This is not knee-jerk and I am not necessarily ripping him because I think he is a great salesman for the university and he has done a great deal in putting MU back on the map. But if you look at the MU the past five years Tom has always had a coach on the floor, with Travis (who has more basketball sense than this team combined) and Novak (especially last year, when he ran every on-court huddle). Who's going to listen to anyone on this team? No one is going to listen to DJ, who somehow believes he's ready for the NBA All-Atar Game. Fitz has lost all confidence in his game. Barro is too raw to be a consistent factor at this level. Jerel leads by example but his game is immature. And we have at least four players who are nowhere near Division I talent. Cubillan may be the answer and hen probably deserves more playing time, even is it means telling DJ to take a seat. It just seems this team is absolutely lost and has lost faith (perhaps rightfully so) in TC.
I think he's being exposed as a recruiter. That, the transfers and coaching turnover were bound to catch up with us.
Quote from: ecompt on January 08, 2007, 07:49:52 AM
This is not knee-jerk and I am not necessarily ripping him because I think he is a great salesman for the university and he has done a great deal in putting MU back on the map. But if you look at the MU the past five years Tom has always had a coach on the floor, with Travis (who has more basketball sense than this team combined) and Novak (especially last year, when he ran every on-court huddle). Who's going to listen to anyone on this team? No one is going to listen to DJ, who somehow believes he's ready for the NBA All-Atar Game. Fitz has lost all confidence in his game. Barro is too raw to be a consistent factor at this level. Jerel leads by example but his game is immature. And we have at least four players who are nowhere near Division I talent. Cubillan may be the answer and hen probably deserves more playing time, even is it means telling DJ to take a seat. It just seems this team is absolutely lost and has lost faith (perhaps rightfully so) in TC.
"is being" or "has been"? I agree with your first comments, he is a great salesman for the university, but when his offenses don't change year after year, and they are horrible to begin with, it tells me a lot. He has to adjust to talent, talent he brought in. I don't see it as much as lack of leadership, as it is the ability to have a three point shooter who can bail out these offenses on a regular and deadly way. Diener was a great leader, and a great shooter. Novak wasn't a great leader in the same mold, but was a great shooter.
I agree with PRN. It's more a problem of personnel/recruiting than of tactics or leadership. I'm not sure what offensive adjustments we can make. We have no low box scorer and no decent outside shooters. You try building a successful zone offense with those basic characteristics. Even with our tremendous quickness at guard we can't really press too much to get offense off of defense because we don't have the frontline defenders to discourage lay-ups should the press get beat.
Wellll .. let's remember, two months ago, DJ was the 2nd coming. He was the vaunted team leader, and Crean was counting on him to play hard, average his 18, lead the team, yadda yadda.
Lots of what is said about DJ is pure conjecture on the NBA subject.
If you guys are right, then that's doubly sad. Because the strength of TC has always been his salesmanship and if he's using his talents on the wrong players we're up the creek. If he has to rely on his game coaching, we're even further upstream. And his JUCOs have been an absolute disaster.