Scholarship table
He needs to balance it out and hopefully Christopherson and Hayward can develop into shooters in the years ahead.
The easiest thing to do following these losses is to blame coaching. But this has to be Creans most difficult team to coach. In DJ, he has a potential star who has the ego of a star and that has helped us win (Pitt, Valpo, Duke) and led to losses (Wisc, G-town, DePaul (that last shot was awful)). So his dilemma is how do you keep DJs confidence high while also breaking him down and making him realize that he is hurting the team when he bombs away. McNeal is also a challenge in his toughness makes him very good but his fearlessness leads to many turnovers. IMO, Creans mistake is that a few years ago he recruited mostly shooters. He then realized he needed to increase athletism and he did that at the expense of shooters. He needs to balance it out and hopefully Christopherson and Hayward can develop into shooters in the years ahead.I thought last nights game was among the most frustrating I've seen in awhile. But I thought the team played hard and that's a credit to Crean. The challenging part is to get them to play smarter and that's necessary if they are going to have end this season successfully b/c they have too many weaknesses to rely on their athleticism alone.
Quote from: AlumKCof93 on February 15, 2007, 03:09:05 PMThe easiest thing to do following these losses is to blame coaching. But this has to be Creans most difficult team to coach. In DJ, he has a potential star who has the ego of a star and that has helped us win (Pitt, Valpo, Duke) and led to losses (Wisc, G-town, DePaul (that last shot was awful)). So his dilemma is how do you keep DJs confidence high while also breaking him down and making him realize that he is hurting the team when he bombs away. McNeal is also a challenge in his toughness makes him very good but his fearlessness leads to many turnovers. IMO, Creans mistake is that a few years ago he recruited mostly shooters. He then realized he needed to increase athletism and he did that at the expense of shooters. He needs to balance it out and hopefully Christopherson and Hayward can develop into shooters in the years ahead.I thought last nights game was among the most frustrating I've seen in awhile. But I thought the team played hard and that's a credit to Crean. The challenging part is to get them to play smarter and that's necessary if they are going to have end this season successfully b/c they have too many weaknesses to rely on their athleticism alone.Really you think this year is harder to coach than the year we had so many injuries we had our center bringing the ball up the court to get past the press?
IMO what makes this team hard to coach is the NBA ambition of McNeal, Mathews, and particularily DJ. DJ told TC well before the season that he was going to opt for the NBA after the season (I know this for a fact)----hence his scholarship was used and Acker brought in. IMO DJ is too focused on where he's going in the draft and therefore is pressing (which is obvious)-------TC probably had a talk with him after the 2 losses and he regained his old form ----now recently he's started pressing again (forcing things)-----obviously he's trying to move up in the mocks. Meanwhile McNeal and Mathews resent DJ's attitude as his forcing means less opps for them and that it hurts the team------results in less than ideal team chemistry! The closer we get to the end of the season----the less control TC has over DJ.Just a theory!