Collins' use of players

[PurpleWhiteBoy]

I went thru the box scores with the players substitutions in an attempt to figure out what Collins was doing with his available players. I calculated points allowed and scored by any significant group of 5 guys, using the last 13 games of the season as my dataset.

We all know that Collins viewed Nance, Beran, Buie, Audige and Kopp as "the starters," with an occasional nod to Gaines or Young.

In some cases I eliminated the "free throw shooting contest" aspect of a few games, which didn't really merit consideration in "+/-" calculations.

My premise is that the coach is using his players effectively if the combinations that play the most are the combinations that outscore the opposition. By using "seconds played" as the increment of time, I could project a typical final score if that group of 5 played the entire game. It is a useful way to compare performance.

Some things that most people suspected have been proven to be true.
"The starters" were a disaster.
Nance ,Beran, Buie, Kopp and Audige produced 127 points and allowed 179 in 5575 seconds of play.
This projects to an average full game result of a 77-55 blowout loss. This lineup played almost twice as many minutes as any specific group of 5 players. That is a big problem. One of the worst performing line-ups got the most minutes, by a wide margin.

Playing Young and Nance together was our best chance. It wasn't even close. Regardless of the other 3 players, if Young and Nance were on the court together, we scored 215 points and allowed 199 in 8196 seconds of play. This projects to a 63-58 win in a typical game.

If you look at the +/- for each player when paired with every other player (for example Buie with Audige, Buie with Beran, Buie with Kopp, etc) it is very clear that Young and Ty Berry were the best players to be paired with. In Pete Nance's case, being paired with Young or Berry and 3 random guys would have led to a typical game being a 4.7 point win. Nance/Kopp was a 3 point loss. Nance/Beran was a 17 point loss. On the flip side of this were Robbie Beran and Ryan Greer. Every player's worst result was with one of those two.

The one notable exception to this was Anthony Gaines. For him, Ryan Young and Ty Berry were not a good pairing. He played his best with Nance, Kopp and Buie. When paired with them, his games projected to a 4 - 5 point loss. With Young or Berry, his results were about a 10 point loss.

For the individual players, the projected typical game results were as follows...
Nance(-6.3), Kopp (-4.7), Beran (-12.1), Buie (-6.1), Audige (-7.6), Greer (-17), Young (-2.6), Gaines(-8.0), Berry(-1.3). Please note, this is based on the results of how Collins used the players.

So armed with this information, we know that Ty Berry and Ryan Young deserved more minutes and Robbie Beran deserved fewer minutes, but there was much more to be discovered...

It turns out that Collins rarely used Young in place of Nance with the other 4 starters. The group of Young, Kopp, Beran, Buie and Audige was out there for 878 seconds (total) in the last 13 games. During that 14:38, they outscored the opponent 39-19, which projects to a 107-52 domination. As an NU fan, this is a bit frustrating.

What struck me was the fact that neither Gaines nor Beran was "useless." It was just that certain combinations were clearly successful and others were clearly detrimental.

If Gaines was on the court with Young and Nance was on the bench, we were likely to fall behind.
However, if Gaines and Nance were out there together, we tended to do fairly well.
Nance, Kopp, Buie, Gaines and Audige played 1457 seconds as a unit and projected to a 85-61 victory.

Similarly, even Beran was successful when paired with Young, in a lineup that made sense. If it was Nance and Beran. we were hurting ourselves. Collins played Nance and Beran together A LOT.

The single most effective group of 5 was Nance, Young, Kopp, Audige and Berry, rolling up a 15-0 victory in a grand total of 375 seconds, projecting to a 96-0 slaughter of a typical Big Ten opponent.

As effective as Young was relative to his teammates, there were some glaringly bad combinations...
Young, Kopp, Buie, Audige and Gaines played 959 seconds together, losing 30-11, or 75-28 for a full game.
Young, Kopp, Buie, Berry and Gaines played 947 seconds together, losing 32-17 or 81-43 for a full game.
It used to drive me nuts watching Young with Kopp and 3 guards. I didn't realize it was mainly because Gaines and Young didn't click. I think the coach is supposed to notice.

Obviously, sample size matters, but these results are meaningful, frustrating and hard to ignore. I think the talent was there for far better outcomes this year. Feel free to comment...

 

[GatoLouco]

Sorry to say you spent a ton of time on this and you are wrong.

The solution is on our “motto”: pound the rock. Eventually the rock will crack. What if you have a jack hammer? That’s for wusses. You just pound it like a man until it breaks.

More seriously, those are interesting numbers. Of course they don’t account for what the lineups were on the other side, which can “excuse” the starting lineup a bit as they play the other team’s starters more than other combos. But they do tell a story: the nonsense of Nance at the 5 with the roster we have.

Playing Nance and Young at the same time was never, ever, playing two bigs. Because Nance is only a big in height. He’s a 3/4 in the style of play. Who developed a hook shot and the rest, even from 5 feet away from the basket will shoot a fadeaway.

I would not be surprised next year we look completely different in the lineups. Which would demonstrate how lost CC is. After 8 years still searching for an identity. I admire coaches who adapt, but the man is lost.

 

[willycat]

Sorry to say you spent a ton of time on this and you are wrong.

The solution is on our “motto”: pound the rock. Eventually the rock will crack. What if you have a jack hammer? That’s for wusses. You just pound it like a man until it breaks.

More seriously, those are interesting numbers. Of course they don’t account for what the lineups were on the other side, which can “excuse” the starting lineup a bit as they play the other team’s starters more than other combos. But they do tell a story: the nonsense of Nance at the 5 with the roster we have.

Playing Nance and Young at the same time was never, ever, playing two bigs. Because Nance is only a big in height. He’s a 3/4 in the style of play. Who developed a hook shot and the rest, even from 5 feet away from the basket will shoot a fadeaway.

I would not be surprised next year we look completely different in the lineups. Which would demonstrate how lost CC is. After 8 years still searching for an identity. I admire coaches who adapt, but the man is lost.

What did you think of carmody and his "P" offense and turning and running back from the basket after the ball was shot? or how about that 1-3-1 D with a 5-9 guy at the bottom? Or not bothering to be on campus when a top recruit arrives?

 

[GatoLouco]

What did you think of carmody and his "P" offense and turning and running back from the basket after the ball was shot? or how about that 1-3-1 D with a 5-9 guy at the bottom? Or not bothering to be on campus when a top recruit arrives?

What does Carmody have to do with Collins? Whataboutism much?

 

[IdahoAlum]

Surely the coaching staff has access to this data, right? It then becomes a judgement issue and we can clearly see the wrong choices are being made.

 

[PurpleWhiteBoy]

I would think they do have accurate "+/-" data. I'm baffled by the player selections that were made game after game. Collins substituted 2 players at a time frequently. I never understood that either, because there never seemed to be any rhyme or reason to the choices.

 

[SDakaGordie]

I went thru the box scores with the players substitutions in an attempt to figure out what Collins was doing with his available players. I calculated points allowed and scored by any significant group of 5 guys, using the last 13 games of the season as my dataset.

We all know that Collins viewed Nance, Beran, Buie, Audige and Kopp as "the starters," with an occasional nod to Gaines or Young.

In some cases I eliminated the "free throw shooting contest" aspect of a few games, which didn't really merit consideration in "+/-" calculations.

My premise is that the coach is using his players effectively if the combinations that play the most are the combinations that outscore the opposition. By using "seconds played" as the increment of time, I could project a typical final score if that group of 5 played the entire game. It is a useful way to compare performance.

Some things that most people suspected have been proven to be true.
"The starters" were a disaster.
Nance ,Beran, Buie, Kopp and Audige produced 127 points and allowed 179 in 5575 seconds of play.
This projects to an average full game result of a 77-55 blowout loss. This lineup played almost twice as many minutes as any specific group of 5 players. That is a big problem. One of the worst performing line-ups got the most minutes, by a wide margin.

Playing Young and Nance together was our best chance. It wasn't even close. Regardless of the other 3 players, if Young and Nance were on the court together, we scored 215 points and allowed 199 in 8196 seconds of play. This projects to a 63-58 win in a typical game.

If you look at the +/- for each player when paired with every other player (for example Buie with Audige, Buie with Beran, Buie with Kopp, etc) it is very clear that Young and Ty Berry were the best players to be paired with. In Pete Nance's case, being paired with Young or Berry and 3 random guys would have led to a typical game being a 4.7 point win. Nance/Kopp was a 3 point loss. Nance/Beran was a 17 point loss. On the flip side of this were Robbie Beran and Ryan Greer. Every player's worst result was with one of those two.

The one notable exception to this was Anthony Gaines. For him, Ryan Young and Ty Berry were not a good pairing. He played his best with Nance, Kopp and Buie. When paired with them, his games projected to a 4 - 5 point loss. With Young or Berry, his results were about a 10 point loss.

For the individual players, the projected typical game results were as follows...
Nance(-6.3), Kopp (-4.7), Beran (-12.1), Buie (-6.1), Audige (-7.6), Greer (-17), Young (-2.6), Gaines(-8.0), Berry(-1.3). Please note, this is based on the results of how Collins used the players.

So armed with this information, we know that Ty Berry and Ryan Young deserved more minutes and Robbie Beran deserved fewer minutes, but there was much more to be discovered...

It turns out that Collins rarely used Young in place of Nance with the other 4 starters. The group of Young, Kopp, Beran, Buie and Audige was out there for 878 seconds (total) in the last 13 games. During that 14:38, they outscored the opponent 39-19, which projects to a 107-52 domination. As an NU fan, this is a bit frustrating.

What struck me was the fact that neither Gaines nor Beran was "useless." It was just that certain combinations were clearly successful and others were clearly detrimental.

If Gaines was on the court with Young and Nance was on the bench, we were likely to fall behind.
However, if Gaines and Nance were out there together, we tended to do fairly well.
Nance, Kopp, Buie, Gaines and Audige played 1457 seconds as a unit and projected to a 85-61 victory.

Similarly, even Beran was successful when paired with Young, in a lineup that made sense. If it was Nance and Beran. we were hurting ourselves. Collins played Nance and Beran together A LOT.

The single most effective group of 5 was Nance, Young, Kopp, Audige and Berry, rolling up a 15-0 victory in a grand total of 375 seconds, projecting to a 96-0 slaughter of a typical Big Ten opponent.

As effective as Young was relative to his teammates, there were some glaringly bad combinations...
Young, Kopp, Buie, Audige and Gaines played 959 seconds together, losing 30-11, or 75-28 for a full game.
Young, Kopp, Buie, Berry and Gaines played 947 seconds together, losing 32-17 or 81-43 for a full game.
It used to drive me nuts watching Young with Kopp and 3 guards. I didn't realize it was mainly because Gaines and Young didn't click. I think the coach is supposed to notice.

Obviously, sample size matters, but these results are meaningful, frustrating and hard to ignore. I think the talent was there for far better outcomes this year. Feel free to comment...

This is helpful. Let’s hope, as we all can agree, that he uses Nance and Young a lot more.

 

[SmellyCat]

Fascinating stuff, and I thank you for the hard work of putting it together.

There may be some extenuating circumstances explaining the results of small samples, but I think A LOT can be taken from slicing the data this way. If I were on the coaching staff, I would want to know stuff like this, but I'm more off a sabermetric guy and less of an old school gym rat like I suspect Coach Collins is.

I've never understood why Northwestern wasn't at the forefront of Moneyball-type theories, as you need to find advantages however you can, rather than being the boring "punt-on-fourth-and-three" kind of coach. Glad to see Fitz is going for it on fourth down more and more - he may not always be right about the when, but at some point like five years ago surely someone showed him some data on fourth downs and he was clearly open to going against the conventional wisdom there. Perhaps Collins needs to look at the data differently and adjust accordingly. What could it hurt?

 

[GatoLouco]

I would think they do have accurate "+/-" data. I'm baffled by the player selections that were made game after game. Collins substituted 2 players at a time frequently. I never understood that either, because there never seemed to be any rhyme or reason to the choices.

The reason is to keep everyone fresh so the team plays the uptempo he had some dream about. The one we can’t do because we don’t have the horses to. Go deep, 1-9 could all be starters the man said.

Gonzaga is the best team in the land and goes 7 deep. Go figure. There must be some logic on limiting the rotation beyond the players that lower the quality on the court.

 

[SDakaGordie]

Sorry to say you spent a ton of time on this and you are wrong.

The solution is on our “motto”: pound the rock. Eventually the rock will crack. What if you have a jack hammer? That’s for wusses. You just pound it like a man until it breaks.

More seriously, those are interesting numbers. Of course they don’t account for what the lineups were on the other side, which can “excuse” the starting lineup a bit as they play the other team’s starters more than other combos. But they do tell a story: the nonsense of Nance at the 5 with the roster we have.

Playing Nance and Young at the same time was never, ever, playing two bigs. Because Nance is only a big in height. He’s a 3/4 in the style of play. Who developed a hook shot and the rest, even from 5 feet away from the basket will shoot a fadeaway.

I would not be surprised next year we look completely different in the lineups. Which would demonstrate how lost CC is. After 8 years still searching for an identity. I admire coaches who adapt, but the man is lost.

Who is lost here? You criticize Collins for staying with the same lineups too much, and now you say he’s lost if he changes them?

 

[SmellyCat]

I would think they do have accurate "+/-" data. I'm baffled by the player selections that were made game after game. Collins substituted 2 players at a time frequently. I never understood that either, because there never seemed to be any rhyme or reason to the choices.

And +/- data doesn't go into nearly the detail you did. Just knowing that two players play well together and two others don't - and it's backed up by data and not just your gut or anecdotal evidence - is immensely valuable.

 

[GatoLouco]

Who is lost here? You criticize Collins for staying with the same lineups too much, and now you say he’s lost if he changes them?

I am all for change. But a coach that changes the style of play he wants with a team every year is lost. Last year was 1-3-1, followed by 2-3, Young starting. This year is 3-2, Nance at 5. Maybe next year it’s 5 guards. Who knows? Let’s keep experimenting. We have the luxury of spending 3 years experimenting, because players stay in college for 10 years.

maybe I chose the wrong word in “lineups”. I meant different style of play, which implies in most cases different lineups. I’m all for it because the current style is horse ****. But it surely shows that after 8 years the man does not have any idea where he’s taking the program. Keep on experimenting Chrissy.

 

[SDakaGordie]

I am all for change. But a coach that changes the style of play he wants with a team every year is lost. Last year was 1-3-1, followed by 2-3, Young starting. This year is 3-2, Nance at 5. Maybe next year it’s 5 guards. Who knows? Let’s keep experimenting. We have the luxury of spending 3 years experimenting, because players stay in college for 10 years.

maybe I chose the wrong word in “lineups”. I meant different style of play, which implies in most cases different lineups. I’m all for it because the current style is horse ****. But it surely shows that after 8 years the man does not have any idea where he’s taking the program. Keep on experimenting Chrissy.

In my book, you can’t have it both ways. And Chrissy is downright insulting to our coach. I’m done with you.

 

[PurpleWhiteBoy]

Just to touch on this whole anomaly where Gaines worked well with Nance, but quite poorly with Young...

The times when Young, Nance and Gaines played together, they actually posted a 107-104 "win" in 4253 seconds of action. That projects to a low-scoring 60.4 - 58.7 final score. So the positive expectation of playing Nance and Young together, plus the chemistry between Nance and Gaines, offset the lack of chemistry between Young and Gaines.

But if you look at Young with Gaines and "not Nance" you get some horrible results...
114 - 161 in 5747 seconds, which projects to a 67 - 47 loss. Thats 95 minutes out of 520 where you should expect to be outplayed, even though your best player, Ryan Young, is on the court.

Couple that with the Nance/Beran/Buie/Kopp/Audige "starters" and their 93 minutes of an expected 77-55 loss and you have a coach who is playing 36% of the game with lineups that should lose by 20 points against a typical opponent. By choice!

If Collins had gone with...
Young/Nance/3 guys 20 minutes of 63-58.3 win
Young/Beran/Kopp/Buie/Berry 10 minutes of 82-65 win
Nance/Gaines/not Beran 10 minutes of 68-67 win

Well you get the picture... its obviously way too simple and Young and Nance are playing 30 minutes a night, but there's plenty of good alternatives to what Collins actually did. He played 23 different lineups at least 6 minutes (total) over those last 13 games. Of those 23 lineups, the 4th worst performance came from the lineup he used the most by far.

 

[heet75]

Everything is right there. Just need to make some shots, especially when they count. So many open shots did not fall. Reminds me of the '94 football team. Showed all the promise but fell apart. We all know what happened the next year. When you have had many really good coaches as we have , and little to show, the problem is elsewhere. Regardless how disappointing a season we had Collins must stay. We have upgraded in many ways and as slow as the train seems it is coming.

 

[TheC]

The reason is to keep everyone fresh so the team plays the uptempo he had some dream about. The one we can’t do because we don’t have the horses to. Go deep, 1-9 could all be starters the man said.

Gonzaga is the best team in the land and goes 7 deep. Go figure. There must be some logic on limiting the rotation beyond the players that lower the quality on the court.

I still think this has something to do with my CCC coaches like he’s in the NBA theory. This is what NBA teams do. Even really good college teams just rotate their starters to get them a breather. Michigan is another good example of this. They always have at least 3 of their starters on the court at all times.

 

[PURPLECAT88]

I appreciate the effort here, and I'll trust that your numbers are accurate, but I'm not sure they really prove anything.

Nance ,Beran, Buie, Kopp and Audige produced 127 points and allowed 179 in 5575 seconds of play.
This projects to an average full game result of a 77-55 blowout loss. This lineup played almost twice as many minutes as any specific group of 5 players. That is a big problem. One of the worst performing line-ups got the most minutes, by a wide margin.

5575 seconds breaks down to about 7 minutes per game. That may well be the most of any line-up, but does 7 minutes a game over 13 games really mean much without a pre-existing confirmation bias?

Even worse:
It turns out that Collins rarely used Young in place of Nance with the other 4 starters. The group of Young, Kopp, Beran, Buie and Audige was out there for 878 seconds (total) in the last 13 games. During that 14:38, they outscored the opponent 39-19, which projects to a 107-52 domination. As an NU fan, this is a bit frustrating.

That's nice, but 878 seconds is 1:13 per game. That's a lot of noise for not much signal. I'm all for using data to get the best out of players. Heck, I read Moneyball nearly two decades ago, but let's try to learn something from the data rather than using it to try to prove what we already think.

 

[SmellyCat]

I appreciate the effort here, and I'll trust that your numbers are accurate, but I'm not sure they really prove anything.

...

That's nice, but 878 seconds is 1:13 per game. That's a lot of noise for not much signal. I'm all for using data to get the best out of players. Heck, I read Moneyball nearly two decades ago, but let's try to learn something from the data rather than using it to try to prove what we already think.

I realize the sample size is small, and I'm not sure he was trying to *prove* anything, but I think it was definitely worth the effort and would make a good jumping-off point for whoever is trying to do complete analysis of the data. Let's say you have a theory that Player X and Player Y playing together is a disaster. First you have your eyes/gut telling you that, but that's skin deep and can easily just be anecdotal. Now you have some empirical data, which - you're right - could easily be used to "prove" what you already think. But it's something, and is a good start for a deeper hypothesis and dive into the numbers. Someone much smarter than I and with more time (and with more on the line) might know how to take this data to the next step and figure something out.

For example, if we presuppose that Nance/Young play well together and Gaines/Young don't because of this data, let's try to narrow down WHY. Watch film. Maybe when they're on the court together someone is out of position (and it might not be either of them!), or they only come in during periods of time when the other team's best player is on the floor, or a ton of wide-open threes happen or whatever. Meanwhile, when Nance/Young are on the floor, the opponents' three-point shooting is poor because they're forcing bad shots, or opposing players are forced to go left under the basket or the Cats focus more on defensive rebounding or who knows what else? For all we know, some numbers are skewed because a player just broke up with his girlfriend and didn't have his head in the game, but the three games before that they played fine together.

I guess this is just my long way of saying that this data isn't the end-all, be-all, but it's a great early data point that might force people (cough, cough, the coaching staff) to dig deeper. There's about seven or eight months to pore through this data and figure it out, and I hope the coaching staff, if they don't have access to this *specific* data, at least has something similar and is trying to figure it out.

 

[GeorgiaCat]

One thing you don’t touch on that impacts the lineups throughout the game is foul trouble. In many, many games foul trouble forced certain line-ups. I haven’t done the research to confirm, but anecdotally we almost always seemed to put the other team in the bonus way sooner than we got to the bonus. And we almost alway seemed to have somebody important, if not two people, on the bench early in first half with two fouls or early in second half with four fouls.

I think our foul trouble is something that must be corrected via coaching. We have to be better in this area. Way too many fouls are what I call “unforced.” Sloppy play. Reaching. Out of position.Etc. This must be corrected and will allow us to have better line rotations.

 

[willycat]

What does Carmody have to do with Collins? Whataboutism much?

well maybe because he was NU's coach prior to Collins. You think?

 

[Purple Pile Driver]

I realize the sample size is small, and I'm not sure he was trying to *prove* anything, but I think it was definitely worth the effort and would make a good jumping-off point for whoever is trying to do complete analysis of the data. Let's say you have a theory that Player X and Player Y playing together is a disaster. First you have your eyes/gut telling you that, but that's skin deep and can easily just be anecdotal. Now you have some empirical data, which - you're right - could easily be used to "prove" what you already think. But it's something, and is a good start for a deeper hypothesis and dive into the numbers. Someone much smarter than I and with more time (and with more on the line) might know how to take this data to the next step and figure something out.

For example, if we presuppose that Nance/Young play well together and Gaines/Young don't because of this data, let's try to narrow down WHY. Watch film. Maybe when they're on the court together someone is out of position (and it might not be either of them!), or they only come in during periods of time when the other team's best player is on the floor, or a ton of wide-open threes happen or whatever. Meanwhile, when Nance/Young are on the floor, the opponents' three-point shooting is poor because they're forcing bad shots, or opposing players are forced to go left under the basket or the Cats focus more on defensive rebounding or who knows what else? For all we know, some numbers are skewed because a player just broke up with his girlfriend and didn't have his head in the game, but the three games before that they played fine together.

I guess this is just my long way of saying that this data isn't the end-all, be-all, but it's a great early data point that might force people (cough, cough, the coaching staff) to dig deeper. There's about seven or eight months to pore through this data and figure it out, and I hope the coaching staff, if they don't have access to this *specific* data, at least has something similar and is trying to figure it out.

Everything should be on the table. This team was not good. No way to avoid that conclusion. I agree, data like this is a starting point. I would be shocked if CCC didn’t have much deeper dive data at his disposal. However, I think extrapolation of results to a full game is a bridge to far for me. As others have said, who you are playing against, foul trouble, etc play a part in success or failure of groupings. I just can’t get to the theory that playing the optimum lineup ( based on this analysis) get NU to a 500 team in the B1G. Players win games.

 

[PurpleWhiteBoy]

I appreciate the feedback. I wasn't really trying to prove much by the numbers, just looking for information.
The Gaines/Young thing took me by surprise.
Greer looks bad by the "+/-" numbers. So does Beran.
But not ALL bad.
Buie, Audige and Kopp look similarly mediocre but not terrible.

The thing that really surprised me was how Young and Berry stood out as "doesn't show up in the box score" quality players. Well, I was confident on Young, but surprised by Berry. Greer surprised me the other way.

Beran surprised me by being a useful player as long as he was playing alongside Young, not Nance. That one is troubling because Collins kept doing the opposite.

Ultimately, the numbers show that (based on actual performance) that had Collins started Nance/Kopp/Gaines/Buie/Audige and then brought in Young and Beran for Nance and Gaines, we would have seen significantly better results. The next change could have been going to Nance/Young/Kopp/Buie/Berry.

What jumped off the page was that Collins consistently used lineups that had been proven to "not work" and consistently failed to recognize/deploy lineups that had been quite successful in limited opportunities.

 

[GatoLouco]

well maybe because he was NU's coach prior to Collins. You think?

Liking BC or not has nothing to do with liking CC or not. But if it satisfies your curiosity, not a fan of BC.

 

[TheC]

I appreciate the feedback. I wasn't really trying to prove much by the numbers, just looking for information.
The Gaines/Young thing took me by surprise.
Greer looks bad by the "+/-" numbers. So does Beran.
But not ALL bad.
Buie, Audige and Kopp look similarly mediocre but not terrible.

The thing that really surprised me was how Young and Berry stood out as "doesn't show up in the box score" quality players. Well, I was confident on Young, but surprised by Berry. Greer surprised me the other way.

Beran surprised me by being a useful player as long as he was playing alongside Young, not Nance. That one is troubling because Collins kept doing the opposite.

Ultimately, the numbers show that (based on actual performance) that had Collins started Nance/Kopp/Gaines/Buie/Audige and then brought in Young and Beran for Nance and Gaines, we would have seen significantly better results. The next change could have been going to Nance/Young/Kopp/Buie/Berry.

What jumped off the page was that Collins consistently used lineups that had been proven to "not work" and consistently failed to recognize/deploy lineups that had been quite successful in limited opportunities.

Maybe this will help put to rest the play Greer over Buie nonsense.

 

[PurpleWhiteBoy]

Well, maybe, but not for me. In most situations, it is pretty clear that Buie should play ahead of Greer. Specifically, I still want to see Greer on the court, running the offense with two shooters and Young and Nance.

Nance/Young/Buie 109-107 4250 secs 61.5 - 60.4
Nance/Young/Greer 19-18 743 secs 61.4 - 58.1

The jury is still out...

 

[willycat]

Liking BC or not has nothing to do with liking CC or not. But if it satisfies your curiosity, not a fan of BC.

I would think that most schools and their fans compare current and past coaches.

 

[julescat]

NU pays Collins millions a year. What a joke.

 

[GatoLouco]

I would think that most schools and their fans compare current and past coaches.

I’m not a nice guy just because I’m nicer than a serial killer.