Niko should be in Big Ten coach of the year mix

[GopherGrit]

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According to Gemini, Nebraska is the only team doing significantly more with less. Purdue and Wisconsin just slightly ahead in talent but much higher in the standings. Obviously this is a flawed look because the past HS recruiting is pretty much irrelevant for the gophers.

Wish there was something easy to grab that was some kind of measure taking into account an actual per game grading of play (like a PFF in football) in combination with total minutes being able to be spread around to depth behind the starters.

So x-axis would more truly measure how much talent was available to the coach over the season.

 

[bmb5270]

I have enjoyed watching Niko's offense this year, but little noted has been the fact that the defense has been really solid despite the team having almost zero rim protection. On Evan Miya the Gophs rank 60th in defense and that is being accomplished in a really tough league. We have certainly had teams that we could not stop but there just have not been many breakdowns where the opposition gets easy buckets in a row. The guys always get back on defense, preventing the easy runouts.

I think it shows that coaching and solid fundamentals can compensate for not having elite athletes. Refreshing change from what we saw under Ben and Pitino where the defensive fundamentals were not strong. I guess it does make sense to hire a coach with more than 1 or 0 years of head coaching experience. Who’d have thunk it?

 

[Spaulding!No!]

I think it shows that coaching and solid fundamentals can compensate for not having elite athletes. Refreshing change from what we saw under Ben and Pitino where the defensive fundamentals were not strong. I guess it does make sense to hire a coach with more than 1 or 0 years of head coaching experience. Who’d have thunk it?

Who? MNVC guy

 

[WilliamsArenaGuy]

The OSU goaltend and the USC game were two absolute robberies. Those two wins alone make it 8-8 and 15-12, even with half the roster missing. Unluckiest season I've ever seen.

 

[GophersInIowa]

Losing 2 or 3 guys isn't a good enough reason to have 6 playable Division 1 guys.

What? You think the whole roster has only 8-9 playable guys? It's probably like 10-11 which is pretty common for most rosters. They just have so many guys out (it's more than 2 or 3).

 

[MNVCGUY]

What? You think the whole roster has only 8-9 playable guys? It's probably like 10-11 which is pretty common for most rosters. They just have so many guys out (it's more than 2 or 3).

It is always funny when people act like a team should have quality/playable depth all the way to the very back of the roster, it just doesn't work that way.

Injuries happen and your roster should be setup to withstand a couple.....but we are well beyond that threshold and yet somehow this group keeps finding a way to compete when on paper they should not be able to.

 

[MaxyJR1]

Likely won't be in the mix which is fine. Tough to be coach of the year when you are 12th+ in the league. Tough games down the stretch.

He has really laid a nice foundation that that will be huge in recruiting, portal, and NIL.

I've already started to wonder about transfers that might want to be the next Durkin or Tyson.