JCT wrote:
And I'll give one last question that has occurred to me in the past few days, one that the issues above may be related to.... We know Coach Valentine knows what it takes to put together a winning team, but does he know what things to avoid that making a losing team? I took a look back at Valentine's teams that he played on and learned to coach with. There was only one team that he played on or coached with (at Oakland, Michigan State, and Loyola) that had a non-20 win season. At all those places, there was a coach (Kampe, Izzo, Moser) who had policies in place that kept players from developing bad habits or lapsing into carelessness about things that contribute to losing. The difference can be subtle. That's why culture has become a "thing" that coaches are always trying to develop. A winning culture develops from not only positive, proactive things, but also from avoiding bad habits, attitudes, and inattention to foundational building blocks-- and the latter can go unnoticed if you're in a winning program with a positive culture.
This is the big piece for me. Even outside of Drew, this is a younger staff. I'm assuming this is why Hipsher is here, although I don't have a ton of familiarity with him outside of his bio and Wikipedia page. It's the patterns that we see with this team that are troubling. The terrible starts to second halves, the huge ebbs and flows in playing time for the younger guys, etc.