He showed improvement every year. If Pope ends up with fewer wins, more losses and maybe even missing the tournament, that’s not progression, that’s regression.
Gameday thread
- Thread starter Skyguyb27
- Start date
Tell me you don't understand college basketball without telling me you don't understand college basketball.
All that money and this is what you get. LMAO. You can’t compete with the B1G. Go to the MAC conference where you belong.
The guys I listed have the best tools to defend. And rebound. And we will be at least a threat in the paint just by playing Moreno over Garrison.
I like Chandler. Just think he might be better in bench energy role. One thing for sure there have to be major changes or Pope isn’t the coach I think he is.
If they playing basketball 1 on 1 I will take Pope. If they playing quarters I will take Gillespie. But if they are drinking then playing basketball I go with Gillespie
I agree 100%. I have ZERO knowledge, but wondering if Oweh’s lack of giving many sh*ts on the floor translates to him being a bit of an issue off the floor.
Oh come on?? What?? You said Pope was his man all along. Instead of admitting you were terribly wrong and just making suff up to sound like you were in the know, you try to play it off. What a farce. Good grief dude. Ignored.
See, that’s a cop out. There are so many fundamental failures on an individual level on defense. Getting lost. Giving up the lane. Abysmal screen defense. I can go on and on. Does the coach share some blame? Yeah. But we have some players that can’t face themselves in the mirror. The fix has to start there. I was an athlete. When I failed, it was never some coach that didn’t step on the floor. It was me. We have players not owning their performance.
We would've looked much differently at the Cal era if it weren't for BCG's recruiting acumen.
Where would the 2010, 2011, and to a lesser extent the 2012 team had been if we didn't have Liggins, Patterson, Jorts, and Miller? lol
Really? When did you see defense? I saw some accidental defense. We utterly failed at defense to a man.
This has nothing to do with money.
Mich St players are getting paid. UL players are getting paid.
They both played with passion.
We are not prepared to play. And we don’t seem to care about that.
That’s right. Nobody played defense. The guys I listed are our best skilled players. If they’re not defending, sure sit them down. But nobody defended well. And something has to change. But this isn’t 1950. You have to score as well.
Yeah.
The 2014 team won 3 tournament games despite the opponent scoring 1.15 PPP. There are going to be some games when the opponent gets hot and you need the fire power to overcome.
First I didn’t say that. Second, the people pretending to play that defense maybe? I can assure you they are not teaching people to do what we just saw. If you insist on assigning blame, then list every coach that saw that group.
Go back and watch films of Chuck Hayes or Gilchrist or Davis. You think a coach was responsible for their individual effort? I doubt we have one player feeling pride at their performance. Blaming the coach alone is just a cop out.
Our players can do better. I suspect they are struggling with that as we speak. This is very 2014 like.
Full on deflection. So it’s the players fault, even though Pope has been coaching for like a decade and zero elite defenses? Makes sense
Believe what you want. I certainly dont care. Again i made an assumption people would understand the time frame my post covered.
Really? Which player wearing blue did you see that can look in the mirror and say they are proud of their game? Which athlete took ownership? We simply failed to execute on any phase of our game.
And Pope is just in his second year of coaching at a school that can field an elite defense. Go cherry pick something else.
Players play the game. Players own their performance. The biggest failure by a coach tonight is failing to make that clear. Rest assured Izzo will claim no credit for his team. That is on his players.
I’d have to rewatch the film to decide which players could be proud of their performance, but I can’t stomach to watch this one a second time. I saw plenty of awful adjustments and Izzo took Pope to the woodshed. Blame the players if you want, but they don’t decide if they get minutes or what position they are put in —- Pope does that
I cant believe that the radio crew gave a player (I can't remember who it was) Defensive player of the game. Seriously??? Defensive player of the game!!! Sometimes there's just not enough rocks...
Its the first month of year two. RR is full of nutcases.
You clearly have never stepped foot on a court save PE class or to leave the stands. No serious athlete would deny that they alone have responsibility for their own performance. We did not play our best nor anywhere close to it.
That’s ridiculous. You effectively just said it doesn’t matter who the coach is at all.
Yeah but lets be honest here. In bad times the coach gets the blame and in good times they get the credit. Too much in both regards but that's just how it is.
Plus this team is very talented. We've seen this story play out last year with Pope. Even in the big games that we eventually won, we had to dig ourselves out of massive 1st half holes. And I tihnk it's fair to ask the question why that's the case.
As I said before, blaming the coach has brought us a long way in the last 20 years. Not. We've been digging holes all that time, as you say. At least Pope was winning a few. We have some talented individuals. I have yet to see a talented and skilled group of players, though. Talent means nothing if its unskilled and not part of a whole. Calipari taught us that.
I guess it comes down to whether you find relief in bashing a coach and call for firing them when that is not going to happen. Or you prefer talking about the issues we actually have and how to resolve those. Kinda pointless trashing a coach because a guy can't defend the lane or can't get position or won't make a pass over 6 feet. I don't think a single player will look in the mirror tonight and say, that was all I have. That's it, I can't do any better.
You’re either going to point to the coaches or the players. Those are the only people in the room preparing for these games. Your only alternative is saying the games are random or no one should ever say anything about anyone when we lose a game. People are gonna vent when we lose, coz this matters to people in this state. Too much? Sure, but that’s also why NIL can be so massive in a rural, poor state as well…because people eat, sleep and breathe this stuff.
Vent? I understand venting. We’ve been beating, thrashing, abusing, trashing, bashing, and ripping on coaches for two decades now. Jeez that’s working really well. We had what? 2 or 3 offers rejected last time? We aren’t exactly the nicest career building Mecca anymore. Think a hyper aggressive ungrateful fanbase is gonna fix that? Just sayin.
We need to get the players proud of their effort. To do that they gotta start start executing.
I think I’m completely fine with Pope dealing with the locker room very straightforward to try to find out which guys want to fix things. If there are guys who don’t, kick them off the team.
And there is part of the problem. They got their money
Think about AR, FL, AU, TN, all four will be a tough out, plus ALL road games. If our defense plays every game like we played last night we will be lucky to have a winning record in conference play.
Yeah I tend to agree about these things. Ultimately, the players have to perform to the levels they should be performing. We have a roster with quite a bit of guys that have had track records already. I think blaming the coach or manager or whoever is in charge in a particular sport is the easy way out for some because easy to dump on one guy then an entire set of players.
I will say tho........college basketball or college sports in general is a bit different in this aspect than pros since part of the coaches job here is to recruit and assemble the team. I don't think we are quite at that point yet with Pope (I mean heck it was two recruiting seasons one of which was rushed to put a competitive team together) but questions will obviously start to be asked on whether he is bringing in enough talent to compete at the top. I think that's valid.
Yes, but I’m not sure what recruiting will turn into going forward. That is not the same as before NIL and the portal. We might have to screw up a few more coaches before fans come to grips with that.