[81alum]

At the outset, i confess to being the ultimate armchair second guessing coach. After all my experience coaching three years of 4th 5th and 6th grade boys YMCA teams entitles me to tell the winningest coach in college bb history how to coach .  And I do so constantly throughout the games.

I have backed off of criticizing Tara for going to a grind it out, defensive oriented  approach to winning…even though I believe this approach contributed a lot to out loss to UCLA.  And no, i haven  t mellowed.

I think .Tara wanted to have an open, flowing high powered offense this year . We spent most of the first half of the year playing this way; trying to find the right five to pull it off. Leopolo’s development as a point guard looked like the missing piece. But it turned out to be fools gold.

Those lineups and that style led to a high number of turnovers and I think  the coaches concluded correctly that they could not win the NATTy that way. Further, Haley’s inability to hit the three and Cams early inability to hit mid range shots took away some very important and necessary elements of an open , flowing almost positionless offense. 

By the way, I think Haley Jones is a generational talent and player. She is simply great and we will find out how important she was next year.

What Tara did have was an almost Chiney level inside talent in Cam and an astounding rebounding #4 in Haley. So she set out to grind people down with that; to limit turnovers and force other teas to score against our defense .. not off turnovers and in transition.

It worked pretty well. Eventually, other good teams decided to clog the middle and force us to win from the outside. As we know , that has worked also.

At the end of the day, i think we went to the grind it out, Def she focused inside scoring game because we had to, not because we wanted to. So I am no longer demanding that I replace Tara as head coach.

I am intrigued by the resurgence of  Brinks midrange game. If that’s for real, we could go,back to the open style with Betts and Kiki down low and Haley slashing. We can get enough 3 point action from Jump, Lepolo, Bosagna et Al to win..even with 15 to 20 turnovers?  

It’s worth a try especially if the goal is the NATTY rather than “a deep run”.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

That theory makes a lot of sense, Mudhead.  It does account for the change in offense and game play that came mid year.  Early in the year, Iriafen was hitting jumpers from the elbow, too.   More recently Brink's midrange game has perked up and Iriafen even hit one from the elbow.  Maybe it is time to give our original strategy another try.  It did, after all, get us to a tie in regulation with South Carolina.  And when would be a better time to give it another try than in the first two rounds, at home in Maples?  I like your story, and don't blame you for sticking with it.

[81alum]

At the outset, i confess to being the ultimate armchair second guessing coach. After all my experience coaching three years of 4th 5th and 6th grade boys YMCA teams entitles me to tell the winningest coach in college bb history how to coach .  And I do so constantly throughout the games.

I have backed off of criticizing Tara for going to a grind it out, defensive oriented  approach to winning…even though I believe this approach contributed a lot to out loss to UCLA.  And no, i haven  t mellowed.

I think .Tara wanted to have an open, flowing high powered offense this year . We spent most of the first half of the year playing this way; trying to find the right five to pull it off. Leopolo’s development as a point guard looked like the missing piece. But it turned out to be fools gold.

Those lineups and that style led to a high number of turnovers and I think  the coaches concluded correctly that they could not win the NATTy that way. Further, Haley’s inability to hit the three and Cams early inability to hit mid range shots took away some very important and necessary elements of an open , flowing almost positionless offense. 

By the way, I think Haley Jones is a generational talent and player. She is simply great and we will find out how important she was next year.

What Tara did have was an almost Chiney level inside talent in Cam and an astounding rebounding #4 in Haley. So she set out to grind people down with that; to limit turnovers and force other teas to score against our defense .. not off turnovers and in transition.

It worked pretty well. Eventually, other good teams decided to clog the middle and force us to win from the outside. As we know , that has worked also.

At the end of the day, i think we went to the grind it out, Def she focused inside scoring game because we had to, not because we wanted to. So I am no longer demanding that I replace Tara as head coach.

I am intrigued by the resurgence of  Brinks midrange game. If that’s for real, we could go,back to the open style with Betts and Kiki down low and Haley slashing. We can get enough 3 point action from Jump, Lepolo, Bosagna et Al to win..even with 15 to 20 turnovers?  

It’s worth a try especially if the goal is the NATTY rather than “a deep run”.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

That theory makes a lot of sense, Mudhead.  It does account for the change in offense and game play that came mid year.  Early in the year, Iriafen was hitting jumpers from the elbow, too.   More recently Brink's midrange game has perked up and Iriafen even hit one from the elbow.  Maybe it is time to give our original strategy another try.  It did, after all, get us to a tie in regulation with South Carolina.  And when would be a better time to give it another try than in the first two rounds, at home in Maples?  I like your story, and don't blame you for sticking with it.