[81alum]

I don't watch with much emotional attachment anymore but I do watch and pay attention.  Bottom line to me is that yes, talent is down, but not down to the point we see such poor play.  We may not have the talent level of last year but we have way more than the results indicate.  The team seems lost out there.  When one or two players struggle but the rest are ok, the issue is those particular players.  When the whole team struggles, the issues are deeper - coaching and schemes.  

I very much want Kate Paye to succeed.  She is in a tough spot.  I'm sure there is a learning curve for her.  Even with all her years as an assistant or associate head coach, being the head coach, making all the decisions yourself, leading a team, setting the tone, etc., etc. is a big jump.  So far it is not going well.  The ND game was embarrassing.  The team was not ready for the game and did not play with focus and intensity.  We generally do not look very well coached.  

The only slightly encouraging sign is that the players who are helping the most are the freshmen and sophs.  I do think Tara retired at maybe the best time for her personally but the worst time for the program and for Paye, who had to reinvent the team in a sense, given the changes in the roster.  She was not set up for success and certainly has not made the team greater than the sum of the talents on the roster.  We look much less than the sum of the parts, lack of posts or not.  I just hope the team hasn't given up.  If we lose young players after this wretched season, next year may not be all that much better, and if so, well program is in deep doo doo.

Good to hear from you!

Remember that when Tara retired neither she nor Kate knew which players would be back and which would be gone.  Cam may have told them beforehand that she was going pro--but Cam herself had seriously thought about coming back until pretty late in the season.  And Kiki's decision came after the announcement of Tara's retirement.   So neither Tara nor Kate could have known just how bad a situation Kate was walking into.

I think Kate's biggest mistake so far was not installing a new offense immediately over the summer when she should have realized that she would have too few players capable of running the Princeton with proficiency.  But at that time she still thought she would have Lepolo, who at least can run the system.  Getting so much bad news so late seems to have made it impossible to really change those schemes in time.  Schemes indeed.

The real key to the season's collapse, though, seems to me to be the receding of Bosgana and Demetre as scorers.  They have both been streaky in the past, but when they got ample play time early this year they seemed to become more consistent.  That went "poof" in the last month.

I'm still not giving up on Kate Paye, but I sure want to see more improvement and a few wins before this season is done and buried...

[81alum]

I don't watch with much emotional attachment anymore but I do watch and pay attention.  Bottom line to me is that yes, talent is down, but not down to the point we see such poor play.  We may not have the talent level of last year but we have way more than the results indicate.  The team seems lost out there.  When one or two players struggle but the rest are ok, the issue is those particular players.  When the whole team struggles, the issues are deeper - coaching and schemes.  

I very much want Kate Paye to succeed.  She is in a tough spot.  I'm sure there is a learning curve for her.  Even with all her years as an assistant or associate head coach, being the head coach, making all the decisions yourself, leading a team, setting the tone, etc., etc. is a big jump.  So far it is not going well.  The ND game was embarrassing.  The team was not ready for the game and did not play with focus and intensity.  We generally do not look very well coached.  

The only slightly encouraging sign is that the players who are helping the most are the freshmen and sophs.  I do think Tara retired at maybe the best time for her personally but the worst time for the program and for Paye, who had to reinvent the team in a sense, given the changes in the roster.  She was not set up for success and certainly has not made the team greater than the sum of the talents on the roster.  We look much less than the sum of the parts, lack of posts or not.  I just hope the team hasn't given up.  If we lose young players after this wretched season, next year may not be all that much better, and if so, well program is in deep doo doo.

Good to hear from you!

Remember that when Tara retired neither she nor Kate knew which players would be back and which would be gone.  Cam may have told them beforehand that she was going pro--but Cam herself had seriously thought about coming back until pretty late in the season.  And Kiki's decision came after the announcement of Tara's retirement.   So neither Tara nor Kate could have known just how bad a situation Kate was walking into.

I think Kate's biggest mistake so far was not installing a new offense immediately over the summer when she should have realized that she would have too few players capable of running the Princeton with proficiency.  But at that time she still thought she would have Lepolo, who at least can run the system.  Getting so much bad news so late seems to have made it impossible to really change those schemes in time.  Schemes indeed.

The real key to the season's collapse, though, seems to me to be the receding of Bosgana and Demetre as scorers.  They have both been streaky in the past, but when they got ample play time early this year they seemed to become more consistent.  That went "poof" in the last month.

I'm still not giving up on Kate Paye, but I sure want to see more improvement and a few wins before this season is done and buried...