This team is fun on paper, but why does it look so bad? | Gopherhole

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ecoperson said:
Some of you must be very unpleasant to spend time with in person. The constant negativity and endless nit-picking is just so tiring. I would hate to be your child or spouse who fails to meet expectations day in and day out. It would also really suck to have you as a supervisor as nothing is likely ever good enough because its not exactly how you would do it.

The coaches and team are trying as hard as they can on and off the court. If you don't like a 4-1 record for nearly a full roster of new players, go follow another team. Maybe you can come back next year when Evans and Christie lace 'em up. Of course, I am sure they will disappoint you as well so maybe just watch the #1 team in the country each week as I am sure that will bring you greater joy and match your basketball acumen.

I know many of you are still chaffed about Johnson being hired. We are stuck with Johnson and company for a few more years so you may want to move past this. Or maybe share some of your expertise with the staff and AD. I am sure they would love to hear from you.

I might also recommend that you and your bobos cough up some major cash so Coyle can hire the biggest name coach out there and so we can pay the NIL necessary to attract the can't miss talent.

While you are doing that, I am going to sit back and watch this young team grow, gel, and IMPROVE. There is a lot of room for that but fortunately we have 25+ more games to go.
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The biggest problem is the Athletic Director and his poor hire of basketball coaches. He is trying to keep costs low while he pays down athletic department debt. He is hiring low tier MN coaches that fans can connect with and help him raise donor monies. That's it.

You can keep believing the lie that every year it is going to get better, but it will not. Both men's and women's basketball programs will be BIG10 bottom dwellers year after year until the change is made at the top. The results speak for themselves.
 

60's Guy said:
There is so much in basketball you can't duplicate in practice. Practice the first 10 weeks...what you say is true. Season starts and you are load managing guys, especially depending on the schedule. How many minutes do you think the team practices in December? and in February?
I bet Battle and Garcia and Payne might be available for Ola-Joseph to practice against for 5 or 10 minutes on a good day. You are doing walk throughs, film study, blackboard discussions, shooting, stretching, weight training and rarely 5 on 5. That is not how you get better as an inexperienced player.
Sure, like your music example, you spend time on individual skills, ball handling, shooting, strength training. Two on two with the other guys who don't play. To get experience once the season starts, you need game minutes. They ain't scrimmaging 5 on 5 in December but rarely and Jan, Feb less to none. You are saving legs for the guys who play 40 minutes. So no, Ola-Joseph is not learning how to play Big Ten basketball in practice. He can improve his individual skills but that is 180 from being comfortable, confident, productive in a Big Ten game.

And I get that LOTS of coaches play 7 guys. At Minnesota we never (I suppose it is almost never)
have our best 7 guys healthy for an entire season. 2 of those 7 (or 9) didn't get through fall practice. Battle and Carrington missed weeks. You gotta play 9 now so you can play 7 IF two get hurt.

Again, just my experience from 40 years of successful coaching. Another guy, you, Ben can win only playing 7. Last year we probably didn't have the next guy up. Okay, this year we do. It's just how I'd do it, did it to win titles and fight at the top for them when we didn't. Not live on the bottom.
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We are playing more than 7 guys consistently this year. Last year we would’ve of too if Fox and Ihnen weren’t out. Just stating what most play in close games. Depth is awesome but really hard to come by in todays college basketball with the portal. I’m not worried about our minutes distribution yet.
 

Bunyan said:
The biggest problem is the Athletic Director and his poor hire of basketball coaches. He is trying to keep costs low while he pays down athletic department debt. He is hiring low tier MN coaches that fans can connect with and help him raise donor monies. That's it.
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We paid Ben the going rate. He didn’t sign on the cheap and was given a decent assistant pool. More money won’t ever hurt though.
Bunyan said:
You can keep believing the lie that every year it is going to get better, but it will not. Both men's and women's basketball programs will be BIG10 bottom dwellers year after year until the change is made at the top. The results speak for themselves.
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Coyle is by far the best AD we’ve had in my lifetime. I hate the Whalen hire, but I’m not even close to ready to toss the Ben hire as bad. This is coming from someone who hated it initially.
 

Bunyan said:
The biggest problem is the Athletic Director and his poor hire of basketball coaches. He is trying to keep costs low while he pays down athletic department debt. He is hiring low tier MN coaches that fans can connect with and help him raise donor monies. That's it.

You can keep believing the lie that every year it is going to get better, but it will not. Both men's and women's basketball programs will be BIG10 bottom dwellers year after year until the change is made at the top. The results speak for themselves.
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Are you saying that Ben was a bad hire? Be ready banning
 





I think the only reason this team is “fun on paper” is because we’ve had nothing else to talk about so we were gushing about a bunch of lightly recruited freshmen beating one of the worst teams in the NCAA.

Battle and Garcia are good players but have some flaws. Payne is a high major talent, no doubt. Carrington…maybe? Everyone else is a transfer from a lower conference that may be struggling playing up or a freshman that barely any major programs wanted. This is what you get.
 
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60's Guy said:
There is so much in basketball you can't duplicate in practice. Practice the first 10 weeks...what you say is true. Season starts and you are load managing guys, especially depending on the schedule. How many minutes do you think the team practices in December? and in February?
I bet Battle and Garcia and Payne might be available for Ola-Joseph to practice against for 5 or 10 minutes on a good day. You are doing walk throughs, film study, blackboard discussions, shooting, stretching, weight training and rarely 5 on 5. That is not how you get better as an inexperienced player.
Sure, like your music example, you spend time on individual skills, ball handling, shooting, strength training. Two on two with the other guys who don't play. To get experience once the season starts, you need game minutes. They ain't scrimmaging 5 on 5 in December but rarely and Jan, Feb less to none. You are saving legs for the guys who play 40 minutes. So no, Ola-Joseph is not learning how to play Big Ten basketball in practice. He can improve his individual skills but that is 180 from being comfortable, confident, productive in a Big Ten game.

And I get that LOTS of coaches play 7 guys. At Minnesota we never (I suppose it is almost never)
have our best 7 guys healthy for an entire season. 2 of those 7 (or 9) didn't get through fall practice. Battle and Carrington missed weeks. You gotta play 9 now so you can play 7 IF two get hurt.

Again, just my experience from 40 years of successful coaching. Another guy, you, Ben can win only playing 7. Last year we probably didn't have the next guy up. Okay, this year we do. It's just how I'd do it, did it to win titles and fight at the top for them when we didn't. Not live on the bottom.
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Sounds like you think Betts should have gone to prep school.
 



Bunyan said:
The biggest problem is the Athletic Director and his poor hire of basketball coaches. He is trying to keep costs low while he pays down athletic department debt. He is hiring low tier MN coaches that fans can connect with and help him raise donor monies. That's it.

You can keep believing the lie that every year it is going to get better, but it will not. Both men's and women's basketball programs will be BIG10 bottom dwellers year after year until the change is made at the top. The results speak for themselves.
Click to expand...
Poor hires or simply inexperienced? Whalen suddenly pulled in a top ten recruiting class. Will be interesting to see what she can do with the talent. Johnson pulls in one of the top big men in the country out of a CA and a stud guard out of IL for next year. I am willing to give him more than a few games with this squad before I write this season off... let alone prognosticating that Johnson will be a bottom dweller during his entire career based on a lost season and 5-6 games.
 

ecoperson said:
Poor hires or simply inexperienced? Whalen suddenly pulled in a top ten recruiting class. Will be interesting to see what she can do with the talent. Johnson pulls in one of the top big men in the country out of a CA and a stud guard out of IL for next year. I am willing to give him more than a few games with this squad before I write this season off... let alone prognosticating that Johnson will be a bottom dweller during his entire career based on a lost season and 5-6 games.
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He pulled “one of the best big men in the country” out of CA that curiously nobody in the vicinity bothered to recruit. Seems like Kansas and Texas were mildly interested, the battle was us and TCU. That doesn’t sound like a borderline 5 star player.

He definitely looks like a solid rim protector but I don’t think he’s going to change the program.
 





RickDornsby said:
He pulled “one of the best big men in the country” out of CA that curiously nobody in the vicinity bothered to recruit. Seems like Kansas and Texas were mildly interested, the battle was us and TCU. That doesn’t sound like a borderline 5 star player.

He definitely looks like a solid rim protector but I don’t think he’s going to change the program.
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Kansas was in Evans final 3. Evans cut list to MN and TCU. I haven't heard why but I think he actually wanted to go to a program where he'd get minutes but also be able to grow. Defensive anchors like Evans have the potential to shape the program.
 



Gopherfan84 said:
I don’t think there are enough measurements that are valid or reliable yet. Tonight’s effort doesn’t help my case though
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Admittedly, it’s hard to predict with so many new players, but this has been predicted from miles away before the season. KenPom had us as something like the #110 team coming into the year. That’s #13/14 in the conference territory.

We’ll probably drop further after tonight, but we are currently #144, right by Umass-Lowell and Bradley. This is why we are underdogs to Cal Baptist, etc.

Penn State is #31. If we played at Penn State, we’d be roughly 18 point underdogs.
 

RickDornsby said:
Admittedly, it’s hard to predict with so many new players, but this has been predicted from miles away before the season. KenPom had us as something like the #110 team coming into the year. That’s #13/14 in the conference territory.

We’ll probably drop further after tonight, but we are currently #144, right by Umass-Lowell and Bradley. This is why we are underdogs to Cal Baptist, etc.

Penn State is #31. If we played at Penn State, we’d be roughly 18 point underdogs.
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I love KenPom, but Pomeroy himself said his early season rankings are skewed towards teams returning guys and don’t account enough for incoming players. I bet Vegas puts us at less than 18 when we play. Tough to say since we don’t play for awhile, but I’d be shocked and take the gophers with a good chunk of change if it was 18
 

Gopherfan84 said:
I love KenPom, but Pomeroy himself said his early season rankings are skewed towards teams returning guys and don’t account enough for incoming players. I bet Vegas puts us at less than 18 when we play. Tough to say since we don’t play for awhile, but I’d be shocked and take the gophers with a good chunk of change if it was 18
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Not sure if you know how Vegas works, but they rely HEAVILY on guys like KenPom. They know if he says say 10 and they put 2 that game will get hammered. I know the boomers don't like these new fangled stat things but they really are a great indicator of a team, even this early.
 

leib0039 said:
Not sure if you know how Vegas works, but they rely HEAVILY on guys like KenPom. They know if he says say 10 and they put 2 that game will get hammered. I know the boomers don't like these new fangled stat things but they really are a great indicator of a team, even this early.
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Dude I’m not even 40 and like KenPom and betting on games. Pomeroy himself says it’s flawed early. Vegas uses Pomeroy as a metric sure, but it’s not the only thing they use. I coached and am an analytic guy.
 

Think everyone just needs a little perception here. Outside of these past couple games in the opening minutes of each half....I believe we've had at least two true freshman on the floor at all times.

That's tough no matter how you slice it. There's going to be some growing pains. The brightside is that the talent is there. You can see the ability. It's just raw right now and needs time to develop.
 



rowdaboat said:
The offense looks like watching guys playing pickup at lifetime who just met a half hour ago
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It looks like wrestlers playing on the same team at a Wednesday night open gym. Their inability to shot and guard is just mind blowing. UNLV is a terribly shooting team and the gophers made them look like golden state.
 

bga1 said:
They looked like they had no coach, no plan whatsoever.
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They have a coach, a plan and some talent. They lack speed and they are out of shape. They will struggle until they get a couple of quick guards. The plan is useless if you consistently get beat to the ball and the spot.

The conditioning issue is on Ben, his staff and the players. It's perplexing.
 


Gopherfan84 said:
Coyle is by far the best AD we’ve had in my lifetime.
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curious what you're seeing to believe this. Appears Mens hockey is trending up. I still like the PJ hire. Any other U sports teams trending up?

swimming is way down, might finish last in the bigten this year. wrestling is down - Coyle didn't create the JRob problem but he's holding on to Eggum too long as the team is about to leave the top 10 rankings. and then there is basketball

Iowa State showed you could take a 2 win basketball team and turn it around in one year by their TJ hire.

Why can't Minnesota do that?
 

Not sure why anybody is surprised.

The roster is a mishmash of transfers and pretty lightly regarded freshmen with a coaching staff literally learning on the job. It was inevitable that there would be issues.

My advice would be to check-in a few years from now and see if they've improved from the cellar-dweller program they currently are. Otherwise, prepare to see a lot of losing and bad basketball for awhile. That's just the reality, like it or not.
 

MRJ said:
Not sure why anybody is surprised.

The roster is a mishmash of transfers and pretty lightly regarded freshmen with a coaching staff literally learning on the job. It was inevitable that there would be issues.

My advice would be to check-in a few years from now and see if they've improved from the cellar-dweller program they currently are. Otherwise, prepare to see a lot of losing and bad basketball for awhile. That's just the reality, like it or not.
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2027 bayyybeee!
 

GopherOhana said:
curious what you're seeing to believe this. Appears Mens hockey is trending up. I still like the PJ hire. Any other U sports teams trending up?

swimming is way down, might finish last in the bigten this year. wrestling is down - Coyle didn't create the JRob problem but he's holding on to Eggum too long as the team is about to leave the top 10 rankings. and then there is basketball

Iowa State showed you could take a 2 win basketball team and turn it around in one year by their TJ hire.

Why can't Minnesota do that?
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The department as a whole is loaded with mediocrity. Make of that what you will, but there isn't a lot to cheer about.
 

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