When will we start coaching?

[jman2004]

Dancer, I'll slightly side with you. Our team is built around Brooks, Grant, and Eric. It's very rare that those three are off the court at the same time and if anything, at least two of them can be found on the court at all times.

However this is why I only "slightly" side with you. After those three, it drops off significantly. Brown and Josten got some time last year, but not much.

But everyone else has to realize it's kind of silly to call us "VERY inexperienced". That doesn't make a whole lot of sense considering we returned three starters from last season. I don't care what their roles were. Three starters from an NCAA tournament season should have plenty of experience. All three have had pretty decent sized roles on this team for the last 3-4 years.

We're by no means as "experienced" as Dancer is trying to claim we are, but along the same lines, we're by no means as "inexperienced" as everyone else is trying to claim we are.

[DancerHall Cat]

But everyone else has to realize it's kind of silly to call us "VERY inexperienced". .

This is all I am trying to say. I have never in my life heard of a team with a 4-year starter, and 2 different 3 years starters be considered inexperienced, and certainly not VERY inexperienced. I would guess that 10 years of starting experience would but us in the top 25% of the country in that regard.

Everyone counters my argument with: Brown and Josten were role-players last year. Well no kidding guys. Almost every team in the country relies on players who didnt play a ton of minutes the year before to step in and fill some gaps.

I realize that our bench is very young. However, we have asked freshmen to step in and play big roles before (Much bigger roles than we are this year) Coleman was huge for us his freshman year ( I would argue he was not as highly touted as Jordan or Koch). It seems to me that we got quite a bit out of Brooks his freshman year as well, despite his inexperience.

My bottom line is this: The last few weeks have been an absolute disaster. You can talk about us having too high of expecations all you want, but I didnt see too many people on the board predicting a sub .500 conference record before the year started. In fact, I am quite certain those posters would have gotten run off of this board. Now all of the sudden, a few "enlightened" posters continue to make the same excuses for this team and pretend as if everything is going as well as could have been expected.

[jman2004]

I'm not arguing with you. I agree with you. That's what I meant by it's silly of people to say we're very inexperienced.

[oldcat]

No one predicted that the league would be as balanced from top to bottom this year as it has been.........................the tournament should be interesting!

[ferociouspredator]

Guard Play, Guard Play, Guard Play. Newsflash: Playing Jordan more is not going to improve our inexperienced guards.

Brown, Viet, Kwadzo, Koch do not equal Crawford, Little, Jacobson yet.

Do the members of the Jake-Bashing-What-Have-You-Done-for-Me-Lately club think the mere presence of Mac would have made the almost rookie guards somehow exeperienced, cool, and able to win the wars with the Aherns, Funks, Tatums, et. al?

[panther2317]

I just want Dancer Hall Cat to admit we're an inexperienced basketball team. We're playing TWO starters who averaged just 8 minutes a game last season in very limited roles and now we're asking them to step up consistently and be a scorer, defender, rebounder for 25+ minutes a game. I think JJ and Brown HAVE done that...but they haven't done it in every game. Next year...I think they will have learned as one full season as starters HOW to put forth maximum effort every game. Because next year, they will be the focal point of the offense.

Let me ask a quick question, what are we doing differently (from a strategy standpoint) than we were doing when we were winning? The answer is: NOTHING. The only difference is that in the last 6 games, we're not hitting the open 3-pointers. We also may be turning the ball over a little more, not rebounding as well...but the gameplans are still the same from when we were winning. Basketball is not rocket science...we need to value the basketball more and hit more shots. The gameplans are fine.

[jman2004]

You're right 2317, one of the biggest things we're not doing now than when we were winning is hitting the open 3 pointers. Our shooting percentage from behind the arc has plummeted.

There is one more thing that I think is different lately as well, and that's substitution patterns. Our bench hasn't contributed to this team in eating up minutes in the second half and that kills our starters. They're beat by the end of the game.

I realize that Jake thinks he needs his starters to stay with teams, but I think he got out of sync with substitutions once we hit Valley play and he hasn't found the groove back yet.

[Panthers to the Bone]

Some stats:
Josten played 8.4 min/game in all 33 games (9.0 min/game in all 18 conference games)
Brown played 8.9 min/game in 28 of 33 games (9.4 min/game in 16 of 18 conference games)
Viet played 7.2 min/game in 13 of 33 games (3.3 min/game in 4 of 18 conference games)

[OhNewby]

We're playing TWO starters who averaged just 8 minutes a game last season in very limited roles and now we're asking them to step up consistently and be a scorer, defender, rebounder for 25+ minutes a game. I think JJ and Brown HAVE done that...but they haven't done it in every game. Next year...I think they will have learned as one full season as starters HOW to put forth maximum effort every game. Because next year, they will be the focal point of the offense.

IMO, one clear path to success as a team, is how much players improve year over year (and most importantly between seasons). I don't know how many people watched a player like Jason Daisy in the 90's, but he was, well, flat out horrible as a freshman, but turned into one of UNI's greatest players. My concern is that Brown looks like the same player as last year. I think he might have missed some of the "off season" with an injury (I can't recall), so maybe that's the reason. I think Josten has improved a lot.

As for the focal point of the offense next year, I doubt it will be Brown or JJ...it's going to be the same as this year...the bigs. Coleman with Jordan and Koch splitting time. I think we'll have the best post play in the Valley next year, too.

[Cobra 23]

Oldcat, I have to disagree with you as I think many people thought the Valley would be very competitive top to bottom. Which is why UNI was picked 6th despite returning arguably 2 of its 3 best players from an NCAA qualifying team and why Bradley a sweet 16 team was not expected to be in the top 3 or 4 of the conference. With the majority of the teams having a lot of experienced players coming back, this was the one "mid-major" conference everyone said would be well balanced. Wichita St., Missouri St., Creighton, Southern Illinois, Evansville, and Drake all returned a good portion of their best players.

I don't think anyone thought this conference would come in to Valley play as the #2 RPI conference, but I would say being in the top 5 was almost expected. It is one of the few conferences that is really senior dominated.

One thing I would like to see against some of these teams is for us to move Stout to the 3 position as he can hit the outside shot and then go with a zone defense with Jordan in the center. Obviously this does not work against great outside shooting teams and super athletic teams, but I think the one thing we have over most teams in our conference is size and big men who can score. I'd like to see us use them more as it is obvious our guards cannot score enough to win games.

[WR4UNI]

I was pleasantly suprised to see the coach sub in 4 players at a time in the first half of the Nevada game. Im thinking he must have been watching Tom Davis when they last played against Drake. However, once again when they got to the second half, the coaching staff seems to forget about subbing. In the Nevada game they had a plan for the first half, which worked great. Then they got to the second half and changed what was working. I mean I realize that Stout and Coleman were on the bench but perhaps Nevada was expecting them to play and they had a game plan for that. They probably didnt have a game plan for what was being played in that first half, which was Stout and Coleman on the bench. I know you dont want to see your two best players on the bench but it somehow did work for a lead at the half. I really dont think they were expecting Jordan to do as well as he did.

Has the coaching staff ever played Stout, Coleman and Egelseder?

I mean I know Jordon is a freshman and playing him against a senior probably isnt such a great move. However, the last 3 games I have seen him play he has done really well. The last home game, Missouri State, they didnt seem to have anyone that could match-up against him. Jordon scored easily over the top twice and missed an easy one, then got taken out. We never seen him again after that.

Is there a reason Im missing for not just playing Jordon? He gets triple teamed, there must be someone open....

[TravelingPanther]

[QUOTE=WR4UNI;74637]
I mean I know Jordon is a freshman and playing him against a senior probably isnt such a great move.
QUOTE]

Do you mean over Stout, or against Fazekas? Because I thought he defended Nick better than Stout did.