Gmac

[dasher]

Since more than one insider confidently said at the time that the staff had quit on Joseph before his sophomore year, I think there's something to that.

It's clear that player development has taken something of a back seat to manipulating the personnel to fit some Zone Ideal in the last years of the Boeheim era. I sympathize with his urgency, but it's a crappy way to run a sustainable program and there's a lot of collateral damage associated with it. There are hundreds of coaches out there who'd love to build a team with Roberson, Joseph, and B.J. Johnson.

No coach in a p-5 conference, other than Boston College, would want to build a team with those three. It just isn't true.

 

[Brooky03]

Why didn't Trevor Cooney improve from rFr to Senior year?
Why didn't Ron Patterson improve in his 2 years?
Why didn't Kaleb Joseph improve in his 2 years?
I don't consider BJ Johnson a guard so he doesn't count.
Why hasn't Frank Howard improved?
I give him credit for Gbinije but that isn't enough.

Our guard play has been bad since 2014.
Sorry GMac shouldn't be a made man in the SU BB coaching mafia.
GMac's recruiting hasn't been great either.
We need some freaking help on the staff. Our guys aren't improving. That is coaching.

Kaleb Joseph was a hopeless case. Blame the talent evaluation on that one. I also don't know what was expected of Ron. He was an emergency filler player who Indiana dropped because they didn't have room. That essentially means Crean didn't think Patterson was better than his worst scholarship player at crappy Indiana. Don't know what could be done there either.

Blame GMac's recruiting, fine. I wouldn't blame the coaching given what he's had to work with.

 

[Alsacs]

No coach in a p-5 conference, other than Boston College, would want to build a team with those three. It just isn't true.

Johnson is a POY contender in the A-10. The A-10 isn't a low D-1 league. It is a real good league. Johnson is why we beat a top 10 ND on the road 2 years ago.
Joseph is at Creighton and they are a top 10 team. They think he has potential.
Roberson playing well was a huge part of the NCAAT run.
They are all solid D-1 players our staff hasn't gotten enough out of.

 

[OttoMets]

No coach in a p-5 conference, other than Boston College, would want to build a team with those three. It just isn't true.

I don't know that that's true (there's a lot of Clemsons and Nebraskas and Pittsburghs out there who routinely run out inferior talent), but I wasn't limiting my claim to those leagues.

I'd hate to see what Georgetown, UConn, or St. John's would've done to us this month with any of those three kids who are superior to the worse players they drubbed us with.

 

[Brooky03]

Exactly. Another highly rated recruit that was not evaluated correctly or just wasn't coached good enough.

So Hop's fault? Hop handled Joseph, not GMac.

 

[Cusefan0307]

So Hop's fault? Hop handled Joseph, not GMac.

Recruited him, not coached.

 

[Alsacs]

Kaleb Joseph was a hopeless case. Blame the talent evaluation on that one. I also don't know what was expected of Ron. He was an emergency filler player who Indiana dropped because they didn't have room. That essentially means Crean didn't think Patterson was better than his worst scholarship player at crappy Indiana. Don't know what could be done there either.

Blame GMac's recruiting, fine. I wouldn't blame the coaching given what he's had to work with.

I think JB was too hard on Kaleb Joseph and that broke him. The transfer was for his betterment. I don't think he was handled well at all.
JB picks and chooses who be hard on and who to build up. Joseph needed the later and he was hard on him from the beginning.

I love all that JB has done at SU but I really hate some of things he does and it hurts players. These kids publicly need to be praised and privately tear them down. JB doesn't care what anyone else thinks and is blunt. That hurts if Joseph got the leash that Cooney got it would have helped the kid a lot more. JB never criticized Cooney at all but he has killed Roberson and he killed Joseph. Why?

 

[Brooky03]

I think JB was too hard on Kaleb Joseph and that broke him. The transfer was for his betterment. I don't think he was handled well at all.
JB picks and chooses who be hard on and who to build up. Joseph needed the later and he was hard on him from the beginning.

I love all that JB has done at SU but I really hate some of things he does and it hurts players. These kids publicly need to be praised and privately tear them down. JB doesn't care what anyone else thinks and is blunt. That hurts if Joseph got the leash that Cooney got it would have helped the kid a lot more. JB never criticized Cooney at all but he has killed Roberson and he killed Joseph. Why?

Cooney played defense at the top of the zone as good as anybody and didn't make many stupid mistakes. Cooney's limitation was his talent. Kaleb and Roberson have talent limitations, too, but they compounded them with a combination of poor effort, poor decision making, and a lack of balls. Cooney had effort, balls, and at least average decision making abilities, he just wouldn't get his threes to go down all the time.

I don't know Jim Boeheim personally, but I'd bet he's more okay with a greenlight shooter missing 3's than his PG turning the ball over if somebody looks at him crosseyed and his rebounding power forward with great size, athleticism, and strength not being able to rebound, defend, or score when he's a foot away from the rim.

 

[Brooky03]

Recruited him, not coached.

Yes, that is what I meant.

 

[HOFCeluck]

2) You're asking him to mold poop into an artistic vase when it's ceiling is as a bowl for pooping in.

You poop in bowls molded from poop?

Don't invite me over.

 

[Brooky03]

You poop in bowls molded from poop?

Don't invite me over.

Wait, you don't?

 

[Alsacs]

Cooney played defense at the top of the zone as good as anybody and didn't make many stupid mistakes. Cooney's limitation was his talent. Kaleb and Roberson have talent limitations, too, but they compounded them with a combination of poor effort, poor decision making, and a lack of balls. Cooney had effort, balls, and at least average decision making abilities, he just wouldn't get his threes to go down all the time.

I don't know Jim Boeheim personally, but I'd bet he's more okay with a greenlight shooter missing 3's than his PG turning the ball over if somebody looks at him crosseyed and his rebounding power forward with great size, athleticism, and strength not being able to rebound, defend, or score when he's a foot away from the rim.

Joseph played D. Patterson played D as well. Joseph was a Freshman PG you have to take the good with the bad. JB was tough on him and he broke. That doesn't work.

 

[Brooky03]

Joseph played D. Patterson played D as well. Joseph was a Freshman PG you have to take the good with the bad. JB was tough on him and he broke. That doesn't work.

Patterson was a good defensive guard. No argument there, he just couldn't shoot, drive, or finish, and wasn't a point guard. Maybe if JB was nicer to Joseph, he would have played better, maybe not; nobody knows. If a coach yelling at you breaks you, playing ball at a high level maybe isn't your 'thing'. We'll see how he does at Creighton. I imagine he'll put up decent numbers in that cupcake conference.

 

[Newhouser]

The good news is we are already grooming Devo to move into the next open seat.

 

[IthacaMatt]

2) Our guards aren't talented.

No, they have talent. Battle and Howard were both 4 star players, and Battle was a borderline 5 star at one point. Gillon scored 14 PPG for Colorado State - not a Patriot League team - and has shown an ability to get into the lane and to shoot threes in his four years of college ball.

Talent is not the issue. The issue is coaching. Our offense is incredibly simplistic and predictable. Our passing to the interior has been poor, but part of that is the sets that we line up in. It seems like our only play is a pick and roll. We don't create sight lines or passing angles to feed the post. That's the offensive set as much as it is on the player.

I think this has been a poor job so far all around, with plenty of blame to share. But the players are good enough to be doing much better than they have shown so far.

 

[IthacaMatt]

No coach in a p-5 conference, other than Boston College, would want to build a team with those three. It just isn't true.

They were good enough to all be contributing rotation players, though. You can't argue against that.

 

[Brooky03]

No, they have talent. Battle and Howard were both 4 star players, and Battle was a borderline 5 star at one point. Gillon scored 14 PPG for Colorado State - not a Patriot League team - and has shown an ability to get into the lane and to shoot threes in his four years of college ball.

Talent is not the issue. The issue is coaching. Our offense is incredibly simplistic and predictable. Our passing to the interior has been poor, but part of that is the sets that we line up in. It seems like our only play is a pick and roll. We don't create sight lines or passing angles to feed the post. That's the offensive set as much as it is on the player.

I think this has been a poor job so far all around, with plenty of blame to share. But the players are good enough to be doing much better than they have shown so far.

The Mountain West is not any better than the Patriot League. Both leagues suck. Gillon plays well against midmajors. He doesn't play well against the big boys, like I said. 14 points per game in the Mountain West means next to nothing. He's a good shooter when he doesn't have a tall fast guy guarding him and he's good at getting into and finishing in the lane when he doesn't have tall fast guys to worry about. Well, that doesn't do us any good in ACC play.

I thought for a while that the problem wasn't a talent issue but it is. Andrew White is the most one dimensional player I've seen in a while, and that includes Cooney. I still think Howard has potential but he just loses is mind on the court at least 6 times per game on top of the random dribbles off his leg and elsewhere if a defender says 'boo'. Thompson and Battle show some promise, haven't been with the coaching staff long enough to blame the coaches for any of their shortcomings. Chukwu looks like he belongs at Providence. Coleman needs to retire. Roberson needs to go home.

 

[cuseinseattle]

I love Gmac and what he has done for this program and I'm not saying we need to let him go but there are a couple things that concern me.

1) this recruiting class is not as good as it could be because Gmac couldn't finish. I'm not talking just about Quade, there were a couple others. So he has shown he is not a strong recruiter, perhaps he needs time.

2) he is the guard coach, and not even up for debate that is our worst position. I know he developed G and helped develop MCW, but those guys were already extremely talented. I don't want to overreact based just on this seasons results but hopefully this season lights a fire under him and he gets going or he'all be going out the door in a couple years if he doesn't show some value to the staff.

Silent G was a small forward who couldn't shoot when he got here. I'm not saying I disagree with some of the other stuff but he was no where near a finished product or extremely talented when he got here. What G did came through hard work and perseverance by both him and the staff in my opinion.

 

[IthacaMatt]

The Mountain West is not any better than the Patriot League. Both leagues suck.

Neither league may be a P5 league, but the Mountain West is a far better league.

The Patriot League has only 1 of its 10 teams ranked in the top 100 by RPI and that's Bucknell at 95. The average RPI ranking of Patriot League teams is 212, and they have 3 teams whose RPI's are over 300, meaning worst of the worst in all of college basketball.

The Mountain West isn't a P5 conference, but their top team is currently Nevada at 32, and they have 4 teams (out of 11) at 113 or better in the RPI. They have no teams with RPI rankings in the 300s. Their worst team is 8-4 Fresno State with an RPI of 243. Their average RPI is about 60 spots better per team than the Patriot League.

 

[MSOrange]

Neither league may be a P5 league, but the Mountain West is a far better league.

The Patriot League has only 1 of its 10 teams ranked in the top 100 by RPI and that's Bucknell at 95. The average RPI ranking of Patriot League teams is 212, and they have 3 teams whose RPI's are over 300, meaning worst of the worst in all of college basketball.

The Mountain West isn't a P5 conference, but their top team is currently Nevada at 32, and they have 4 teams (out of 11) at 113 or better in the RPI. They have no teams with RPI rankings in the 300s. Their worst team is 8-4 Fresno State with an RPI of 243. Their average RPI is about 60 spots better per team than the Patriot League.

Thanks for doing the research. That comment caught my attention also as not at all true. Brooky is usually a better poster than that, probably one of my favorites, but I think the frustration caught up with him with that post. Can't say that I blame him though.

 

[orange79]

What GMac got would be like me graduating from
Newhouse interning at NY Times and then getting a columnist job at the Washington Post.
His first job as an assistant shouldn't have been at a top 10 school. Atleast Autry worked his way up and was an assistant at a P5 school in VPI under Seth Greenberg.

I don't know. My roommate in grad school landed a job at the NY Times before he finished his degree. It happens. :noidea:

 

[Alsacs]

I don't know. My roommate in grad school landed a job at the NY Times before he finished his degree. It happens. :noidea:

Not as a columnist. Those are the best plum jobs at newspapers.

 

[orange79]

Not as a columnist. Those are the best plum jobs at newspapers.

True. Beat writer for the Yankees. Then a columnist job at the Washington Post.

 

[Alsacs]

True. Beat writer for the Yankees. Then a columnist job at the Washington Post.

GMac jumped to a premiere job and it's not like our school recruits for itself like Kansas/Duke/Kentucky do.
We need assistants who can either develop talent or recruit well. I don't think GMac does either well now which is why he should have worked up.

 

[RF2044]

GMac jumped to a premiere job and it's not like our school recruits for itself like Kansas/Duke/Kentucky do.
We need assistants who can either develop talent or recruit well. I don't think GMac does either well now which is why he should have worked up.

GMac didn't hire GMac. And it isn't really his fault that he was in a situation where he got promoted--which happened after Bernie Fine got fired. That was a perfectly acceptable short term / stop gap move by Boeheim and the program to offset Fine's departure.

The question is: would we have been better off making him an interim AC, and then going out and filling that hole in the staff with somebody with a proven track record of success? And I believe that the answer is a resounding "yes."

And I qualify this by acknowledging that I am appreciative of all of GMac's contributions to the program, as a player and as a coach.