Ben Johnson is a Disaster

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GopherWeatherGuy said:
This isn’t a youth issue, this is a coaching and roster construction issue. It’s not going to get much better next season.

When you hire someone who doesn’t have any credentials to be a B1G coach, this is what you get. This is the worst Gopher basketball team I’ve seen in my lifetime.
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It most definitely is a coaching issue. If you looked at penn state game tonight and Ben substituting it was bad. Ben doesn’t put these players in the right position to win
 

Ghos345 said:
It most definitely is a coaching issue. If you looked at penn state game tonight and Ben substituting it was bad. Ben doesn’t put these players in the right position to win
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Please share how the substitute patterns should’ve been different tonight
 


Ghos345 said:
Everything about the offensive and defensive schemes are a disaster. I wonder at Xavier what Ben was actually responsible for
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Again would love to hear what’s bad about the schemes. Totally fair to criticize the execution of them, but struggling to see a schematic issue.
Ben ran the defense at Xavier.
 



Gopherfan84 said:
Again would love to hear what’s bad about the schemes. Totally fair to criticize the execution of them, but struggling to see a schematic issue.
Ben ran the defense at Xavier.
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Gophs rarely doubled up on Penn players down low and they seemed to win most of those one on one battles. Conversely Penn smothered our low post possessions. Just say’n.
 

At the end of the game tonight on the defensive end, the Gophers were running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Nobody was in the right position. This directly lead to the start of that PSU run that put the game away. Isn’t Thorson supposed to be a defensive guru? I don’t know if it’s the horses or the coaching, but they sure seem to get lit up quite often by the opposing team. Does CBJ start throwing his assistants under the bus and hiring some new ones this offseason?
 

GoodasGold said:
Gophs rarely doubled up on Penn players down low and they seemed to win most of those one on one battles. Conversely Penn smothered our low post possessions. Just say’n.
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So you’d rather we double on post touches and give open threes to their good shooters? I also rarely saw doubles on our post possessions. They stayed to their man and Battles man never helped period
 

forever a gopher said:
At the end of the game tonight on the defensive end, the Gophers were running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Nobody was in the right position. This directly lead to the start of that PSU run that put the game away. Isn’t Thorson supposed to be a defensive guru? I don’t know if it’s the horses or the coaching, but they sure seem to get lit up quite often by the opposing team. Does CBJ start throwing his assistants under the bus and hiring some new ones this offseason?
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This is why they didn’t double a ton. They get lost on screens easily enough. Henley, Cooper, JOJ, and Payne in the first half struggled on rotations tonight big time. Sherwsberry ran really good sets and Penn States experiences guards ate us up. They did a good job getting their mismatch and taking advantage of it.
We made good adjustments in the second half that helped. This wasn’t a Thorson having a bad game plan thing. This was those 4 guys struggling. The young ones I have hope for. Payne did better, Henley and JOJ didn’t. Cooper is a lost cause imo
 



Gopherfan84 said:
Again would love to hear what’s bad about the schemes. Totally fair to criticize the execution of them, but struggling to see a schematic issue.
Ben ran the defense at Xavier.
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We are around 60th (top 16th percentile) for drop coverage. That leads to a lot of 3s. Not usually ideal against a team who's top 4 scoring options all shot 37% or higher from 3. We lack foot speed so then after a few makes we close out too hard which opens up their driving lanes. First half they got us from 3, after we adjusted to start the 2nd, they did as well and we were lost.

I'd also be interested to know the +/- for the minutes Ramberg and Samuels played.

Those are direct coaching decisions.
 

Ghos345 said:
Everything about the offensive and defensive schemes are a disaster. I wonder at Xavier what Ben was actually responsible for
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Did you watch the game?

We scored easily on multiple out of bounds plays and the color analyst noted it as well.
 





leib0039 said:
We are around 60th (top 16th percentile) for drop coverage. That leads to a lot of 3s. Not usually ideal against a team who's top 4 scoring options all shot 37% or higher from 3. We lack foot speed so then after a few makes we close out too hard which opens up their driving lanes. First half they got us from 3, after we adjusted to start the 2nd, they did as well and we were lost.

I'd also be interested to know the +/- for the minutes Ramberg and Samuels played.

Those are direct coaching decisions.
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So how would prefer we defend screens? Switch everything? Hard hedge? We are not good at stopping dribble penetration or rotations and that lead drive and kick 3s or easy lay ups.
I think +\- is a worthless stat. They have access to way better metrics than those. They can and do get grades on every possession.
 


Gophers7633 said:
Henley playing 33 minutes in a winnable game isn't very defensible.
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I can understand the decision since he had been improving over the last month but he reverted to prior form last night.
 

cjbfbp said:
I can understand the decision since he had been improving over the last month but he reverted to prior form last night.
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We just don't have anyone better. Henley will be fine but he has a long ways to go to be a really solid two way player. Carrington looked like a deer in headlights out there.
 

Gopherfan84 said:
So how would prefer we defend screens? Switch everything? Hard hedge? We are not good at stopping dribble penetration or rotations and that lead drive and kick 3s or easy lay ups.
I think +\- is a worthless stat. They have access to way better metrics than those. They can and do get grades on every possession.
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Well that is somewhat opponent dependent. Against a good 3pt team with no inside game I'd prefer trying a zone or at least hedging and making them take mid range shots. We simply gave them exactly what they wanted. We adjusted for 4 minutes in the second half, PSU countered that and CBJ had no counter to that and we go from up 1 to down 10 right away. Pretty big sign of a bad coach.

Ok you don't like +/-. What is better? Henley ORTG yesterday 70, which is even worse than his season total or 73 which is almost impossible to do. Like one of the worst ortg for any player in the entire country. Or maybe Carrington who had 50% TO rate. Or would you like Samuels and Ramberg where we didn't score with them on the floor. Would you like BPM which measures how much a player provides over an average player over 100 possessions. Yesterday Garcia Payne Cooper joj were better than average players. Henley was a putrid -7.3 (again meaning over 100 possessions he was 7.3 pts worse than an AVERAGE d1 player) or I guess Carrington who was -18 or samuels who was -12. Any of those stats better?

As I've said, a college bball coach has more to do with the results of their team than any coach. They recruit the kids and coach them. So what is it, can ben not identify talent? Or can he not make a kid better? One or both has to be true. There are no statistical measures that day anything different
 

leib0039 said:
Well that is somewhat opponent dependent. Against a good 3pt team with no inside game I'd prefer trying a zone or at least hedging and making them take mid range shots. We simply gave them exactly what they wanted. We adjusted for 4 minutes in the second half, PSU countered that and CBJ had no counter to that and we go from up 1 to down 10 right away. Pretty big sign of a bad coach.
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Beauty of having good old guards. Ben needs his to grow and he needs to find another. Our younger guys messed up enough assignments already. I don’t think we’d want to add more to their plate. Spot on that we didn’t re counter because it probably would’ve led to more confusion though not cause our coach doesn’t know how too.
leib0039 said:
Ok you don't like +/-. What is better? Henley ORTG yesterday 70, which is even worse than his season total or 73 which is almost impossible to do. Like one of the worst ortg for any player in the entire country. Or maybe Carrington who had 50% TO rate. Or would you like Samuels and Ramberg where we didn't score with them on the floor. Would you like BPM which measures how much a player provides over an average player over 100 possessions. Yesterday Garcia Payne Cooper joj were better than average players. Henley was a putrid -7.3 (again meaning over 100 possessions he was 7.3 pts worse than an AVERAGE d1 player) or I guess Carrington who was -18 or samuels who was -12. Any of those stats better?
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Yes I like those better. Where did I say Henley was good?
leib0039 said:
As I've said, a college bball coach has more to do with the results of their team than any coach. They recruit the kids and coach them. So what is it, can ben not identify talent? Or can he not make a kid better? One or both has to be true. There are no statistical measures that day anything different
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Yes college basketball coaches obviously have a lot of effect on a team/program. This team is not good for a myriad of reasons. Our players have gotten better. Henley had been playing better. Last night he wasn’t good. JOJ struggled too. They are freshman playing more than they should (go ahead and blame Ben on this one for his roster construction) but they won’t be consistent. Purdues freshman are currently struggling too. It’s the nature of the beast. We act like Ben just chooses these guys over all these other options that were better. We don’t know what else was out there that was better. Again his job to figure it out, but some act like he’s clueless and that’s not true.
 

Gopherfan84 said:
So you’d rather we double on post touches and give open threes to their good shooters? I also rarely saw doubles on our post possessions. They stayed to their man and Battles man never helped period
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Well, you saw a different game than I did. Sure Battle was covered tightly and he didn’t put up many points. Penn scored inside and out.
 

Does anyone think Carrington and Henley can have a trajectory similar to that of Seth Lundy? All were similarly rated out of HS. Lundy started 15 games his FR year, albeit on a MUCH better team than this Gophers team. He's slowly gotten better and now is avg 14 ppg on 44% from 3 as a SR and is a really nice player. Is that attainable? I'd say probably not based on how much better Lundy was as a FR, but hopefully one of them can be that.
 

Gopherfan84 said:
Beauty of having good old guards. Ben needs his to grow and he needs to find another. Our younger guys messed up enough assignments already. I don’t think we’d want to add more to their plate. Spot on that we didn’t re counter because it probably would’ve led to more confusion though not cause our coach doesn’t know how too.

Yes I like those better. Where did I say Henley was good?

Yes college basketball coaches obviously have a lot of effect on a team/program. This team is not good for a myriad of reasons. Our players have gotten better. Henley had been playing better. Last night he wasn’t good. JOJ struggled too. They are freshman playing more than they should (go ahead and blame Ben on this one for his roster construction) but they won’t be consistent. Purdues freshman are currently struggling too. It’s the nature of the beast. We act like Ben just chooses these guys over all these other options that were better. We don’t know what else was out there that was better. Again his job to figure it out, but some act like he’s clueless and that’s not true.
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In the postgame on BTN, they said Pickett was one of the three best overall players in the conference and a legit Conference Player of the year candidate.
Amazing that he has accomplished what hasn’t happened in D1 in 35 years, per the broadcast, with career totals of 2k points and 700 each boards and assists. Just think how different they are without him.
 
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Gophers7633 said:
Does anyone think Carrington and Henley can have a trajectory similar to that of Seth Lundy? All were similarly rated out of HS. Lundy started 15 games his FR year, albeit on a MUCH better team than this Gophers team. He's slowly gotten better and now is avg 14 ppg on 44% from 3 as a SR and is a really nice player. Is that attainable? I'd say probably not based on how much better Lundy was as a FR, but hopefully one of them can be that.
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I think at this point anything is possible. We all want to see guys come in and play great right from the beginning, but every player develops at different rates. Maybe they pan out, maybe they don't, but making any declarations on their future based on what they have done as a true freshman is not really productive.
 


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