American Tournament

[longtimefan]

DDJ and Nolley combined 4-23. Nolley didn’t make a two point basket.

[leeraymond]

Brannen had Trevon Scott and Jarron Cumberland, and that Houston team was nowhere near the level of this Houston team. Three Brannen guys are still getting major minutes, guys that didn’t get an offer from UC when Mick was here. Give the coach a chance with his own guys.

C'mon man! Let's think about this a minute. Brannen had two all-conference players (Scott and Cumberland), Miller has two all-conference players (Nolley and DeJulius). Brannen had Chris Vogt, Miller has Lahkin. Brannen had Adams-Woods (replaced C. McNeil as the starting PG), Miller has Adams-Woods as a senior. The only other real contributor on Brannen's team was K. Williams. Miller has Davenport, Skillings, Oguama, and Ezikpe. It appears to me Brannen had less to work with.

Let's look at Houston then and Houston now. Houston had Jarreau, Harris, Nate Hinton, and Fabian White. All of those guys were undrafted but were good enough to play in the G-League. Houston also had Grimes (drafted by NY Knicks in 1st round), Caleb Mills (3 point shooter that transferred to Fla. St.), and Sasser. Houston now has Shead, Sasser (NBA prospect), Walker (NBA prospect), Roberts, Chaney, Mark, and Sharp as the main contributors. Both Houston teams are loaded. However, the big difference is the AAC was NOT as competitive this year as it was during Brannen's two years.

In my mind, this current UC team probably will represent Miller's best chance to win for maybe a couple of years; especially going into the BIG 12 with a bunch of sophomores and freshmen. In college basketball, given that a team has the minimum amount of talent to compete, the coaching truly is the deciding factor whether a team wins or loses. Imagine what Huggins or Cronin could have done with the current UC team.

[Bearcat93]

It’s tough when we only have 1 developing new player (Skillings). But yeah, I have observed all year that we have enough talent to have more than 1 quad one W. I’ll say this-getting players ready to play, effort - that’s coaching. I think UC is being underserved by Wes. It’s hard to imagine we won’t have at least 2 more years of this, but who knows, maybe Rayvon will be a K-mart type player. I just worry about the pace of development vs AAC talent. We all know the B12 will be so much tougher.

[Rufus]

He hasn’t even brought in his 2nd recruit class yet.

It's not about the players. We've debated the players remaining from the Brannen regime versus getting a full stable of CWM's recruits till we're blue in the face. It's about getting the maximum out of the players you have in your stable now at this time. Example #1, we mentioned the observation that DDJ is overwhelmed when someone taller than he is assigned to guard him. This has been evident all season. Yet when Memphis and Houston employ this strategy and have even seen it two times from each of these teams and again with Houston in the tournament is it not a coaches job to find a way to counter that strategy? But we still see the same ineffective play. Miller promised these kids that they would be playing an open style of game so he refuses to deviate from that even though it's futile against this defense. It's the same with Nolley. With someone defending him close he vanishes (only scored 2 against Houston) but yet CMW still just allows him to flounder, to create his own shots instead of the coaches designing some offensive stategies? When was the last time we've seen some sort of play when the ball is being taken out under our own basket? We just throw it in best we can to the first open man.
When CWM took over he made the statement that as a first year coach at UNC Greensboro he made mistakes before he began winning in year five. Are we going to have to endure a 5 year learning curve just because he jumped up to a more competitive conference or even longer now that we're going into the best bball conference? It took a year and a half before he realized that JD's impulse to shoot as soon as he crosses half court regardless of the time left was costing us games and only then began suppressing him a bit by bringing him in as the sixth man. We all commented on it in this forum all last year and half of this. No other coach would continue to keep putting these players into games and allow them to continue to play street style bball when progress is not being shown. It's time to get a plan. It's time to find an offensive and defensive identity that players will buy into. Find a way to get your so called shooters the ball with a shot instead of hoping they can create their own. If your going to play a full court press with all the guards we are recruiting then put it into the game plan and stick with it. If your players can play man defense then teach them a zone. I'd rather watch a team lose that has some type of game than to watch this same ol same ol that isn't getting any better. But what do I know.
I remember one time when Huggins took us to the ncaas it may have been the year we beat Penny four straight times in the same year. We drew Texas Tech I think in the first round. This coach and Huggins both were coaching their a$$e$ off trying to out strategize the other. I remember Huggins telling his dad "that guy over there can coach".

[JBB]

Good report Rufus, totally agree with you analysis. We had the players this year, but not a style of play necessary to get to what we expect for UC Basketball. The coaches have to define how they are to play, defend, rebound, scrap for loose balls, we saw none of this on a consistent basis.
We will never contend in Big12 with this style of play. “ Where there is no vision, the people Parrish”