last night…but..
I met Mg at a non-ncsu related event in year 2, and came away with the impression that he was an ass and a shyster. Same year, his team’s effort and performance confirmed nothing had changed from his days in Alabama. There was a lot of talk and optimism here after those first two seasons–and a lot of excuses about lowe’s recruits and importance of a few upperclassmen who graduated or transferred. But plenty of folks knew what we got when we hired mg.
This team is not mentally or physically tough. Its collective bb iq is bad. Its not disciplined. think mg knows he’s in trouble now, and is grasping.
All teams evolve and should grow and improve as a season progresses and fr are integrated, but it should’ve been crystal clear early on what the identity of the team was, where its strengths lay, and where there was room for progress.
I think mg recognizes some of those strengths and weaknesses but he’s too stubborn, arrogant, or lazy to alter course. Lot of talk, but that bone don’t have much marrow
I’d like to see a scorecard as well. Too many wieners calling games at this level. If you’ve been around the officiating ranks, even at the high school level, where most of these folks broke in, you know it’s a fraternity of fanboy deuches. Of course, there are some really solid officials, folks with lots of playing experience, folks that really put time in studying and working, but by and large, they are outnumbered by the deuches. College basketball is definitely the worst.
But let’s be real, it’s not the Cat Barbers who are picking up a ton of fouls. Sure, he had the questionable push off charge the other night, but by and large, he doesn’t get whistled. He’s an outstanding defender. If we look down the roster, there aren’t a lot of great defenders on this team, our coaches are not great defensive coaches, and we don’t play solid team defense. We reach, our bigs make dumb fouls reaching 30 feet from the basket, and some of us are a little slow of foot. We hedge on non-shooters and don’t get out on shooters. You name it, we do it badly.
Notre Dame is a worse defensive team than we are, and scoring 29 points in the second half was inexcusable. Poor shot selection continues to be a glaring problem for every Gottfried team. It’s only masked by the fact that his offense generally generates good shots–for somebody, mind you. The selling point for the UCLA high post, particularly to 18 year olds, is that it generates shots for everybody. That’s nice. But the problem is that everybody doesn’t need the same touches or shots. When you have a star player like Warren last year, we made a concerted effort for him to get more shots, but he was also very active and highly efficient on his own. IMO, Gottfried doesn’t exploit mismatches in man-to-man situations nearly enough. He used Buckets wisely last year, but hell, who couldn’t? With this bunch, we definitely settle to much for jumpshots, too little penetration, and there’s too little cutting and activity by the bigs and wings.
Gottfried is repeating his Bama performances, albeit it, with better talent and depth, and in a better league. I still say his best option is run out 9-10 a game, play with a 20-25 second shot clock, press, trap, and run, run, run. Score in the 80s-90s, not the low 70s. You don’t need 35 seconds to run the UCLA high post. That’s my biggest issue, we say we’ll outscore you, but we don’t really appear committed to the scheme that will create more possessions, or bait teams into taking quicker shots, creating turnovers, or lessening the effect of our bad halfcourt defense.
Barber needs to shoot and score more, not less. His unwillingness to take the 3 this year hurts us. He’s 25% but has only attempted 20. A starting pg in acc playing 30+ a game, and only 20 attempts, wtf? He has to be willing to take that shot more within the offense.
Norte dame is very similar to us. They’re pretenders. If they get favorable match ups they do damage come NCAA time, but most likely they’ll run into an athletic squad whose tough on defense but better than average on offense, and they’ll get sent packing
^i totally agree. Only pointing out this as an example of the questionable core coaching philosophy of this staff. More offense. Less defense, less rebounding.
And that’s fine. But if that’s the philosophy, then why insist on playing at that pace? You need more possessions, not less.
Who really thought we’d shoot 60% from 2 and 50% from 3 for the whole game, even against a defense that’s worse than our own?
Scoring 29 points in a half isn’t going to get it done against most teams, and certainly not the Irish.
Don’t know the backstory on cat not starting and only playing 20, but we can only be excellent if he is. Subbing out one of the best on ball defenders in the country for more offense is classic gottfried. You have to guard us, too, blah, blah, blah
Never any doubt that the lead would be squandered, or why, just a question of how fast for me, and could we manage to pull it out.
Rest assured that if gottfried’s team builds a lead against a quality opponent, they’re either burning up the nets or the other team is ice cold. Same with the duke win. They had an off night from 3, not on account of our defense. When the percentages even out, we often find ourselves with a loss or desperately trying to hang on. Really bad choke.
