We now have both a Q3 and a Q4 loss from this tournament.

Based on some of his interviews and comments, I surmise that Drew's coaching philosophy is to setup a system and encourage players to make snap decisions within them. We've seen the good and bad from that IMHO so far in his tenure.

On defense he prefers to switch everything, and it seems like players can make their own decisions on helping/rim protection. Occasionally we will double or flash a zone look if we're having particular matchup problems, but seems like his ideal is not to.

On offense, he wants to run a motion offense like horns and let players react and freewheel a bit to get a shot naturally.

My impression -- and I'm hardly an expert -- is that Drew prefers kind of a "set it and forget it" approach rather than micro-managing. We still run plays and change things up on defense, but not that often and sometimes it seems like we may be a little slow to react to another coach's moves. This is not particularly surprising with an inexperienced coach, IMO, and to be fair the more hands-off approach CAN work beautifully with players who are comfortable doing so and are familiar with each other. I think that's why he leaned towards the soft schedule, to build that cohesion.

My main criticism is that sometimes it seems like he's hesitant to react to coaching moves by other teams, and I'll admit I've been frustrated seeing more experienced coaches change things up and it takes us too long to react with a countering strategy. Drew wants the guys to figure it out own their own, but they just don't (especially without Houinsou out there) and the other team goes on a long run exploiting the same thing over and over again.

So in that regard, I think the injuries really are a worst-case scenario for Drew. It requires him to be more of a micro-manager coach than he is comfortable with at this point in his career (again, IMO). For the group of players we have available now, I think we should probably have been running more set plays and things where guys just have to execute and think less.

EDIT: TL/DR, I guess this was just a longwinded way of saying I don't think Drew is a good in-game coach yet, although I think that will come. And to be clear I don't want him going anywere. His recruiting and portal skills, IMO, are elite, and his coaching system itself is a very good one. Once he starts getting the hang of the in-game chess moves, we'll be in business, but yeah at the moment a vet like Mack can outmanuever him.

I really can’t blame Drew or his style here. I think that when a team loses essentially 4 starters(i.e expected production) No scheme or coaching is going to make up that gap in talent and cohesion, we’ve had to possibly unredshirt a freshman. We can expect to be relatively healthy in a month, where i think the pressure to be the #1/#2 option will be off Des and he’ll hopefully perform better. Don’t think he should be handling any real point guard duties even as bare as we are now. As it is, if we’re gonna to get this version of Des, then unfortunately team is sort of cooked.