In the spirit of everyone who has ever said I have a man-crush on Saban when I compare Miles to the bloke, please bring your love-affair with Brady to one of those shady motels on Airline that charge by the hour. :hihi:
How the hell did Johnson's job need saving in his first year on the job? You're reaching now, Mr. Fantastic. And yeah, the team has regressed. Because the cupboard was bare. It's gonna take a bit more time to re-fill it. Get over it.
Pay attention. I'm only going to explain this once. I'm not a Brady fan. I'm an LSU fan. I thought we were supposed to constantly bitch about the coach in basketball. Isn't that all everyone did for the last 5 or 6 years of Brady? I'm just trying to belong.
John, if you hadn't run off three players a year you might have done some special things at LSU. Hell you took us to a Final Four in spite of it, but you never turned the corner. It was good or terrible. Trent is trying to build a consistently competitive program. He is sacrificing short term success for the long term benefit of the program.
No matter what I say I have an agenda. If I don't approve of what the current coach is doing, I have an agenda. If I am willing to give the current coach time, I have an agenda. If I didn't like the previous coach, I have an agenda. If I did, I have an agenda. You seem to be pointing out the exceptions rather than the rule regarding impact freshman. Even Duke and UNC won the last 2 championships with upperclassmen heavy starting lineups. Duke 3 Sr 2 Jr UNC 3 Sr 2 Jr Our two best players our freshman and in my opinion are making freshman mistakes. Chris Jackson and the Fab 5 aren't the norm. Don't mistake my willingness to give Trent Johnson time for approval of what his in-game and game to game coaching. I'm willing to give him time because of the huge gap in Brady's recruiting classes. Here are a few things I think we can do better: Work the offense better-There is a lack of ball movement. We aren't stretching the zone by working the ball in and out. I don't mind Stringer shooting a lot of 3s, but he is shooting from too far out and too early during possessions. Trent needs to reign him in. Shooting- See Stringer. Also, I would like to see Turner work on getting more arc on his shot. He is super talented, but his flat trajectory can lead to inconsistencies. This is more of an off-season thing. Derenbecker needs to be reigned in as well. He comes and makes bad shot choices. He comes in and jacks up 3s while falling away. Defense- We need to play more zone. We are giving up too many easy baskets. I'm not sure how much time I would give him. I feel like we could be pretty good in 2 years. If next year looks like this one, then I would say it's time for him to go. If there is visible improvement, the he should get another year.The fact that he won an SEC title in his first year is the reason I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt. If the players and team don't improve, then he needs to go. I believe he was a better coach that year and I hope he returns to that form.
I'm not really going to get into the debate here, because I really don't follow the basketball team very much, and really haven't for some time, even before Brady. I still defer my opinion to Hornland, he to me is our resident expert, opinion wise. The reason I am posting is believe it or not I had the most vivid dream last nite, and it was about LSU basketball. Go figure, I haven't watched a game in 4 yrs and I have a dream out of the blue. The dream was LSU vs Baylor in the Sweet 16, which we won 78-65, making it to the Elite 8. Now I don't have a clue as to why I would dream this or anything for that matter about our basketball team, but it was very vivid, so I am going with somehow we make it to the Elite 8 this season. I'm sticking to it. Crazy, yep, but I can't ignore an out of left field dream. :grin:
I'm not going to really get into a CTJ vs CJB debate in this thread. Just seems like more of the same, which is in part LSU "we have to win at all times" angst mixed in with a little CJB venom that always has existed. To some extent as well, per SabanF, some of this is just polar board posting that always exists. Many of the points you've made are correct. The reality of college basketball programs is they are not built overnight. Frankly, I don't think it's time for the debate. Trent is in his 3rd year, and only really 1/2 into his third year. So, consider this 1.5 years of Trent's era with his players. I give his coaching resume a bump for the job he did in his first year... period. Yes, he had an experienced team, but he took them from near last in the SEC under Brady/Pierre (+ Anthony Randolph) to SEC championship. I don't think that this year's job is "less good", it's just a different team. He's got to build a defensive mindset with recruits that frankly didn't ever learn how to play structured defense. I certainly give him a pass for last year b/c of what talent he inherited, and this year, well, I'm at least happy enough with the 2010 recruiting class to be optimistic. I look forward to 2012 recruiting, given 2011 (including transfer Justin Hamilton) is also a solid class to build on. The funny thing about the "debate" is frankly, the coaches fundamentally are very similar. Both fundamentally preach defense and rebounding, man to man defense, and work on it as the baseline. To say that this team has been inable to match that ideal is again a little premature IMO. I think that frankly this team needed to lose some before they realized how important the little things are. I expect improvement in this area, and even before the Southern game, Trent has been mixing up the practice techniques to better teach the defense, and also played with starting line ups (as a result, you see more life out of Malcolm White with 16 points, 11 boards and 3 blocks vs Southern). So, obviously both coaches pride themselves on similar things. That's however, where the similarities end (again, debate needs to be had after Trent has more time). (I would, however, dispute the fact that CTJ has alienated LSU faithful, including CT). As for this year so far, I have also wondered how effective Trent has been in games. Frankly, I haven't been able to watch the games real time. But, I think some of the things you're pointing out are just simply fundamentals and what certain recruits bring to the table. If you watched Stringer in high school tape, he did some of the same things in Jackson MS as he is here. He has good range, and had license to shoot 25 footers. Frankly, he's made about 35-37% of them here (I also seem to remember Bo Spencer doing some of the same thing, but missing). Turner's shot trajectory? I don't think that Trent can spend too much time worrying about this. As for the zone thing, I agree, I wonder if zone would make a difference for a team that has lateral quickness issues. At the same time, if you're concerned with a team learning how to block out in a man situation, it's even harder to feel out in a zone. So, I guess it's easy to assume that somehow Trent has missed the grade. At the same time, I think if you go back and look at LSU's stats this year versus last, there's no doubt this is a better team (hard not to be) top to bottom. But, it's a process. If they win against Rice and UVA this week (which are winnable), they would go into SEC play at 10-5. I'm not overwhelmed by that, but also not terribly disappointed per se. How they gel, and stay together as a team, during SEC play is where I'm judging Trent this year. He's staying true to course, which is building a foundation for these young guys to then build on. It's a little unfortunate that LSU fans aren't seeing this or buying it, but that also is not unexpected given past attendance numbers. That too, will take some time.
