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If one person says that loss is on coaching... you haven't a clue!


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1 hour ago, FoundationEagle said:

I'd bet we could get Jones back. It may be the difference between average and very good. If I were Bruce I'd be on the phone all month trying to bring him back. Of course I'm not Bruce so who knows what his poa is. 

I think Bruce could get him back. I believe he left for an opportunity to be an interim coach for a professional team but now he doesn't work for the team. I don't really know what he's up to but if Bruce really tried there's a chance. If not we can probably find another high quality assistant. The question is who leaves the staff to make room for the new assistant if this happens 

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Just my view but comparing BP's results in Year #1 vs Year #2  vs  Year #3 ....W-L does not tell us the real story.   

Consider that the talent level has improved substantially from year to year and no question...freshmen or whatever.... he had much better talent this season than in either of the past two so the fact that we had a better season should not be surprising.    

 I'm thinking that the question to be asked is whether BP got the best out of the talent he had this year which is the primary measurement of a coach's work. And IMO, the W-L record is a secondary measure.   After all, the coach's job is to maximize the talent he has available ...and help his players become more skillful at the game. 

So looking at this season....and forgetting the W-L...but just looking at how the games were played and directed and how the individual players progressed..... what kind of coaching job did BP do?    Not talking about recruiting...but actually coaching the team and getting the most out of them. ..

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12 minutes ago, AU64 said:

Just my view but comparing BP's results in Year #1 vs Year #2  vs  Year #3 ....W-L does not tell us the real story.   

Consider that the talent level has improved substantially from year to year and no question...freshmen or whatever.... he had much better talent this season than in either of the past two so the fact that we had a better season should not be surprising.    

 I'm thinking that the question to be asked is whether BP got the best out of the talent he had this year which is the primary measurement of a coach's work. And IMO, the W-L record is a secondary measure.   After all, the coach's job is to maximize the talent he has available ...and help his players become more skillful at the game. 

So looking at this season....and forgetting the W-L...but just looking at how the games were played and directed and how the individual players progressed..... what kind of coaching job did BP do?    Not talking about recruiting...but actually coaching the team and getting the most out of them. ..

Unless you were to give this team to another coach and see how he fared with this group of players then i don't know how you can really answer and quantify this. Players like Heron and McLemore exceeded my expectations. RJ and Harper probably met expectations. Brown had a terrible start to the year but got better. Wiley did about as good as i would think a kid in his shoes could do. Spencer missed most of the year for various reasons. Purifoy was underwhelming most of the year.....Dunans was alternating between exceeding meeting and falling short of my expectations so not sure how to gauge that one. 

If I was going to fault Pearl for something it would probably be his inability to find a leader on this team and being unable to prevent the multiple meltdowns the team had as a result of not having a leader. Looking back on the season the only guy i could see taking that role would be RJ. He just has that demeanor about him. I wish Pearl would have leaned on him more throughout the season. And let Harper be the spark plug off the bench. But there is no denying that the minutes Harper played this year will help us down the road and that at times Harper took over and won us some games. Coaches have to balance looking at the future and getting the most out of the present. Not easy to do with our current roster make up. And plus that is hindsight and everything is obvious in hindsight. 

In the end the team did not meet my expectations for the season. So that means Pearl didn't either. My expectations were an NIT bid. We were close but didn't quite make it. Were another coach have got us there with these players? maybe/maybe not....would another coach have even gotten us in this position? maybe/maybe not. Were my expectations for this team too high because i have seen such awful basketball at AU for so long that the smallest bit of hope has my eyes to the sky? probably. 

Nothing to do now but sit back and see what we have for next year and hope we continue our path of improvement. The good news is that if we improve just a bit we are guaranteed the post season next year.  

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1 minute ago, gravejd said:

Nothing to do now but sit back and see what we have for next year and hope we continue our path of improvement. The good news is that if we improve just a bit we are guaranteed the post season next year.  

Agreed 

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The state of the program is improving. We hoped BP could've gotten these guys to play together on both ends a little better but it didn't happen as smoothly as we hoped. There is always a possibility of that when you have guys not only all playing together for the first time but also learning to playing college basketball at the same time. Not to mention we injected a starter into the lineup 1/3 into the season JUST as roles were seemingly getting defined which pushed our progress back. 

Record has improved.

Talent has improved.

We were actually a bubble team at one point -- That is insane improvement and there seems to be a lot of spoiled fans in here who have no right to be spoiled if they don't recognize the significance of this.

We had a chance to play ourselves into the NIT and just melted down the last 3:45 of the Mizzou game. We didn't get the job done there.

 

Bottom line is WIN-LOSS record is where the judgement lies. That is sports. To move the criteria once improvement is being shown in the win-loss column just reeks of trying to make BP look bad. I understand we failed in reaching our goal of getting to a real postseason tournament. I am not ignoring this fact at all but I can see where this road is taking us. There are only a few coaches who would've come in and gotten the results some of you wanted by this time -- Coach Calipari, Coach K, and maybe Bill Self. These guys hoard all the one and dones for the most part and our players just aren't immediate stop by the NCAA tournament before declaring pro kind of guys. And that's ok because our program now has solid footing for the first time in years to build off of.

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1 hour ago, au302 said:

I think Bruce could get him back. I believe he left for an opportunity to be an interim coach for a professional team but now he doesn't work for the team. I don't really know what he's up to but if Bruce really tried there's a chance. If not we can probably find another high quality assistant. The question is who leaves the staff to make room for the new assistant if this happens 

Jones is teaching/coaching at an AAU academy. Probably a substantial raise if he came back if I had to guess

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It seems odd he left to do that. Maybe he just didn't like living and working in Auburn? It's possible.

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1 hour ago, Tiger said:

It seems odd he left to do that. Maybe he just didn't like living and working in Auburn? It's possible.

He originally left to fill in coaching a professional team after his brother, who was the head coach, was suspenfef for a fight. I guess his brother got reinstated or a new coach was hired. In fact, it looks like he was at the game Wednesday night, posted a picture on twitter, maybe that's a sign. 

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28 minutes ago, au302 said:

He originally left to fill in coaching a professional team after his brother, who was the head coach, was suspenfef for a fight. I guess his brother got reinstated or a new coach was hired. In fact, it looks like he was at the game Wednesday night, posted a picture on twitter, maybe that's a sign. 

Ahhh thanks for that breakdown.

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To those talking about people selling tickets: I checked Stubhub for prices fairly regularly during the season and they were always going for more than face. So they were trying to sell them, but also trying to profit which is fine, but people aren't going to pay $200 to take their family to weekday basketball games. 

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1 hour ago, jared52 said:

To those talking about people selling tickets: I checked Stubhub for prices fairly regularly during the season and they were always going for more than face. So they were trying to sell them, but also trying to profit which is fine, but people aren't going to pay $200 to take their family to weekday basketball games. 

I understand these businesses buy big batches of surplus tickets...probably at a discount ...schools want to get rid of them....and it helps generate the "sold out" conditions at an arena or stadium which the schools like to promote... and then they try to sell them at a profit.   That probably works many times.....but if the demand is not there...?????  

Wondering if that is the reason we keep having "sell outs"....with lots of empty seats.   Some tickets are sold entirely on the hope of being re-sold...but if the team goes cold ...as did AU later in the season, they can't do much with them. 

 

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