Geno's Presser--One for the Books

At 22:30 ff. really struggling to praise and yet call out Nika. Walking a fine line there.

Criticizing without naming Aaliyah after that about the big throws that sailed out of the court. He says, he believes you do what you do best, and save the development of weaker skills for the summer. True!

He ends by saying the team could still fool him (to the upside).

finally: "I knew I should have got on the plane with Stewie in 2016." Wow.

But what he's reflecting is the rapidly changing player culture, not just the NIL/Portal, etc., but the way kids are coached and trained before college, the expectations of college, etc. Whether or not he's right about all this, it's what he feels.

how many times are you going to post this here and on the radioactive no-fly zone? 

Actually, I didn't hear it that way, but what's the point? 

Based on the article - Adia Barnes had some thoughts in a similar vein after a couple of losses out here in Arizona.  Bulkey I think correctly identifies a root in the way players develop before they get to college.

Refreshing when you hear Geno, Adia and other coaches say what they thinking.  They acknowledge that they came up short, but they are pretty straightforward about what is happening with the team.

It has been an unusual season.  Based on history, I am still expecting to see you guys in the final four.  Everything can be fixed, really.

You hear what YOU WANT to hear? Geno was quite specific as to what needs to be 'fixed':

First off, at about  the 1:00 mark, he said the team needs to take responsibility for themselves and stop blaming injuries or fatigue for their inconsistencies. 

When this team does finally get a small lead, they often don't 'clamp down' on defense and go on a run. They too often make mental mistakes and allow their opponent to keep up with them.

Shortly after that he mentioned the failure of the team to communicate on defense. Watch the first stretch of the game where Patterson comes in and she back to back misses her defensive assignment. She and Edwards BOTH not communicating. 

5:30 We run up and down the court well, but we don't think very well

At about the 6:00 mark Geno talked about players being selfsih and not wanting to change bad habits. They've had about 30 games played this season and there's been ample time to 'correct' poor habits, but that takes mental effort and discipline on the part of the individual players. 

Xavier is a lot better than our guys want to give them credit for. We're too immature.

8:00 and he's talking about the team only following a small segment of the game plan which the coaching staff taught them.

9:00 we look like a poorly coached team.

12:00 too many inconsistencies since the SC game especially.

A few minutes later, the players pick and choose what to listen to from their coaching staff.

16:00 Everyone must 'buy in' and play together.

17:00 Eventually, the coaches can't do everything for the team playing on the court.....the team must at some point learn to be decisive in a good way on the court aka coach themselves! I would add that a coach can't call a time out every 5 minutes to baby sit their team. You don't give up the same layup 3X in a row when you're anxious to fix it. At some point, a good team learns and improves; but poor teams don't.

Geno also mentioned that the very short bench they have doesn't permit the coaching staff to replace a poorly performing player with a better one off the bench for most of this season.

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I would challenge you to show us where Geno was wrong in his analyses of the team this game and this season? McCall, Holly Warlick and Muffet McGraw during her final season gave very few specifics of what was wrong with their respective teams. None of those 3 coaches had winning records anywhere near as good as UConn has this season. 

As far as the team getting thrown under the bus; the members of the team need to individually take responsibility for their mental mistakes, inconsistencies and failures to communicate with each other.  

We just disagree!

He didn't throw the players under the bus, he threw the entire program, including himself, under the bus. According to Geno, things look fine in practice, when the game starts they revert back to every bad habit they had that was previously corrected. Collectively, at times they all try to do too much. Not a lack of effort, wasted effort. When your exhausted you do make mental mistakes. Combine that with more than one player saying they feel the pressure. Not just the game to game pressure but the pressure that comes from what it say's on the front of the uniform. They know they lack scoring punch. In what Galaxy could you lose two players like Paige and Azzi, go 26-5 and win a conference championship? Take Boston and Cooke out of S. Carolina's lineup and see what happens. Take Clark and Czinano out of the Hawkeyes lineup. Yeah, not so good now are they? And they ain't Paige and Azzi. I guarantee you Geno felt much better after venting. Next game's Saturday. Bleed Blue, All Paws In.

I watch a depressed press conference like that and worry about recruiting. Probably the last thing on some people’s minds. But it was what I was thinking about.

And most of their parents!

Note also that last night, there were a lot of minutes from those who haven't had that role and take an extra half second to react ... or even recognize which voice to hear in the cacophony of a packed Gampel.

Remember, as pointed out in a great post yesterday, the bench last night consisted of the 12th, 13th, and a bonus 14th options per the roster we should have been fielding. With Dorka on the shelf, Aaliyah and Aubrey are also out of position. Not unfamiliar, but less perfectly aligned to their abilities and skills. Caroline played probably 10-12 more minutes than was likely planned.

... and they won the game. Let's not get too morose folks.

If this were a flight and the instruments failed and the pilots were out of commission and somehow someone was able to land safely but ran onto the grass between runways ... take a deep breath and realize how much worse this flight might have been, rather than restating how bad it was that the altimeter broke.

I recommend one of these lines of thought ...
1. Kudos to the kids for giving everything they had in the face of impossible circumstances. Celebrate the closeout of the season as gravy over how bad it might have been.

2. Hope. Hope for the Azzi and Dorka and Lou ... et al. to get healthy. Hope for the few days of rest to help Aaliyah and Nika to reenter themselves and return to the stellar play they showed us earlier in the season. Hope for the above to result in a team that can play top 10 or better basketball. Hope that they can build momentum that will carry them to the FF and all the way to confetti. Likely? Of course not. Possible? Yes. That's the thing that makes the tournament so riveting. Even Creighton can play Cinderella. Every team can dream that they'll be the first 12-seed to make the FF or every shot will fall and they'll have a six game winning streak. How much more hope should we have than them? We know our team has the talent. We've seen them play and beat several top teams.

3. Mope about wins that weren't pretty enough.

4. Project disaster for the next game

5. Kibbitz about who to blame.

I choose to go with #2, and will fall back to #1 when forced by a season-ending setback.

Not so much interested I the rest of the choices.

No less a brilliant authority than the World Exposure Report  wonders about Geno's future:

I mean I can see how he projects that. He looks really unhappy and then his parting shot about the plane and Stewie.

I think it is a reasonable conclusion for people that are new to Geno.

Geno has been saying that the players ain't what they used to be for a very long time.