Does it REALLY matter if the new coach wins big?

Or does it only matter that he plays uptempo? I wonder if, after five years, his teams average 90 points per game, but have never been to the NCAA Tournament, some folks will be saying, "We need to be patient and give him time." The odds are we will never know, because he might make the tournament (more about being lucky than being good), and he might move on for some reason or other before that time anyway.

Tribute to Gus Leeper

He played four years (plus a redshirt season), was never involved in any sort of off-the-court scandal. That counts in my book. From every outward indication he was a class act.

His numbers:
112 games
140 of 313 from the field (44.8%)
80 of 109 from the line (73.4%)
363 points (3.2 per game)
264 rebounds (2.4 per game)
58 blocks

Those are not the sort of numbers that blow anyone away, but they are the tale of a career in which Gus was always a steady, reliable post presence. His late-season surge in the NCAA Tournament year was a big part of our success. And for those of us who have followed Trojan  basketball for a while, he will be remembered as one of the better free throw shooters among the big men to play here.

It was fun to root for players like Gus Leeper. You could do it with a clear conscience.

Double your fun

Not only does a coaching change bring with it the anticipation and speculation of who the new man will be, but also who the assistants will be, what players will leave, what recruiting commitments will be honored, and whether or not the new coach can piece together a recruiting class in time to patch up any holes. The one big domino toppled sets off the fall of lots of smaller ones. Lots to talk and speculate about.

Assessing the new coach

Not a home run, but that is more than you can expect on our budget, so we will call it a solid extra-base hit. Not great, but certainly not bad.

What I do like about Beard is that he has experience both as head coach at different levels and as an assistant at a couple different D1 programs. I suspect coaches may learn more about some aspects of coaching at the lower levels where it is harder work, and he has done it at three different strata of the basketball world. Add to that the fact that he has been an assistant at a level comparable to ours (North Texas) and also at Texas Tech for a decade, seven of them under Bobby Knight. While I have no use for Knight as a person, even his detractors would admit that he has a great basketball mind, so Beard is bound to have learned a few things about the game.

In short, this is a guy who has paid his dues, not one of the fancy-dans who rides the coat-tails of a high-profile coach into an immediate D1 stint. I like that. He ought to be hungry.

Final 2015 records watch

Here are the entries from this year that made the media guide Year and Career leaders.

CAREER FT%:
Ben Dillard finished at 82.4% for 4th all-time

CAREER ASSISTS:
Josh Hagins has 300 for 6th.

CAREER STEALS:
Josh Hagins has 126 for 4th.

CAREER BLOCKS:
James White has 80 for 8th.

CAREER 3PT MADE:
Josh Hagins has 116 for 12th.

SEASON 3PT%:
Mariek Isom had 45.0% for 6th.

SEASON STEALS:
Josh Hagins had 52 to tie for 12th.

What I wish ESPN would do

During  basketball season, have a feature each week of something like "Great Hidden Plays." Then have some knowledgeable coach look at the films and pick out some plays that would not be noticed by the average fan, but that win games. Things like blocking out, taking charges, denying the ball to the player you are guarding, making smart but not spectacular passes, etc. ESPN has done more than anyone to glorify the sensational and trivialize the everyday, and it the everyday things that makes good basketball.

Coach K needs to send a commission check to Bo Ryan

because if Duke plays Kentucky  in the finals, UK wins 7 times out of 10. Wisconsin did the dirty work.

Whether or not Wisconsin wins

they have been a lot of fun to watch. Just a bunch of fun-loving kids having a good time, enjoying the moment.

Harrison validated our opinion of Calipari

We assumed it of Calipari: he recruited kids of questionable character who had dazzling talent. In other words, Rent-a-Championship. That was what he apparently did at Memphis, and it carried over to Kentucky. And Andrew Harrison's low-class comments just confirmed our opinion.

Who woulda thunk it?

Kentucky believed their own hype. Wisconsin believed their coach. Wisconsin won. It does not always work out that nicely, but this time it did, and it is very, very sweet.

Size does not always win the day

Kentucky had all those 7-footers on the roster, and Wisconsin HAMMERED them on the boards 34-22. That just shows that sometimes grit wins over talent.

Reverse racial discrimination

If Frank Kaminsky had done what Andrew Harrison did, do you think the reaction would have been the same? Do you think anyone would actually believe that it was "said in jest?" Of course not! The national media would be calling for Kaminsky to be drawn and quartered.

Trying to water down Wooden

I hear commentators saying that John Wooden's accomplishments in the NCAA tournament need to have an asterisk because the tournament was not at 64 teams at that point. Come on, guys! Do you really think the 37th-best team in the country was going to beat one of those UCLA teams?

Not overwhelmed by the candidates, but we shall see

LINK

I am not hugely excited by the Final Five candidates, but  then I do not know precisely what Conque is looking for. Joe knows the program and the players. Who knows if he could be a head coach. Darrell Walker does not excite me at all - AT ALL. My picks would be Downey and Pearson probably, but I will not lose sleep over it, since I am not getting paid to make the choice.

Here is why I REALLY appreciated Steve Shields

From their official site:

Bowling Green State University has terminated the employment of Men's Head Basketball Coach Chris Jans. Jans was terminated following an investigation into his recent public conduct. The University concluded that Jans' public conduct failed to meet his obligations as a head coach and the expectations that BGSU Athletics has for its coaches.
The University will have no further comment on this personnel matter.

Shields was here for over a decade and you never heard any of this sort of thing.

Good for Gregg Marshall

He turned down the Alabama job, and is returning to Wichita State (at least as of this moment). Unless he just needs a lot of money a lot, why would he possibly want to go to Alabama, where basketball ranks below football spring training and recruiting as a sport?  Basketball is king in Kansas, and at the moment his team is the reigning program. I am sure WSU will not let his family starve in the meantime.

What I do in the off-season

I follow college baseball a little bit, and I keep up with a couple of high school football teams in the local area, but outside of that I pretty much follow only college basketball. So what do I do in the LONG off-season? I peruse statistics from the past season, I try to keep up with recruiting for the approximately 30 teams I follow to a fairly close degree, and try to stay abreast of the general topics relevant to the sport. Helps the time pass more quickly.

#1 or #2

#1. Wisconsin wins the title.
#2. Kentucky does NOT win the title.

Either of those would make this a very good year.

New Era

When Porter Moser left Little Rock after two years, one could hardly call it the end of an era because the time frame was not long enough to warrant that title. But Steve Shields was there twelve years. There are children who will be teenagers before the next coach starts who never knew anyone at the helm of the Trojans except Shields. There was not a huge change between Moser and Shields because both of them had a fairly similar philosophy. Who knows what scheme the new coach will espouse, but the odds are that there will be some significant changes on one end of the court or the other. Thus, a New Era.

Tweaking without revising

All coaches have a system. They run a particular style of offense and defense, and if they are smart they recruit to those systems. However, you do not always get the players you target, and sometimes injuries upset the formula. So, coaches have to tweak their system to suit the group of players they have. They have to do it without a wholesale revision to that system to the extent that they have to "start from scratch" and start developing and teaching all over again. I suspect it is a fine line sometimes.