Top 25 teams with point guard concerns

[iKrager]

They've had two bad NCAA games.......St Louis and Michigan State. They played over their heads in the Arizona game and had a chance to win in the final seconds.

Do you think Pastner prepared them well against Arizona or do you think the players were just in the zone more or less?

 

[bleedingTNorange]

Exactly.

I think it's the opposite of what someone said. You can learn coaching (plus you can hire great assistants), you can't learn recruiting.

You can hire assistants to help with recruiting as well, so that definitely works both ways.

 

[cncchris33]

Exactly.

I think it's the opposite of what someone said. You can learn coaching (plus you can hire great assistants), you can't learn recruiting. The Pastner at Murray State example may be valid but a lot of people still think he can't recruit nationally. That will be determined in the next couple of years as well.

Martin will have a great roster over at least the next couple of years and hopefully recruiting will improve because of it. If he doesn't have success in making and winning in the NCAA, we'll be seeing the same comments about him as we are Pastner now.

Disagree if you want, but being a good coach is not sonething you can fake. You either are or you aren't. Can you improve your ability? Sure...in the X's & O's, but that is only part of coaching.

You can't fake being a good recruiter either, but so many other things affect your ability to recruit.

Bottom line, good coaches/average recruiters can be competitive with any level of talent. Good recruiters/average coaches can only compete when they have a talent advantage.

Like I said, if Josh Pastner didn't have the Memphis brand and local talent to recruit to, he'd be just another middling coach. Put him at Murray State where recruiting is much more difficult, and he'd be exposed as just that.

 

[MemphisCanes]

One is generally much easier to correct. Being a good coach is intangible in a sense. One can become a better recruiter due to circumstance and situation. As for being a good coach, you either are or you aren't.

Brad Stevens for example. Or Shaka Smart. Their situations somewhat limit(ed) their ability to recruit, but their coaching abilities turned a group of average talent into above average teams. Now put Stevens at Indiana, or Smart at Georgetown and they instantly gain a different level of credibility with elite talent.

Put Pastner at Murray State (sans his small bit of credibility as a high-major coach at Memphis), and I think you get a better idea of his coaching ability.

The Ron Zook example above is a good one. Great recruiter, but an average, at best, coach. Back to your statement, who'd you rather have coaching your football team, Ron Zook or Frank Beamer?

I think that's actually backwards: the longer you coach the better that you'll become at it; recruiting is a "salesmanship" mentality, either you have it or you don't.

 

[dixiebullfrog]

Disagree if you want, but being a good coach is not sonething you can fake. You either are or you aren't. Can you improve your ability? Sure...in the X's & O's, but that is only part of coaching.

You can't fake being a good recruiter either, but so many other things affect your ability to recruit.

Bottom line, good coaches/average recruiters can be competitive with any level of talent. Good recruiters/average coaches can only compete when they have a talent advantage.

Like I said, if Josh Pastner didn't have the Memphis brand and local talent to recruit to, he'd be just another middling coach. Put him at Murray State where recruiting is much more difficult, and he'd be exposed as just that.

Absent your usual sarcasm, you normally make readable/believable posts. Yet, for some reason, you don't seem to be able to grasp the idea that "good/great coach" and "great recruiter" are NOT mutually exclusive. In this "one and done" NCAA bb world, you've got to be a very, very good recruiter at a minimum to elevate your program.

And let's not turn this post into another Pastner love/hate session. A similar argument could be made if you put "great coach" Calipari @ Murray State tomorrow. How many of his 2013 recruits would go with him to Murray, KY? How many of his top-notch asst's would be there for 2014? Answer to both: probably zero.

P.S. Pastner would be pulling Memphis kids to MS within two recruiting cycles.

 

[cncchris33]

I think that's actually backwards: the longer you coach the better that you'll become at it; recruiting is a "salesmanship" mentality, either you have it or you don't.

A good coach can be successful anywhere, irrespective of talent. He makes his system fit the players he has and maximizes their strengths while masking their weaknesses.

I've stated you can become a better X's and 0's coach over time. Hoe much better is the question. If you're a good enough coach though, you'll eventually work your way to an attractive job at a more recognizable and credible program.

That alone can make you a better recruiter. I understand the "salesman" mentality, and the notion of you either have it or you don't. I just think there are outside influences that can make you a better recruiter (landing at a big name school due to your coaching ability, hiring excellent assistants with a salesman mentality, putting players in the NBA).

So to the original point, would I rather have a guy who can flat out coach and is maybe an average recruiter over a great recruiter who's a marginal coach? Yes I would. I'd rather have Frank Beamer than Ron Zook. I'd rather have Butch Jones than Lane Kiffin. I'd rather have Brad Stevens than Josh Pastner.

 

[MemphisCanes]

A good coach can be successful anywhere, irrespective of talent. He makes his system fit the players he has and maximizes their strengths while masking their weaknesses.

I've stated you can become a better X's and 0's coach over time. Hoe much better is the question. If you're a good enough coach though, you'll eventually work your way to an attractive job at a more recognizable and credible program.

That alone can make you a better recruiter. I understand the "salesman" mentality, and the notion of you either have it or you don't. I just think there are outside influences that can make you a better recruiter (landing at a big name school due to your coaching ability, hiring excellent assistants with a salesman mentality, putting players in the NBA).

So to the original point, would I rather have a guy who can flat out coach and is maybe an average recruiter over a great recruiter who's a marginal coach? Yes I would. I'd rather have Frank Beamer than Ron Zook. I'd rather have Butch Jones than Lane Kiffin. I'd rather have Brad Stevens than Josh Pastner.

All those coaches have different resumes though, which is a irrelevant point. Of course you'd rather have the better coach.

I'm talking about two coaches with hypothetically comparable resumes. Getting results by recruiting superior players to your program seems to be thought less of when compared to "getting mediocre players to play above their heads", when the end result is the same.

 

[GoobieVol]

A good coach can be successful anywhere, irrespective of talent. He makes his system fit the players he has and maximizes their strengths while masking their weaknesses.

I've stated you can become a better X's and 0's coach over time. Hoe much better is the question. If you're a good enough coach though, you'll eventually work your way to an attractive job at a more recognizable and credible program.

That alone can make you a better recruiter. I understand the "salesman" mentality, and the notion of you either have it or you don't. I just think there are outside influences that can make you a better recruiter (landing at a big name school due to your coaching ability, hiring excellent assistants with a salesman mentality, putting players in the NBA).

So to the original point, would I rather have a guy who can flat out coach and is maybe an average recruiter over a great recruiter who's a marginal coach? Yes I would. I'd rather have Frank Beamer than Ron Zook. I'd rather have Butch Jones than Lane Kiffin. I'd rather have Brad Stevens than Josh Pastner.

Now this would make one heck of a thread. 'Coaches you would rather have than Josh Pastner' lol

We wouldn't even have to restrict it to basketball coaches. Track and Field, swimming, diving, softball,etc.
I am confident Chris4 would be all over this!

 

[MemphisCanes]

Now this would make one heck of a thread. 'Coaches you would rather have than Josh Pastner' lol

We wouldn't even have to restrict it to basketball coaches. Track and Field, swimming, diving, softball,etc.
I am confident Chris4 would be all over this!

I have a feeling you wouldn't like that game as much as you think you would.

 

[GoobieVol]

I have a feeling you wouldn't like that game as much as you think you would.

Come on man, how serious do I seem in my posts? I think I could make lemonade out of most of the lemons you got.

 

[cncchris33]

Absent your usual sarcasm, you normally make readable/believable posts. Yet, for some reason, you don't seem to be able to grasp the idea that "good/great coach" and "great recruiter" are NOT mutually exclusive. In this "one and done" NCAA bb world, you've got to be a very, very good recruiter at a minimum to elevate your program.

And let's not turn this post into another Pastner love/hate session. A similar argument could be made if you put "great coach" Calipari @ Murray State tomorrow. How many of his 2013 recruits would go with him to Murray, KY? How many of his top-notch asst's would be there for 2014? Answer to both: probably zero.

P.S. Pastner would be pulling Memphis kids to MS within two recruiting cycles.

Pastner was brought into the fray in advance of me using him as an example, and it's not as if he isn't germane to the conversation.

Your Coach Cal at Murray State example only furthers my point, except I don't find him to be a "great coach" as you called him, on the floor. He's a great recruiter and an above average floor coach at best, IMO. At UK (and at Memphis to an extent) he had the platform to recruit elite talent. He couldn't do that at Murray State if you removed his current resume, and neither could Pastner. Very few, if any, could. It's just not where great players want to play.

As to your opinion that you have to be a very good recruiter to elevate your program, that may be true on the whole, but there are exceptions, and those exceptions are usually made for really good coaches like Stevens and Shaka Smart. We'll never know what Stevens could have done at Butler, but who's to say he wasn't about to turn them into the next Gonzaga?

Mark Few turned a no-name school in the Pacific Northwest into a household name in the college basketball community, and he didn't do it by initially recruiting top-25 talent either. It's only recently that he has started to get the attention of elite players. He coached the heck out of some pretty average players, put some of them in the league, and won a lot of ballgames in the process.

 

[BigZiti09]

Zzzzzzzzzz

 

[cncchris33]

All those coaches have different resumes though, which is a irrelevant point. Of course you'd rather have the better coach.

I'm talking about two coaches with hypothetically comparable resumes. Getting results by recruiting superior players to your program seems to be thought less of when compared to "getting mediocre players to play above their heads", when the end result is the same.

I see what you're saying. You're comparing similar results from two different paths. That's not what I got from your original post, but it's more clear now.

My guess as to why they are viewed differently is because of the product on the court. One coach theoretically started out with a decided advantage (better players) and in the end, only could muster the same result as a coach whose players had to play above their talent level to achieve the same success.

If a team littered with top-100 talent goes 18-12 and a team with average "3-star" talent does the same against a similar schedule, I'd be more impressed with the team that overachieved. To me, that's the sign of better coaching.

 

[MemphisCanes]

Pastner was brought into the fray in advance of me using him as an example, and it's not as if he isn't germane to the conversation.

Your Coach Cal at Murray State example only furthers my point, except I don't find him to be a "great coach" as you called him, on the floor. He's a great recruiter and an above average floor coach at best, IMO. At UK (and at Memphis to an extent) he had the platform to recruit elite talent. He couldn't do that at Murray State if you removed his current resume, and neither could Pastner. Very few, if any, could. It's just not where great players want to play.

As to your opinion that you have to be a very good recruiter to elevate your program, that may be true on the whole, but there are exceptions, and those exceptions are usually made for really good coaches like Stevens and Shaka Smart. We'll never know what Stevens could have done at Butler, but who's to say he wasn't about to turn them into the next Gonzaga?

Mark Few turned a no-name school in the Pacific Northwest into a household name in the college basketball community, and he didn't do it by initially recruiting top-25 talent either. It's only recently that he has started to get the attention of elite players. He coached the heck out of some pretty average players, put some of them in the league, and won a lot of ballgames in the process.

Mark Few has always recruited REALLY well for a WCC coach, so I'm not sure that he's the example you want to use.

 

[MemphisCanes]

I see what you're saying. You're comparing similar results from two different paths. That's not what I got from your original post, but it's more clear now.

My guess as to why they are viewed differently is because of the product on the court. One coach theoretically started out with a decided advantage (better players) and in the end, only could muster the same result as a coach whose players had to play above their talent level to achieve the same success.

If a team littered with top-100 talent goes 18-12 and a team with average "3-star" talent does the same against a similar schedule, I'd be more impressed with the team that overachieved. To me, that's the sign of better coaching.

There's the rub; people forget that recruiting those players is half the battle.

 

[cncchris33]

Mark Few has always recruited REALLY well for a WCC coach, so I'm not sure that he's the example you want to use.

He's exactly the example I want to use, because you said it yourself, "for a WCC coach".

 

[cncchris33]

There's the rub; people forget that recruiting those players is half the battle.

I get that, but he should be expectes to do more with it. He should be judged on his own merit, and not compared to someone else. If he's recruiting top-25 talent, he should get top-25 results, not the results of a coach getting top-150 talent. In the end, what happens on the court is what matters. There's no trophy for #1 recruiting class, only higher expectations, and you better meet them or you'll be hitting the bricks. One of those coaches overachieved and the other underachieved.

 

[MemphisCanes]

He's exactly the example I want to use, because you said it yourself, "for a WCC coach".

Well, what other conference would you use for comparison? He competes with the WCC schools. He's no worse or better a recruiter because of the school he is at.

If you take Calipari, the best recruiter in history, and put him at Murray State, he won't recruit as well as he did at Memphis or Kentucky. He will, however, recruit circles around the OVC schools and win his conference every year on sheer player talent.

 

[MemphisCanes]

I get that, but he should be expectes to do more with it. He should be judged on his own merit, and not compared to someone else. If he's recruiting top-25 talent, he should get top-25 results, not the results of a coach getting top-150 talent. In the end, what happens on the court is what matters. There's no trophy for #1 recruiting class, only higher expectations, and you better meet them or you'll be hitting the bricks. One of those coaches overachieved and the other underachieved.

That's not true at all; he should be compared to his peers. Again, you're separating recruiting and then on the court results. They're two pieces of the same puzzle. This is my whole point about the double-standard.

 

[cncchris33]

Well, what other conference would you use for comparison? He competes with the WCC schools. He's no worse or better a recruiter because of the school he is at.

If you take Calipari, the best recruiter in history, and put him at Murray State, he won't recruit as well as he did at Memphis or Kentucky. He will, however, recruit circles around the OVC schools and win his conference every year on sheer player talent.

Gonzaga is in another class than every WCC school as a result of the program Mark Few built. I'm comparing him to programs and coaches nationwide, not just in his conference, because he has made Gonzaga into a nationally recognizable program. Sure he recruits well for the WCC, but he has proven to be competitive with the best programs anywhere. You're trying to limit his success and comparisons to the WCC, where he is obviously superior now. I'm broadening that comparison because that's where he has taken that program. And it wasn't built by outrecruiting the Blue Bloods.

 

[cncchris33]

That's not true at all; he should be compared to his peers. Again, you're separating recruiting and then on the court results. They're two pieces of the same puzzle. This is my whole point about the double-standard.

Pastner shouldn't get a pass for underachieving because Coach X is praised for overachieving and arriving at the same results. Coach X can always improve his talent level with his continued success with lesser talent. If he keeps winning, recruits take notice, which improves his chances to land them in the future. Is the light going to suddenly come on for Pastner, and he starts all of a sudden winning with this superior talent? Perhaps, but a tiger rarely changes his stripes.

Pastner should be judged on the job he did with the talent he recruited. That's pretty cut and dry.

I don't see the double-standard as you do.

 

[Shaun1985]

with solid pg play, this team goes as far as they want too. I can't wait for this season to start.

 

[MemphisCanes]

Pastner shouldn't get a pass for underachieving because Coach X is praised for overachieving and arriving at the same results. Coach X can always improve his talent level with his continued success with lesser talent. If he keeps winning, recruits take notice, which improves his chances to land them in the future. Is the light going to suddenly come on for Pastner, and he starts all of a sudden winning with this superior talent? Perhaps, but a tiger rarely changes his stripes.

Pastner should be judged on the job he did with the talent he recruited. That's pretty cut and dry.

I don't see the double-standard as you do.

Pastner should be judged in comparison to other like-situated coaches. He's got a pretty good resume if you look at it unbiasedly; for some reason, he gets beat up on because he wins games with Jimmies and Joes rather than X's and O's.

 

[Mphsbball]

Are we talking about the same Mark Few that Josh Pastner beat head to head in Seattle 2 years ago?

Josh Pastner is just terrible at bench coaching. Like the time his Tigers won a 2OT game in Hawaii by 2 pts. He comes out a month later against the same team, decides to press and force the other team's out of shape big man to bring the ball up instead of their PG. Other team never gets into any kind of offensive rhythm and only scores 50 pts. Pastner's team wins by 20 the second go round.

Give me the guy who doesn't lose at home in postseason to teams like Mercer over the guy who does.

 

[Mphsbball]

They've had two bad NCAA games.......St Louis and Michigan State. They played over their heads in the Arizona game and had a chance to win in the final seconds.

SLU wasn't even a bad "game". It was a bad 6 minute stretch. Tigers went from 6 up to 6 down (in a very low scoring game) from the 10:00 to 4:00 mark in the 2nd half.