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Message: [QUOTE="Zelda Zonk, post: 5354815, member: 966"] Sincere question: what is “talent?” I think a lot of people use that word to represent physical gifts. Being able to jump over people, dribble past people, make creative passes, and to shoot at a high percentage. But, we’ve played teams with similar or worse athleticism and we still show less fundamental ability to do fundamental things. And aren’t these fundamental things the kinds of things that should be taught? Coached? Practiced? The kinds of execution issues that coaches work with players on, so they understand how to do things? If we all agree we’ve never seen a worse SU team in our lifetimes, isn’t a good percentage of that about how they play? I’m still seeing some of the same issues I noted at the beginning of the season. Some things are better, which demonstrates it’s not about athleticism/talent. And talent itself isn’t always an innate, genetic thing. Talent can and must be developed as well. Jerami Grant is a common example here. He came to SU with the same physical gifts as when he left. But, he’s a vastly different player now than then. Development is partially about maturing, experience, and also coaching—learning how to maximize your abilities. Learning how to minimize and/or hide your flaws. Honestly, to speak to your last sentence—I think we took who we could afford, who was somewhat familiar to us, and we had a misguided attempt to replicate a foe’s success with a similarly built player. All of that is a combination of naïveté, poverty, and laziness… and then we applied poor coaching on top. All of this is say that, Yes, I think another coach would have made a difference. Probably not enough to get us into the NCAAs, but certainly worth a handful more wins on the season. [/QUOTE]

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