It's funny how it was unacceptable to hire a football coach with no HC experience at all, but let's entrust our all time top ten basketball program to Mike Hopkins.
"Funny" 'peculiar,' or "funny" 'ha-ha?'
That's the thing about 'us.' Anything tinged with 'orange' automatically gets bonus points in the assessment game. We have a staff of former orange, and the board seems to 'trust' that that staff is competent (or beyond), with no actual reason to believe such. Never mind the fact that they've not really experienced anything other than what JB has shown them, which, to me, is a colossal disadvantage. Even if you think JB is god, Shirley you can't believe that exposure to other systems of thought (even DRILLS for chrissake) would be beneficial. But, no... We are great because we are great. Which, actually, is some sort of narcissism, in that our program 'represents' us, so of course it cannot be flawed. How dare anyone suggest that 'the right/best way' can/should be found elsewhere.
That all said, i like Hopkins. As a dude. But, that's also how i used to feel about JB. I
liked him, as a dude. Just never liked his coaching. We'll see with Hopkins. He comes across as knowledgable and enthusiastic. Two great components. But, those nine games scared me. There's more to coaching than attributes you can put on paper. Forget about him not having 'his team,' because what's he really going to do differently, recruiting-wise? It was a matter of not having game command. I can 'get' that it can take time to get up to game speed with your thought processes, and a lot of those types of reactions are exactly that, rote reactions, which will develop. Maybe what we need to be concerned with is that Hopkins will feel compelled to maintain 'the system,' because it was 'successful' for his predecessor, or will play it safe in keeping it because defining a new system might take a decade... But, systems are probably tied to the personalities of the people who run them, so if there's a mismatch, well, shoot.
