military academies

The military academies may have trouble getting the best talent, but at least the players they do get can pretty well be depended on to be disciplined and of good character.

baseline

This program seems to have established a baseline. If we play true Trojan defense, we will win at least 17-18 games. With a little help on offense, it will climb to 20 games or more. To get above that, we are going to have to have more than a little help on offense.

beyond me

I just do not understand this attitude among college basketball fans that post-season is the only thing that matters. Oh well, to each his own, I suppose.

out of date?

In this era of pass-oriented, run-and-gun, shotgun football offenses, if someone were to go back to the now-outdated Wishbone offense, it would pose an immediate problem for opponents simply because they no longer see it. They would not in the habit of dealing with it, their defenses would not be set up to handle it, and they would not have recruited players to handle that type of defense. I wonder what the parallels are to the Wishbone in today’s college basketball world? Sometimes, in the fashion of the sports world, what is out of vogue is valuable simply because it is out of vogue.

optimism in spite of ourselves?

Due to having been burned so many times in recruiting, the Little Rock fan base has become pretty jaundiced. However, if we should re-sign Will Neighbour this fall, it will be hard to keep us from being as optimistic as we have been in a while, I am guessing.

GOOD BASKETBALL

Play good basketball! That is the formula for success at the mid-major level. You cannot always guarantee the level of talent you will have, but you can make them play good, smart ball – the type of ball where they don’t beat themselves. Butler and Southern Illinois are two examples of programs which, over the last decade, have enjoyed considerable success at a high level by installing a system of good basketball, and, at least some of the time, getting the talent to make it work better than most. Good basketball can to some degree make up for a lack of talent – but only to a certain extent. You can be good, maybe even consistently good, but you will never be really good without some degree of talent. However, the odds of building a winning program over an extended period of time are better by installing a class culture in the program and close attention to playing good, mistake-free ball than it is by rolling the dice on getting overwhelming talent – which rarely happens at our level.

shooters only?

I hate to disagree with my compatriots, but I cannot subscribe to the “don’t recruit them if they cannot shoot” theory. It just is not true that every player does everything equally well. Every player is stronger at some facet of the game than others. If you recruit so that every player can shoot (which the Princeton schools do), then you will face the same thing they face – they get pounded on the boards and can only play zone defense. Would we turn down Wilt or Shaq because they were terrible shooters? If you recruit based on a single overriding criterium, then you automatically say that the other criteria will of necessity fall by the wayside. You have to recruit so that you have SOME shooters – several of them, and you normally will want your perimeter players to be able to shoot from the perimeter, but do you turn down a John Fowler just because he can’t shoot (and he could) – one of the best defensive players we have ever had? That just does not make sense to me.