Two Things Can Be True...Yet Seem Contradictory

[VAISUFAN]

Like, I'm reading on here most every day but post once or twice a year. Or this forum has what some would call "Sunshine Pumpers" who are just happy we are out of the Prohm days and winning more than 2 games and trust TJ implicitly. And there are those who are "cliff jumpers" after every loss, and never see the positives. Here are my two things can be true:

• There are very few coaches in the country who could've had the success TJ has had these past two years with the talent he has had. TJ may also be the worst "In-game" coach in the Big 12.
• TJ's philosophy of playing to your daily habits is inherently true. You play like you practice. Yet if you play 100% as hard in practice, every day, as you do in games, then inevitably in the dog days of February the team will hit a wall with dead legs.
• TJ knows his personnel, attitudes, etc... better than anyone and should sub accordingly. Yet subbing by time (at the 17 minute mark of every game for example) is not a coach who has a feel for the game. Coaches sub, because of mistakes, or as an adjustment, or injuries, or a player is exhausted after 3 minutes. Not time.
• Coaches may have the team practicing free-throws every day, yet still be bad in the games.
• Teams can struggle down the stretch of a season and still make a run in the tournament.

Oddly, last night gave me hope. We played hard, seemed to be getting our legs back, and played a very good and desperate WVU team toe to toe. I don't expect much the next 2 games (Baylor & Big 12 Tourney), but I think we are gonna be a hard out in the NCAA Tourney. Two things can be true.

 

[BCClone]

Like, I'm reading on here most every day but post once or twice a year. Or this forum has what some would call "Sunshine Pumpers" who are just happy we are out of the Prohm days and winning more than 2 games and trust TJ implicitly. And there are those who are "cliff jumpers" after every loss, and never see the positives. Here are my two things can be true:

• There are very few coaches in the country who could've had the success TJ has had these past two years with the talent he has had. TJ may also be the worst "In-game" coach in the Big 12.
• TJ's philosophy of playing to your daily habits is inherently true. You play like you practice. Yet if you play 100% as hard in practice, every day, as you do in games, then inevitably in the dog days of February the team will hit a wall with dead legs.
• TJ knows his personnel, attitudes, etc... better than anyone and should sub accordingly. Yet subbing by time (at the 17 minute mark of every game for example) is not a coach who has a feel for the game. Coaches sub, because of mistakes, or as an adjustment, or injuries, or a player is exhausted after 3 minutes. Not time.
• Coaches may have the team practicing free-throws every day, yet still be bad in the games.
• Teams can struggle down the stretch of a season and still make a run in the tournament.

Oddly, last night gave me hope. We played hard, seemed to be getting our legs back, and played a very good and desperate WVU team toe to toe. I don't expect much the next 2 games (Baylor & Big 12 Tourney), but I think we are gonna be a hard out in the NCAA Tourney. Two things can be true.

Very good post and I agree with everything you posted.

 

[fsanford]

Like, I'm reading on here most every day but post once or twice a year. Or this forum has what some would call "Sunshine Pumpers" who are just happy we are out of the Prohm days and winning more than 2 games and trust TJ implicitly. And there are those who are "cliff jumpers" after every loss, and never see the positives. Here are my two things can be true:

• There are very few coaches in the country who could've had the success TJ has had these past two years with the talent he has had. TJ may also be the worst "In-game" coach in the Big 12.
• TJ's philosophy of playing to your daily habits is inherently true. You play like you practice. Yet if you play 100% as hard in practice, every day, as you do in games, then inevitably in the dog days of February the team will hit a wall with dead legs.
• TJ knows his personnel, attitudes, etc... better than anyone and should sub accordingly. Yet subbing by time (at the 17 minute mark of every game for example) is not a coach who has a feel for the game. Coaches sub, because of mistakes, or as an adjustment, or injuries, or a player is exhausted after 3 minutes. Not time.
• Coaches may have the team practicing free-throws every day, yet still be bad in the games.
• Teams can struggle down the stretch of a season and still make a run in the tournament.

Oddly, last night gave me hope. We played hard, seemed to be getting our legs back, and played a very good and desperate WVU team toe to toe. I don't expect much the next 2 games (Baylor & Big 12 Tourney), but I think we are gonna be a hard out in the NCAA Tourney. Two things can be true.

Had try the team won 2 lost 2 and ended up with the same record people would probably be more tolerant.

They inflated expectations with early success. Fans are not always the most rationale bunch.

They ended up finishing higher in the league than preseason polls said they would. If you use that as your benchmark in what may be the best league ever you should be pretty happy.

 

[Clonefan32]

I agree TJ has done a great job bringing us back to relevance. Back-to-back tournaments (I think...?) with where we were with Prohm is nothing short of a miracle.

I think my greatest frustration is not addressing our offensive issues. We lost our two best scorers from last year's team and we replaced them with a shot blocker (Shoon), three freshman that can't shoot, a good defender with no offensive game (Ward) and two guards who came into the year with bad jumpshooting numbers (Williams and Holmes). He just placed absolutely no priority on getting guys who could score.

I appreciate an emphasis on defense, but we have so much redundancy on our roster. I can understand valuing length and athleticism, but someone has to put the ball in the basket and that was just completely ignored this offseason.

 

[iastatefan1]

When Holmes and kalscheur were hot and grill was playing better we were good. They are not now and we are still decent. Great thing about basketball is they can get hot again and our defense will still be there.

 

[BCClone]

I agree TJ has done a great job bringing us back to relevance. Back-to-back tournaments (I think...?) with where we were with Prohm is nothing short of a miracle.

I think my greatest frustration is not addressing our offensive issues. We lost our two best scorers from last year's team and we replaced them with a shot blocker (Shoon), three freshman that can't shoot, a good defender with no offensive game (Ward) and two guards who came into the year with bad jumpshooting numbers (Williams and Holmes). He just placed absolutely no priority on getting guys who could score.

I appreciate an emphasis on defense, but we have so much redundancy on our roster. I can understand valuing length and athleticism, but someone has to put the ball in the basket and that was just completely ignored this offseason.

Wasn't Eli supposed to be the shooter? Not saying he should play, but just thinking he was supposed to be our shooter. I know it doesn't help, but kinda supports your point that we didn't mix our HS and portal recruiting very well together.

 

[GetAwesome]

...We lost our two best scorers from last year's team and we replaced them with a shot blocker (Shoon), three freshman that can't shoot, a good defender with no offensive game (Ward) and two guards who came into the year with bad jumpshooting numbers (Williams and Holmes). He just placed absolutely no priority on getting guys who could score.

Fwiw, we have no idea what Ward can be in the Big 12 yet. He too is a shot blocker, but not sure how great of a defender. However, he is our most effective big man on the offensive end, but given his limited minutes no idea if that offensive efficiency would extend with extended minutes.

 

[WastedTalent]

Wasn't Eli supposed to be the shooter? Not saying he should play, but just thinking he was supposed to be our shooter. I know it doesn't help, but kinda supports your point that we didn't mix our HS and portal recruiting very well together.

I doubt the staff ever intended any of the freshmen to have major roles coming into the season. Williams injury obviously changed that for Lipsey.

 

[BCClone]

I doubt the staff ever intended any of the freshmen to have major roles coming into the season. Williams injury obviously changed that for Lipsey.

Most likely. It is apparent that TJ is defense first and that determines your minutes along with hustle. Everyone talks about the freshmen coming in will help scoring. Nobody brings up how they will do in our defensive scheme and it's obvious that whoever fits our defense is who gets the minutes. It seems that we could have 4 freshmen come in and one gets solid minutes, 1 gets spot minutes and the other two get good game conversations with Eli and hawley.

 

[Al_4_State]

Like, I'm reading on here most every day but post once or twice a year. Or this forum has what some would call "Sunshine Pumpers" who are just happy we are out of the Prohm days and winning more than 2 games and trust TJ implicitly. And there are those who are "cliff jumpers" after every loss, and never see the positives. Here are my two things can be true:

• There are very few coaches in the country who could've had the success TJ has had these past two years with the talent he has had. TJ may also be the worst "In-game" coach in the Big 12.
• TJ's philosophy of playing to your daily habits is inherently true. You play like you practice. Yet if you play 100% as hard in practice, every day, as you do in games, then inevitably in the dog days of February the team will hit a wall with dead legs.
• TJ knows his personnel, attitudes, etc... better than anyone and should sub accordingly. Yet subbing by time (at the 17 minute mark of every game for example) is not a coach who has a feel for the game. Coaches sub, because of mistakes, or as an adjustment, or injuries, or a player is exhausted after 3 minutes. Not time.
• Coaches may have the team practicing free-throws every day, yet still be bad in the games.
• Teams can struggle down the stretch of a season and still make a run in the tournament.

Oddly, last night gave me hope. We played hard, seemed to be getting our legs back, and played a very good and desperate WVU team toe to toe. I don't expect much the next 2 games (Baylor & Big 12 Tourney), but I think we are gonna be a hard out in the NCAA Tourney. Two things can be true.

I'm not nearly as optimistic, but I agree with the concept that we should be extremely excited about where the program is and can also be very annoyed with the recent results and pessimistic about the remainder of the season.

I'm really proud of what TJ's done and where the program is going. I hate watching this group play basketball right now and have zero interest in the next two games.

 

[fsanford]

Wasn't Eli supposed to be the shooter? Not saying he should play, but just thinking he was supposed to be our shooter. I know it doesn't help, but kinda supports your point that we didn't mix our HS and portal recruiting very well together.

I would have liked to see freshmen get a few more minutes this time of year. But if you look around most schools have 23 or 24 year old guys playing. Unless you are a special talent probably harder to compete against older guys like that.

Traditional college ball most guys are gone by 22 latest

 

[BCClone]

I would have liked to see freshmen get a few more minutes this time of year. But if you look around most schools have 23 or 24 year old guys playing. Unless you are a special talent probably harder to compete against older guys like that.

Traditional college ball most guys are gone by 22 latest

Why I'm not as excited when people say our offensive woes will be solved by the freshmen recruiting class coming in.

 

[Halincandenza]

I thought this team was a bubble team and maybe on the wrong side of the bubble but TJ and the staff have coached them up to being better than that. And if not for a Grill injury, they may have been a 3 or 4 seed.
The problem right now is they are so offensively challenged that each defensive position is huge. That is too much pressure on the defense to get stops on almost every play especially down the stretch. The offense wasn't great before Grill's injury but it was ok, but now that he can't really do anything, it's just bad.

 

[fsanford]

Why I'm not as excited when people say our offensive woes will be solved by the freshmen recruiting class coming in.

When is the sunset for the "COVID" year I am kind of done with it

 

[1UNI2ISU]

When is the sunset for the "COVID" year I am kind of done with it

2024-25

And yes, it was a god awful decision. Life just isn't fair sometimes and we all move on.

 

[MJ271]

Fwiw, we have no idea what Ward can be in the Big 12 yet. He too is a shot blocker, but not sure how great of a defender. However, he is our most effective big man on the offensive end, but given his limited minutes no idea if that offensive efficiency would extend with extended minutes.

I'm surprised by this assessment. I think that Ward was pretty clearly a good individual defender across the board; he's probably the best big man at switching onto guards. His status as a team defender, though, might still be in question. For offense, his numbers are efficient, but that's only because most of his touches came on dunks or offensive rebounds. If he were asked to do the same thing that Osun or Jones do, he wouldn't have close to the same efficiency numbers.

Wasn't Eli supposed to be the shooter? Not saying he should play, but just thinking he was supposed to be our shooter. I know it doesn't help, but kinda supports your point that we didn't mix our HS and portal recruiting very well together.

In an ideal world, AJ Green would have been the shooter. Adding onto that, Grill's improvement made him "the" shooter before his injury, which helped open things up for Kalscheur and Holmes to get better looks. Holmes is a perfectly fine shooter, he just isn't good enough as the #1 option, especially with an injured Grill. FWIW, Holmes shot 37% from three before the Grill injury and has been 31% since.

 

[BCClone]

2024-25

And yes, it was a god awful decision. Life just isn't fair sometimes and we all move on.

It's actually screwing several current players. They are sitting on benches or playing lower levels due to all these extra ones sticking around longer.

 

[Raiders70]

When Holmes and kalscheur were hot and grill was playing better we were good. They are not now and we are still decent. Great thing about basketball is they can get hot again and our defense will still be there.

Our defense has not been there lately. Especially down the stretch of games. Opponents getting lots of wide open three point looks and down low lots of layups/dunks. West Virginia defense was light years better than ISUs down the stretch last night.

 

[fsanford]

2024-25

And yes, it was a god awful decision. Life just isn't fair sometimes and we all move on.

Thanks wish it was sooner but at least it will come to an end. Should have just called it the Jess Settles year.

 

[WastedTalent]

Most likely. It is apparent that TJ is defense first and that determines your minutes along with hustle. Everyone talks about the freshmen coming in will help scoring. Nobody brings up how they will do in our defensive scheme and it's obvious that whoever fits our defense is who gets the minutes. It seems that we could have 4 freshmen come in and one gets solid minutes, 1 gets spot minutes and the other two get good game conversations with Eli and hawley.

I wouldn't be so certain. My belief (hope) is that TJ is 100% defense first last season, and this season, because he knows they don't have the offensive fire power. He absolutely tried to get AJ Green, who would not have been good defensively, but a guaranteed upgrade in offense, so he was willing to adapt to what he would have had.

As it is, Green didn't come, and TJ saw that offense might be lacking, so he basically decided to "run it back" from what worked last season. I do think the staff thought they had more offense coming in the post from Osun, and they have run more thru him, but I don't think it's been as much as they hoped.

It certainly helps that the best recruit, Bilew, is also supposed to be very aggressive, and good on defense. Milan is going to be the real barometer. I think he might be closer to a Niang than a Hogue defensively. So we'll see if TJ is willing to stay with him for his offense, despite some lapses on defense.