Coach Orange
2nd String
- Joined
- May 19, 2012
- Messages
- 507
- Like
- 1,468
There have been a lot of posts recently claiming that Coach Boeheim and his staff need to "fix" things because our team has way too much talent to lose games as we have. The assumption is that we should have won some, if not all, of the games we have lost because we are more talented than the other teams. Since we lost eight games, a set of wide-ranging conclusions have been offered as explanation: our offensive design is flawed, we don't play the right defense, the coach plays the wrong players, the rotation is so bad that the coach has ruined players, Boeheim has lost the team, and the game has passed him by.
In short, the conclusions add up to "Boeheim is ineffectively coaching."
Though some board members defend Coach B and the team by saying that our players' inability to shoot is the reason we lose, people postulating that Boeheim's coaching is the problem aren't challenged enough on a base assumption: what exactly makes people believe that this team is so "talented?"
There are certainly areas in which Coach Boeheim can be critically questioned--I'm not debating that since I have done it myself. Also, please understand that I am in no way attacking any individual poster on this board, either. However, it feels like many members of the board assume that there is some elixir that a coach should just provide to his players to correct all problems, immediately making all of their deficiencies magically go away. If the coach can't do this, he is deemed a bad coach, or one doing a crappy job.
The problem, though, is that no such magic elixir exists. Developing basketball talent is like teaching a student to write--it takes time, patience, and perseverance.
With that in mind, I return to this term "talent." It gets thrown around as this buzz word used to justify why a team should play up to a certain level of expectations (i.e. This team has so much talent that it should win the Big East, or it should make the Final Four).
If a team doesn't meet these lofty expectations, it seems that some fans start looking for excuses to show cause for the "underachievement"--team dissension/drama, poor coaching decisions, terrible coaching philosophy, etc.--instead of closely examining the true level of talent that a team possesses.
It's rare to see anyone using the term "talent" actually define clearly what it is and, therefore, why it should lead (through cause-and-effect) to results that better match the expectations. Even when talent is somewhat defined, there are often slippages--"athleticism" gets mistaken for "talent," as does the number of stars some recruiting service arbitrarily assigned to players.
Given how the term is often used in claims--we should win more because we have so much talent--it's imperative to define the characteristics of talent to clearly demonstrate that our collection of players (Triche, Dirty, MCW, Fair, Christmas, Baye, DCII, Grant, and Cooney) is so much more developed as a set of basketball "talents" than the players of Georgetown, Louisville, Marquette, Pitt, and so on. Only by clearly defining this can we truly make logical claims as to why our "talent" is underachieving based on the results. If we are going to make similar claims about the NCAA Tourney results, we should also clearly define and examine how our "talent" lines up against teams outside of our conference.
So, I pose a question: what criteria are we as a fan base using to argue that the team has "too much talent" to be where they are: 23-8 (11-7) and fifth in the Big East? In other words, what are the defining characteristics of talent? Technical fundamentals? Tactical fundamentals? Athleticism? Statistical attributes? Intangibles? Recruiting service stars? All of the above? None of the above?
In short, the conclusions add up to "Boeheim is ineffectively coaching."
Though some board members defend Coach B and the team by saying that our players' inability to shoot is the reason we lose, people postulating that Boeheim's coaching is the problem aren't challenged enough on a base assumption: what exactly makes people believe that this team is so "talented?"
There are certainly areas in which Coach Boeheim can be critically questioned--I'm not debating that since I have done it myself. Also, please understand that I am in no way attacking any individual poster on this board, either. However, it feels like many members of the board assume that there is some elixir that a coach should just provide to his players to correct all problems, immediately making all of their deficiencies magically go away. If the coach can't do this, he is deemed a bad coach, or one doing a crappy job.
The problem, though, is that no such magic elixir exists. Developing basketball talent is like teaching a student to write--it takes time, patience, and perseverance.
With that in mind, I return to this term "talent." It gets thrown around as this buzz word used to justify why a team should play up to a certain level of expectations (i.e. This team has so much talent that it should win the Big East, or it should make the Final Four).
If a team doesn't meet these lofty expectations, it seems that some fans start looking for excuses to show cause for the "underachievement"--team dissension/drama, poor coaching decisions, terrible coaching philosophy, etc.--instead of closely examining the true level of talent that a team possesses.
It's rare to see anyone using the term "talent" actually define clearly what it is and, therefore, why it should lead (through cause-and-effect) to results that better match the expectations. Even when talent is somewhat defined, there are often slippages--"athleticism" gets mistaken for "talent," as does the number of stars some recruiting service arbitrarily assigned to players.
Given how the term is often used in claims--we should win more because we have so much talent--it's imperative to define the characteristics of talent to clearly demonstrate that our collection of players (Triche, Dirty, MCW, Fair, Christmas, Baye, DCII, Grant, and Cooney) is so much more developed as a set of basketball "talents" than the players of Georgetown, Louisville, Marquette, Pitt, and so on. Only by clearly defining this can we truly make logical claims as to why our "talent" is underachieving based on the results. If we are going to make similar claims about the NCAA Tourney results, we should also clearly define and examine how our "talent" lines up against teams outside of our conference.
So, I pose a question: what criteria are we as a fan base using to argue that the team has "too much talent" to be where they are: 23-8 (11-7) and fifth in the Big East? In other words, what are the defining characteristics of talent? Technical fundamentals? Tactical fundamentals? Athleticism? Statistical attributes? Intangibles? Recruiting service stars? All of the above? None of the above?