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Message: [QUOTE="AcAndAc, post: 5341288, member: 10310"] It is a tough one. Coach P lost too much of the fan base over time. But it was still a .500 team when he left... which in football terms is like being a bubble team (IMO). It was GERG that dropped an anvil on the program by trying to force the existing players to run his offense, rather than what they were good at and then being horrible. Marrone brought us back to Coach P at the end level, then Shafer went back down. Dino was up and down, ultimately fairly close to .500 overall. Fran has a vision of how to be elite... rather than just a bowl team. JB ran it a little more to the ground by dropping us down at/below a bubble team. I think some of our best teams under JB might have lost last night. We lost no shortage of home games to top 5 programs throughout his career. Losing to Duke, this Duke team, is nothing to be ashamed about. Any more than losing to Georgetown with Ewing, etc. Red has the potential to be a GERG... or he has the potential to be us back to being a bubble team. It is the limited upside that probably makes things worse... there is no "feel" that Red can make us elite again. Methinks that to be elite you need to do something very good... so good that the opponent knows what you are going to do, but you just do it too good. Everyone knew we were going to be 2-3 zone, but few teams had the combination of talent and coaching to defeat it. The difference is that when we were recruiting athletes for the zone, we forced teams to beat us at a game we were trying to dictate. Occasionally, some backup guard would get hot from 3 and upset us. Occasionally, we would run into teams that could dictate their will by too much talent to care about what defense we were playing. But, by and large, teams had to play good games to beat the zone. So I think we need an identity again. If it is going back to the 2-3 zone so be it. If it is playing 10 players and pressing the whole game.. so be it. If it is some sort of offensive scheme that other teams are not used to.. so be it. SOMETHING. And then recruit/portal to fit that system. Red does not seem to have a thing. So who knows if the pieces he is getting will fit into his non-existent system. If we knew the system, we might be able to think positively that things are moving in the right direction. [/QUOTE]

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