The McDermott "System"
- Thread starter cyclonenum1
- Start date
No offense but this is why you aren't a college basketball coach. If your statements were true, high school coaches running the motion offense would win national titles.
:biglaugh: You are talking about 4 and 5 star recruits...athletes who are lottery picks, or players like Mayo who are the #1 recruit in the nation. We have Bryan Petersen and Sean Haluska. There is a slight difference there.
Given your omniscient ability to judge a recruit without seeing him play, I'm certainly not surprised to see that you think you could coach this team better than GM.
P.S. We've been trying to run pick and rolls all year with limited success. Maybe they should hire you to teach them the proper way to execute it, so we can be unstoppable.
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Even with Haluska's horrendous performance this year we are shooting 31% from three point land. You take him out of the numbers and we are right at about 35%. The reality is that most teams shoot between 30-35% from the three...in fact, I think 35% is typically what the average is in the NCAA. The very best 3 point shooting teams only hit 40%. I'm not sure we should be hanging our hats on improved 3 point shooting. By the way...next year the line moves back a foot to 20-9 for mens NCAA BB.
The fact is that you can't just take out certain players stats and then compare our team to national stats. Last I checked, Haluska is part of the team and his shots count towards our teams 3 pt. stats. Increasing our 3 pt % 5-7% would be huge for us...there really is some room for improvement there.
I don't understand your first comment at all. High school coaches don't have the chance to win a "national title" because there is no tournament (no, I don't count the final USA Today poll of HS BB). By the way, Bobby Knight has won a few CBB National Championships using the motion offense.
Yes some of those kids were top recruits...but not all...Ryan Francis was very lightly recruited and went to USC when Floyd was desparate...he ended up being Pac 10 Freshman of the Year. We play major CBB in a major CBB conference...since we have to compete with these teams we should be recruiting players that give us the best chance to do so...shouldn't we?
And if the South Bend Central Coach wouldn't have been an idiot, he would have double teamed Chitwood and not let him get the shot off.
What I meant was that if a KISS offense was the best thing for college basketball, schools could just go out and hire the local high school coach that runs the motion offense. And college basketball has changed slightly since the early 70s concerning Knight.
I think Garrett has a chance to be very good but its going to take him some time to adjust to college basketball and the level of competition. Also, McDermott got less than 1/3 of the time to recruit than most college coaches did for the 2006 class. He brought in Garrett, Boozer, and Lucca this year. One of those needs a redshirt, the other was ruled ineligible for the year. Mac is trying to bring guys in who can contribute but its not an overnight process like you want it to be.
We could have annihalated some of those non-conference foes, but when it comes down to conference play, that type of play would have been very inconsistant and would have never won any type of big things.
Just look at Johnny Orr. He was that type of coach. Not much defense and a very freelance offense. He turned around the program and created excitement, but did anyone really thing that was going to lead to conference championships and final 4's? They only way it could have is if you just have so much more talent than the other guy. Thats the only way you can win consistantly in that type of system.
ISU had its most 'big time' success under Tim and Larry. Both ran a highly structured offense and focused on defense. That led to much more success than our run and gun offenses of Johnny Orr and Wayne Morgan.
As for how long it takes to 'learn the system', it will vary from player to player. However, I think Gmac's history has shown that in the third year, the team will have the system learned. It may be delayed a bit here because of player attrition, but I don't think it will be that much. By next year, we will have a pretty large group of guys that know the system (Garrett, Petersen, Haluska, Johnson, Johnson, Thompson, Brackins). Having this group of guys will make it much easier for the new guys to learn the system. They will also be able to hide the mistakes of the new guys better.
This year the returning guys we have are Clark, Hubalek, Johnson, Johnson and Thompson as the returning guys. A few problems in there. First off, no guards to help the new guards. Thats probably the biggest problem. Second, Clark, Hubalek and Wesley have been hurt and missed a lot of practice. That hurts their ability to help the new guys learn. Thompson never got to run the system in a real game last year, so that limits his ability to help. That leaves Cory Johnson, who plays a position where there really isn't that much to help. Plus, his playing time was limited somewhat last year as well.
Knight won championships in the 80s as well, he has been in the Final Four in the 90s and has been to the Sweet 16 as recently as 2005.
Neither Larry's nor Tim's offenses were as controlled as Mac's. Yes, there needs to be control, but you have to let it bend some too. I think there can be a happy medium between Mac and Morgan. That is how the best teams in the country play. Look at KU as an example. They play half court sets, but also run and gun.
Like I said, 150 plays is too much. What is the point of having that many plays when none of the players can remember all of them on the court? He's a good coach, but a control freak!
It's not as much about a player learning the system as it is the players learning to play together within the system. That comes with practice and experience, and even then, it does not always overcome athletic deficiencies. You have to have all of the pieces for a successful season.
The answer to your question is that it depends on the athlete. For McDermott's system to work he has to have players with a good bit of talent and brains.
Some believe that his system may be better suited for non-BCS programs. This is the point that I think Jake Sullivan was trying to make on the radio a few weeks ago. Big XII type athletes want to showcase their level of talent/skill. They want a program that gives them a little freedom to do this.
I happen to think that his system will work when upcoming athletes see a certain level of success.
It will probably take an athlete on this team about 2-3 years to learn the system. Partly because some of them were not recruited for this system and partly because nobody on the team has much experience with it. Once the system is in place, incoming athletes will be able to pick it up in a year or two because they will have the majority of their teammates from which to learn and because they are the type of athletes that fit the system (brains and skill).
I haven't responded in this thread, but I feel compelled to do so here - nobody would have a problem with the system if we were winning. Also, I don't think an accurate measurement of how good an offensive system is can be reached until we hit the point where we don't have juco walkon's running it. I'm probably being labeled as a merrymen because of things I keep saying on here, but there are a lot of schools that have great athletes that run a controlled system and do very well. Look at Georgetown for example. Jeff Green last year was a fantastic athlete, and he looked great in that system because it really allowed him to showcase his passing ability (much like I think our system allows someone like Brackins to really do a good job passing). There are certain offensive theories that work in a lot of situations. Purdue runs a pretty wide open offense, and they have a lot of super talented young guys, and they really aren't that good this year. There isn't a magic bullet to fix this team. I'm somebody that kind of undervalues in game coaching - I think it's a lot more important to recruit and develop talent. McD does a great job of identifying talent. We've all seen him be in on some guys very early before they blow up. He just needs to reel some of those guys in.
A lot of this argument reminds me of what people were saying about Chizik and this football season. We got Chizik who is a good coach, his OC put up all kinds of points at UCF, and he's such a better coach than Mac we'll start tearing it up. Well guys didn't know the system, turnovers were plentiful early on, and there was a clear lack of talent on the field.
If we're still talking about these things and the end of next year, I'm going to be disappointed. Let's face it, it's not like Eric Coleman and everybody on UNI's team are Rhodes Scholars. If they can pick it up, our guys should be able to as well.
PS - Baylor runs much simpler system. They have had very good talent for years. This is the first year they are putting it all together. I'm not exactly a patient guy when it comes to my favorite sport, but a lot of people have their "Jump to Conclusions" mats out.
A lot of this argument reminds me of what people were saying about Chizik and this football season. We got Chizik who is a good coach, his OC put up all kinds of points at UCF, and he's such a better coach than Mac we'll start tearing it up. Well guys didn't know the system, turnovers were plentiful early on, and there was a clear lack of talent on the field.
If we're still talking about these things and the end of next year, I'm going to be disappointed. Let's face it, it's not like Eric Coleman and everybody on UNI's team are Rhodes Scholars. If they can pick it up, our guys should be able to as well.
PS - Baylor runs much simpler system. They have had very good talent for years. This is the first year they are putting it all together. I'm not exactly a patient guy when it comes to my favorite sport, but a lot of people have their "Jump to Conclusions" mats out.
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It generally takes players about a quarter to half of a season to grasp the system, and most of a season to actually let things REALLY set in...our guys have a solid idea of the system right now, we are just too young and weak at key spots. Garrett, Wesley, and Brackins are all going to play a HUGE factor into the future of ISU basketball. All three of them are very talented, but two of them are extremely weak by big 12 standards, and one of them has switched from power forward to shooting guard. Let them mature beyond their freshmen year (or Wesley's first year at the 2) before you start questioning whether or not McDermott will get it done here. You're entitled to your own opinion, but continually publically questioning whether or not we'll ever get it done under McDermott because he isn't this year with a plethera of injuries, position changes, and youth at crucial positions is just dumb.
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WOW...let me remind you of the facts regarding Coaches Orr, Floyd and Eustachy.
Orr took a moribund program and just 6 years later he had ISU in the Sweet 16. For those that don't recall (or weren't around) many thought that team would make the Final Four (including SI). Unfortunately, we fell to NC State 70-66 in the Sweet 16 game. During his 14 years Orr had 2 stretches of 3 consecutive winning season (including his last 3 seasons at the helm). Many also forget that during the 80s and early 90s the Big 8 Conference was arguably the toughest conference in CBB...witness the 1988 NCAA Championship game between KU and OU. Finally, of these three coaches, Orr is the only one to ever coach his team to a Final Four (his Michigan team lost the NCAA Championship to Indiana in 1976).
Floyd had a three year stretch of winning seasons but his fourth and final year he left us with a klunker of a season at 12-18. He was able to guide us to one Sweet 16...again we lost, this time to UCLA. The one Big 8 Tournament Championship was certainly a high point of his tenure.
Eustachy was never able to string together 3 consecutive winning seasons in his 5 years in Ames. He did win both a regular season Conference Championship and a conference tournament Championship the same year he led us to the Elite 8 round. However, he also guided us during one of the biggest upsets in NCAA history...Hampton beating us as a 15 seed.
My point is not to try and diminish any successes that Floyd and Eustachy had but rather to make sure everyone is clear on something...to think that they brought "much more success" than Orr is simply incorrect. Each coach was able to make one deep run in the NCAA Tournament with the Cyclones. Frankly, when you look at the records, TF and LE were no more consistent in their winning than Orr was (and it could be argued maybe a little less consistent...certainly in LE's case). ISU did have "Big Time Success" under Orr.
Lastly, to state that Orr ran a "freelance offense" is just simply inaccurate. Under Orr, the Cyclones did like to get out and run the break to take advantage of 3 on 2 and 2 on 1 situations. But when they couldn't get the easy basket on the break they ran a high post offense looking to get either back cuts to the basket from the wing or something off of high-low post play.
Injuries, position changes, youth, player turnover are all part of CBB for every team every year...including ISU.
You have to have ball handlers to run and we don't have that. You have to do more than get the ball across half court to run. You have to finish or pass the ball They are getting better but we don't have the Kansas quality player,.......yet.
