Coaching Carousel 7 - When life gives you lemons, squirt someone in the eye

[KeystoneJacket]

 

[slugboy]

Over the last few years, Louisville has been ahead of us. Mack has recruited well. He had a good support structure around him. He’s about 0.500 headed into the meat of the conference schedule. The trend line is bad, though. Guess he’s done for.

			Over			Conf
Rk	Season	Conf	W	L	W-L%	W	L	W-L%	SRS	SOS	PTS	PTS	AP Pre	AP High	AP Final	NCAA Tournament	Seed	Coach(es)
1	2021-22	ACC	11	9	.550	5	5	.500	5.67	4.87	68.5	67.7						Chris Mack (11-9)
2	2020-21	ACC	13	7	.650	8	5	.615	10.35	8.90	68.0	66.5		16				Chris Mack (13-7)
3	2019-20	ACC	24	7	.774	15	5	.750	17.94	7.55	74.1	63.7	5	1	14			Chris Mack (24-7)
4	2018-19	ACC	20	14	.588	10	8	.556	17.28	11.04	74.6	68.4		15		Lost First Round	7	Chris Mack (20-14)

[thead] [/thead]

Provided by CBB at Sports Reference: View Original Table
Generated 1/25/2022.

Over at Duke and UNC, they’ve been bringing in high 5* players that would be leaders on the team as freshmen. FSU distributes the playing time among players more than we do, so each year is more of a continuation of the previous year. For us, this is a big change.

Reasons for optimism:

1. we have a couple of good transfers coming in, and Smith especially looks promising
2. we have one of the better ranked recruiting classes we’ve seen in years
3. Meka has had a year to heal up. Howard and Saba have had a year of coaching to grow into the 5 role
4. Devoe and Usher are back

Reasons I’m cautious:

1. we leaned heavily on 4 players last year, and it really hurt not having Moses in our NCAA game
2. our 5th player—Bubba Parham—is out for an extended period, so we’re down 3 of our main 5 from last year
3. We didn’t go deep into the bench last year, either in number of players, or in playing time. Kyle Sturdivant was getting about 12 minutes per game. He and Smith are taking over for a player who didn’t really come out. Moore is the player with the most reps of any non-starter, and I haven’t heard a lot of people talking about him taking on a greatly expanded role.
4. Part of it was our slow start last season, but after starting with two losses, we relied heavily on our core players through the non-conference schedule last year. Usually, that’s the part of the season where you go deeper in the bench to develop your bench with game experience.
5. Maybe other teams lose a lot of “returning production” too, but it took us a while to get the chemistry going last season, and we were starting with players who had played a lot together. I think this is a taller task.
6. We have a lot of players that we’re relying on this season that just haven’t had many or any minutes (see chart below). I think that puts a lot of pressure on the coaching staff to get them playing well together for the first game. Pastner even said that he’s going to use a lot of the non-conference slate to experiment with lineups. Howard hardly played, and Saba played even less. Sturdivant had some experience, but last year was more of a “win now” season than a “get our players ready for next year” one. It’d be more of a sure thing if we already knew who could play where

Rk	Player	G	GS	MPV
1	Jose Alvarado	26	26	965
2	Michael Devoe	26	26	909
3	Moses Wright	25	25	882
4	Jordan Usher	26	26	766
5	Bubba Parham	25	14	673
6	Khalid Moore	25	11	597
7	Kyle Sturdivant	26	0	310
8	Rodney Howard	19	2	145
9	Saba Gigiberia	8	0	35
10	Jehloni James	4	0	10
11	David Didenko	5	0	9
12	Tristan Maxwell	1	0	8
13	Jordan Meka	1	0	8
14	Malachi Rice	1	0	2
15	Shaheed Medlock	2	0	2
16	Coleman Boyd	2	0	2
17	Niko Broadway	2	0	2
	School Totals	26		5325

Provided by CBB at Sports Reference: View Original Table
Generated 11/9/2021.

It wasn't your intention, but thanks for the pre-season reminder. I thought Pastner needed to have a good season to lock in the goodwill from last year. He hasn't. Most of the reasons for optimism haven't panned out. Devoe has been everything you might have expected. Usher has played well but could use some other threat to free him up. Smith has shown potential, but neither he nor Sturdivant have made up for Alvarado's absence. Howard, Saba, and Meka haven't made up for Wright's graduation. Bubba was kind of a 6th man playing 5th man, and he's out for the year. Last year, we had four scorers, and this year we don't have quite that much.
We salvaged last year--more than salvaged it--we had a great season. But we didn't build anything for this season (young players didn't get the reps) and lost a lot of momentum.
Things could have broken our way this year, but they haven't. We needed at least two players to take big steps up, and could have used 3 or 4 players to have a leap in production. Maybe there were some schematic things that Pastner could have done to take pressure off of the players. At this point, Pastner has to get things on the right track for next year. This year needs another ACC tournament championship to turn it around.

 

[CuseJacket]

There's a lot to this decision. He's been in trouble with the NCAA, had the feud with Dino Gaudio, and now this has become public:

 

[orientalnc]

He had a nice gig at Xavier. So sad.

 

[kg01]

I'm legit surprised it hasn't worked out so well for him there. Smells like there are some personality differences. Maybe the XU folks overlooked him (allegedly) being a whole a**?

 

[CuseJacket]

 

[MidtownJacket]

hats off to @KeystoneJacket for a heckuva thread title.

 

[KeystoneJacket]

Props should be directed to whichever Mod split my post out of the Coaching Carousel 6 thread.

 

[CuseJacket]

hats off to @KeystoneJacket for a heckuva thread title.

Props should be directed to whichever Mod split my post out of the Coaching Carousel 6 thread.

I am guilty of "administrator privilege" and have been appending the motivational quotes to each year's Coaching Carousel thread. At least for the last few.

 

[MidtownJacket]

I am guilty of "administrator privilege" and have been appending the motivational quotes to each year's Coaching Carousel thread. At least for the last few.

Wow, comedic genius AND Gracious.. our guy @kg01 could learn a thing from the ol burner account!

 

[kg01]

Wow, comedic genius AND Gracious.. our guy @kg01 could learn a thing from the ol burner account!

Wait, Cuse has a burner account?

Is that one a fulltime GT fan?

 

[kg01]

In all seriousness ... and I think the answer is 'no' but still ..... do we have anything to worry about with this Lville opening?

If I were them, I'd be looking not at smut merchants like Sampson/Pearl but at squeaky clean dudes. Then again, that's not their style in Kentucky.

 

[YlJacket]

In all seriousness ... and I think the answer is 'no' but still ..... do we have anything to worry about with this Lville opening?

If I were them, I'd be looking not at smut merchants like Sampson/Pearl but at squeaky clean dudes. Then again, that's not their style in Kentucky.

Mick Cronin is supposed to be huge into horse racing and betting. Have heard he has a deep urge for Kentucky Bourbon too. Could be "the guy".

 

[GTbball2016]

In all seriousness ... and I think the answer is 'no' but still ..... do we have anything to worry about with this Lville opening?

If I were them, I'd be looking not at smut merchants like Sampson/Pearl but at squeaky clean dudes. Then again, that's not their style in Kentucky.

No shot for Pastner. It will likely be Payne.

 

[GTpdm]

In all seriousness ... and I think the answer is 'no' but still ..... do we have anything to worry about with this Lville opening?

If I were them, I'd be looking not at smut merchants like Sampson/Pearl but at squeaky clean dudes. Then again, that's not their style in Kentucky.

Let's not forget why Mack got in trouble:



You read that right, folks: Louisville has "guidelines, policies, and procedures" for handling extortion attempts.

 

[Steverc]

Let's not forget why Mack got in trouble:



You read that right, folks: Louisville has "guidelines, policies, and procedures" for handling extortion attempts.

They should have a procedure after Patino was extorted for banging some lady in his restaurant.

 

[dtm1997]

Louisville should bring back BIG **** RICK! LFG!!!!

 

[GT11]

They should have a procedure after Patino was extorted for banging some lady in his restaurant.

Not just some lady, but his assistants wife

 

[slugboy]

Not just some lady, but his assistants wife

And Louisville had Petrino having an affair with a 25-year-old young lady who worked for him. The football budget bought her a car. If he hadn't wrecked his motorcycle with her riding on the back, he might still be their coach.

 

[Steverc]

Not just some lady, but his assistants wife

Classy.