Cincinnati game

[Techwood Relict]

And playing to a depth of 12 players was promising in figuring out different floor fives for different situations., the 12th being last year's student walk-on sophomore forward redshirt #35 Emmer Nichols. William Emmer Nichols is the namesake great grandson of the Georgia Tech great tennis player Bill Moore of the mid 1930's, for whom the tennis center was named before the current center name. He donated money for an upgrade during the tenure of AD Homer Rice. Emmer is a solid basketball player, being in the top 50 high school players in the state of California two years ago. He turned down basketball scholarships to follow the footsteps of his great grandfather and his brother to Georgia Tech. That was Emmer's first game as a Yellow Jacket, though not under the best of circumstances. He is also an honor role student as well in Economics and International Affairs. The other two non-scholarship players are 5th year player 2LT Carter Murphy, commissioned from the Air Force academy, with his Operations Research masters being funded by the Air Force. Freshman student walk-on Marcos San Miguel is a Computer Science major. There are many good reasons to support this and all team through thick and thin. Many will be future donors as many of us are since back in the day when we saw or played our first Yellow Jacket game.

This is an awesome post. Thanks for the detail Mr. Taylor. I said to AUFC at the game, one of the reasons I visit here is the caliber of the members. This site adds a depth not seen elsewhere. We are rooting for this team. I hope they find their stride soon.

 

[Tommy_Taylor_1972]

I cannot read Coach Stoudamire's mind,only his background, and I am not paid anymore to think, but. Coach's background in winning at high levels comes not only in his 2 Oregon state championships in High school, but from his college Coach Lute Olson at Arizona. Coach Olson was the ultimate re-builder coach, for example taking over high school jobs, a junior college, and Long Beach State in the LA area in the 1960's. He emulated Coach Wooden's style of play, learned by being there in LA during Wooden's heyday, with strong guards (1 and 2), strong swing men (3 and 4) and a good enough center (5), all with constant motion offense and tough defense with discipline. He then went on to rebuild Iowa and then to Arizona, where Damon was part of his "Point Guard University". With the times, Coach Olson moved away from the 2-guard front that Wooden used, but kept the motion, strong swing men guard/forwards and good enough center.

I would think that Damon took what he learned to the pros as a player and to Pacific U, and then back to the pros as assistant. My SWAG (sophisticated wild a** guess) is the Damon as the new GT coach is trying to fit his inherited and "portaled" into the style he knows best from when he was coached. And, he likely knows a coach has to play with what he owns at the time, and to improve that with recruiting. When I played at Tech in the late 60's early 70's, Coach Hyder was good at capitalized on what he had. A particular game with UCLA shows me a contrast of coaching styles between a center-centric motion offense used by Coach Hyder and a guard-forward-centric motion offense used by Coach Wooden. Center Yunkus had a great game over Patterson, but Bibby, Valley, Wicks, and Rowe had an ever greater game, and we lost 121-90. Both teams played 12 players throughout the game, not just emptying the bench at the end.

Without a great center yet, Coach Stoudamire may be looking to follow Wooden/Olson, while developing or obtaining as good enough center, and having subs that can carry on when needed. Below is the Georgia Tech - UCLA game in 1969, showing the contrast of the two styles of coaching focus, one on the center and one on all the others. The UCLA guards and forwards scored 101 to our guards and forwards 56, with our center getting 38 to their center 11. Wooden's style won 121-90, observed by Lute Olson, and likely the thinking of Damon Stoudamire. And most pro teams today have a version of the Wizard of Westwood's motion offense in a pattern to optimize their talents. There was in that one tournament in LA a look at 4 teams' offensive patterns, Tech with the shuffle, Princeton with the "Princeton offense", Indiana ? but before Bobby Knight took over, and UCLA with the guard-forward motion offense with high center. I may be wrong, but I think we will see the Wooden/Olson style again soon.

 

[Peacone36]

I think some of y’all are Mind f***ing this.

Texas Tech has a new coach, a new roster and just went to Maui and emerged 5-1.

We just aren’t good. Haven’t played well in four games. Buckle up. Gonna be another long season. The good news is we’re all well seasoned in long seasons

 

[Bogey]

Hoping CDS can get thing turned around but I am not impressed at all watching his demeanor during a game.

 

[AUFC]

I definitely thought we were gonna Jerome Tang or TJ Otzelberger this. There’s still a chance the offense figures things out but I’d pretty much throw out any dancing dreams. The talent is there - we are loaded with 4 star croots.

 

[Steverc]

I definitely thought we were gonna Jerome Tang or TJ Otzelberger this. There’s still a chance the offense figures things out but I’d pretty much throw out any dancing dreams. The talent is there - we are loaded with 4 star croots.

I think a lot of guys that were highly rated out of high school ended up in the transfer portal because they did not pan out. We may be a little thin on talent.

 

[MtnWasp]

There is some talent. They just don't know how to play.

Kowacie Reeves has been more productive than I expected. My impressions of Abram are the opposite. He is important and for him to explode on the launch pad is a huge blow to the team. If Sturdivant was going to be able to be a winning PG, he would have done it before now. Thus, we have a PG issue. The Ndongo injury set us back some. The play of Miles Kelly reminds me of the play of Devoe after Alvarado left. Next in line to be "Da Man," hasn't been able to produce like "Da Man" yet. Gapare has plenty of talent but he is Solo Poole-level wild.

Stoudamire mentioned multiple times about getting some resistance from the players. It is evident. They don't yet understand what he means by playing hard and with an attention to detail. I don't know if enough of this crew ever will. So, I may actually agree with Peacone (for the first time EVER) that this may be a long year. Stoudamire is going to have to recruit more tough minded kids. The questions I have is are there enough of those out there and how long will it take to fill a roster with them?

But our present coach is not one to scheme around weaknesses. He'll ride this crew to oblivion trying to get them to play hard, sound, NBA-Lite style basketball. But Tech fans shouldn't complain. They just had a coach that tried to scheme around weaknesses and the fans didn't like him because they couldn't accept the weaknesses. Stoudamire won't accept the weaknesses either.

So I see a lot of year to year roster turnover with this coach as he freely searches for guys who will have a single-mindedness that suits Stoudamire's vision of what a successful basketball player looks like. He'll chase guys who don't buy-in. If it doesn't work, Stoudamire will move on pretty quick. GT will never have to fire this guy.

Krzyzewski took several seasons to establish his nutty-competitive culture before Duke started to win big. At least five seasons if I recall.

 

[iopjacket]

Stoudamire appears to be looking at plan B with Naithan George getting 15 minutes at PG.

 

[gte447f]

Stoudamire appears to be looking at plan B with Naithan George getting 15 minutes at PG.

Maybe, maybe not. We were down by 30 to 40 points by that time, so he may have been sending a message to the regulars. Kind of like how Roy Williams used to make a complete 5 man line change from starters to scrubs and walk-ons to send a message to his starters sometimes. I’m all for it. Nobody deserves to play when you’re getting beat by 40, and nobody could play any worse, and it doesn’t even matter at that point.

 

[GT33]

Stoudamire appears to be looking at plan B with Naithan George getting 15 minutes at PG.

He needs to Plan B to open some roster spots if necessary. Some significant time on the pine for those not getting the message should help them find their way on or off the team. Hate to say it but we've blown the lid off kids playing for the love of school and now this is a business.

 

[iopjacket]

Maybe, maybe not. We were down by 30 to 40 points by that time, so he may have been sending a message to the regulars. Kind of like how Roy Williams used to make a complete 5 man line change from starters to scrubs and walk-ons to send a message to his starters sometimes. I’m all for it. Nobody deserves to play when you’re getting beat by 40, and nobody could play any worse, and it doesn’t even matter at that point.

My guess is Stoudamire wants to give George some playing time to be prepared for next year and provide some pine time to players that aren't buying in.

 

[Tommy_Taylor_1972]

I firmly believe Coach Stoudamire definitely has a plan to win and is searching for the right combinations to win, I say again, to win. He will further develop each player, particularly the guards, to win. He knows how to win, playing for 23 years in over a thousand games and winning with over 600 high school, college, and professional games at point guard. He and only scored lots but also knew where the other four players were on the court at all times and how to get them to score. Called Little Flying Mouse, he got up and down the court with much speed and quickness, offensively and defensively.

So he knows the skills it takes to win. He has played for 23 years for the top coaches in the game and had to adapt to at least 8 different coaching styles. He learned how to win from high school HOF coach **** Beachell (159-22), Arizona's Lute Olson, and pro coaches Brendan Malone (known for his defense of Michael Jordon), Darrell Walker (pro point guard), Mike Dunleavy (now GM of the Warriors), Maurice Mo Cheeks (former NBA player an now assistant with the Bulls), Mike Fratello (NBA coach of the year, now Fox sports analyst), and Greg Popovich (now coaching the spurs and all-time winning-est coach in NBA history, I played against him in 1970 when he was a guard on the Air Force Academy team).

Coach Stoudamire has adapted to various coaches as a player and knows how to adapt his players who want to be adapted to his "style" of play in fulfilling their assigned roles to win. Pros recruit to the coach's style even mid-season. College coaches have to develop as well as recruit to their style year to year. If they buy in and adopt to his style, they will win like he did. If not, they may elect to hit the portal, giving him more scholarships for the next year.

It will be very interesting to see how quickly he can create a consistent winning team. It takes a lots of discipline for a player to adapt to the coaches style. I know because I came to Tech as a 22 ppg all American on a state championship team as MVP, playing forward. Coach Hyder, with a center oriented team shuffle style offense, told me to have fun playing on the freshman basketball team in 1968-69. I averaged 20 points and 10 rebounds per game on the freshman team as a 5-11 forward. As a sophomore, he moved me to guard and said to get the ball to Yunkus and play great defense, so I adapted from a 20 ppg to shooting less than 5 shots a game. We had two winning seasons with two NCAA and NIT invites each year and chose the NIT. So the players must and will adapt to Coach's style or not be happy campers. I did and never regretted that I adapted.

I have a gut feeling a wining season may be sooner that later, but maybe not this year. I can see at least 12 teams on the schedule that will be tournament contenders that have not changed coaches since last year.