The Cold Hard Truth About Cuonzo

He's better make a run next March, or I am afraid his tenure here will soon be over.

 

Haven't seen any element if the game I believe he coaches well. Offense is disastrous and individual skill ignored. Defense is lazy, soft and lost on screens. Turnovers galore, passing worst ever, intensity absent.

I want him to be the answer, but it's hard to see. Recruiting looks very, very iffy to boot.

 

No worries. We can always go cheap and grab another guy like him. Maybe he'll be good, maybe not. You have to find excitement in that gamble, rather than in the product put on the court.

 

Gambling excitement. I like it.

 

It's hard for me to imagine a scenario in which we don't make a run next season. Would have to involve injuries.

 

Or implosion at the point. We should be stacked elsewhere.

 

PG? Shooting? Defense? Passing? Tactics? Strategy?

Yep, we're gonna kill it.

 

His first year he over-achieved just a little I think. This year maybe a slight under-achievement, but after losing the best player to injury at the start of the year. Assuming McRae and Stokes don't lose their minds and do return, Maymon returns healthy, and Hubbs is even a solid contributor, I think we will be just fine.

And Coach Martin has a chance not only to win games here, but cement himself as a great ambassador for our university. I admire many things about him and I really really hope he succeeds big here.

 

I want success for him too, even beyond what I want for UT. I like the guy and everything he stands for. I don't like the coaching.

If we don't see se individual skill development, we'll still no-show as often as we show.

 

I think until we get consistent outside shooting and/or consistent PG play, it's always going to be a bit ugly. That probably doesn't change dramatically next year, but we should be better equipped to overcome it. I don't think it's 100% scheme, 0% personnel. I probably want Cuonzo to succeed a little too much to remain objective, though.

 

I hope he succeeds because I don't trust Hart to hire his replacement.

 

If you run a motion offense with poor point guard play, it's always going to be ugly regardless of coaching. That offense requires a good point guard. We struggled against zone because we have one guy that consistently makes shots, McRae. I haven't seen any terrible coaching; I'm not sure that there are tons of coaches that would have killed with our roster; however, Zo has to improve it. That's his job. Next year will obviously be make or break.

 

He needs to find some way to instill an inner fire within his players. Too often, his teams have shown an "I don't give a shit" level of effort in critical games. The first half of this season was the most disgraceful I've seen since the last year of Wade Houston in that regards. I ****ing hated this team in January because they didn't care and Cuonzo had no ability to make them care. I get the slow and steady demeanor has its benefits, but, when the moment comes, someone has to light that fire in people's asses. I haven't seen anything of the sort yet.

 

I think it was much more that the team simply sucked ass with Golden playing worse than Lopez and the team trying to figure out how to play with Maymon out.

 

I might go with this if it was just an offensive struggle, but they sucked defensively, too, especially after the Georgetown and Virginia games and that's simply effort. Once the Memphis debacle happened and Marshall Henderson was allowed to disrespect Thompson-Boling, my patience was gone. Martin salvaged some respect with the close to the season, but I agree with BPV about the deficiencies.

Martin has zero excuses next year. He has two 5 star recruits with a litter of 4 star guys, one of those guys being McRae, who may be pre-season POY next year, and a formidable front court. He has another season like these last two and I can't see him ever succeeding here.

 

Something changed defensively after December, because we fell pretty hard in efficiency. Was it the 4 guard lineup or a switch in focus? Or were we better against relatively fundamentally sound teams OOC vs. relatively athletic ones in the conference (all relative to level of competition, which is accounted for in the defensive numbers - like playing in a Air Raid conference with a team built to stop power running). Just some ideas. I can't believe that all of it was lack of effort.

 

Lack of individual skills is glaring on this team. Hall had to get kicked off to develop at all.

 

didn't they actually come up huge in several critical games?

 

I agree, but it happened before the 4-guard lineup, so it wasn't that. Not sure if it was athleticism or an issue in focus or strategy

 

Truer words...

I mean does anyone trust Dave Hart to hire us a good coach in any sport at this point?