First off, I know. TLDR......but stick with me.
I have to put this disclaimer out there, because this board will lose it's collective shit and go full red on me if I don't. I like Rick Barnes. I think, especially when you consider where our program was when you're coming off of Tyndall like we were, that he was a homerun hire. I think he will continue to be great here. With that disclaimer out there, can we talk about his philosophy and talk candidly about the game against Loyola.
I was talking with someone on this board (actually, a few of us were) that I won't name because it's up to them if they want to put themselves out there. This poster made a great observation about the game when we started talking about Grant being double so consistently. They said they'd love to see the points per possession when Grant caught the ball in the post vs. when he was facing the basket near the top of the key. The point was how do you not adjust before the final 4 minutes of the game and give Grant an opportunity to do something on his own with the ball vs. relying on our guards to feed him the ball in the post (which they did a poor job of)? Is that more on the players or more on CRB? It can be fairly be held against CRB for not making those adjustments.
The ultimate direction of this conversation is intended to be can Rick consistently make deep runs in the tournament using his philosophy that is so heavily defensive minded when college basketball is a game where you have to have elite guards who can create off the dribble to consistently be a threat? Kenny Smith had a great way of describing this before the Arizona game the other night when he said (and I'm paraphrasing here) that it's easier to defend teams who rely so much on their bigs on offense because it's easier to gameplan against. It's much easier to keep the ball out of a bigs hands vs taking it out of a guards hands. And it's why you see teams with great guards advance more often, and make runs. There is a lot of truth to that.
The question is can Rick recruit a guard good enough to do that? And what's more, is will he give them some latitude, understanding that while they may have some lapses on defense time-to-time, their offensive ability will exceed those lapses in terms of covering for their own mistakes.
Make no mistake about it. I said to a poster this week that if he has one final four run in 16 years like he did at TX, that is 100% a failure. If you don't think it is, you are complacent with losing.
I have to put this disclaimer out there, because this board will lose it's collective shit and go full red on me if I don't. I like Rick Barnes. I think, especially when you consider where our program was when you're coming off of Tyndall like we were, that he was a homerun hire. I think he will continue to be great here. With that disclaimer out there, can we talk about his philosophy and talk candidly about the game against Loyola.
I was talking with someone on this board (actually, a few of us were) that I won't name because it's up to them if they want to put themselves out there. This poster made a great observation about the game when we started talking about Grant being double so consistently. They said they'd love to see the points per possession when Grant caught the ball in the post vs. when he was facing the basket near the top of the key. The point was how do you not adjust before the final 4 minutes of the game and give Grant an opportunity to do something on his own with the ball vs. relying on our guards to feed him the ball in the post (which they did a poor job of)? Is that more on the players or more on CRB? It can be fairly be held against CRB for not making those adjustments.
The ultimate direction of this conversation is intended to be can Rick consistently make deep runs in the tournament using his philosophy that is so heavily defensive minded when college basketball is a game where you have to have elite guards who can create off the dribble to consistently be a threat? Kenny Smith had a great way of describing this before the Arizona game the other night when he said (and I'm paraphrasing here) that it's easier to defend teams who rely so much on their bigs on offense because it's easier to gameplan against. It's much easier to keep the ball out of a bigs hands vs taking it out of a guards hands. And it's why you see teams with great guards advance more often, and make runs. There is a lot of truth to that.
The question is can Rick recruit a guard good enough to do that? And what's more, is will he give them some latitude, understanding that while they may have some lapses on defense time-to-time, their offensive ability will exceed those lapses in terms of covering for their own mistakes.
Make no mistake about it. I said to a poster this week that if he has one final four run in 16 years like he did at TX, that is 100% a failure. If you don't think it is, you are complacent with losing.
