Tony isnât a good Xâs and Oâs coach. This is where I plead âdumb womanâ because I honestly donât know. What do you guys out there who played say about that? Very curious.
#FireTonyBennett. Get a real coach in here.
Matter of fact anyone named Tony should not be allowed to coach a Virginia athletic program. Iâm declaring open season on all Tonyâs.
#Tonypurge
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I think Tony is a very good Xs ad Os coach. Itâs not where heâs best, but I think heâs very good.
My criticism of how he coaches in those round 1s is heâs sometimes trying to win a generic game, not beat the team heâs playing.
All the things that your typical 1/2/3 seed does to typically win those games handily are not things we typically do â force turnovers, crash the offensive boards, use an overwhelming size or athleticism advantage. Generally, thatâs a fine strategy. But we need a round 1 strategy. Maybe Tony can hire mCKinsey or Bain or something. (this is a joke)
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It would be interesting to run the analytics around when upsets happen - what were the drivers (superstar on lower seeded team, subpar shooting, injury, etc.) or if itâs just totally random. So hard given the probability of any specific upset is low but the probability of some upset happening is high.
Edit: We know when we lose itâs because we canât hit the broadside of a barn shooting. So, maybe easier actually
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If I had listened to this 5 months ago I would have been pissedâŚThere were still some things mentioned that I was annoyed with but, bottom line- âIf we want to be about that life, weâve got to own itâ.
They mentioned our fanbase a few times as if we are responsible in owning the UVa outcomes of games etc. even though TBâs record is pretty good compared to Boheim, Izzo, and the time/duration it took others to get their first championships (Dean and Valvano). I wonder if outside of these boards are we that vocal towards these guys? As an example- I recall Marbly Mouth Jeff Goodman and the Field 64 crew mentioning that Uva fans really let them have it whenever theyâre incorrect in their analysis etc.
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Is there a common trend of our first round exits being against small ball lineups?
Is that a packline shortcoming or not running up the pace on inferior athletes things? I feel like in all the loses we have struggled to score but against not good defensive teams that are much smaller than us.
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I hate McKinsey, Bain, Gartner, Mitre, etc⌠those companies come in to try and convince you that they will help you make an informed procurement, decision, realignment, but in fact⌠they are trying to get you to slow your roll and pay them to do an asinine study to reinforce the decision you were already going to make. Hate hate hate them.
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I think indirectly small ball line-ups are the kryptonite of the packline⌠because small ball line-ups are generally the ones that shoot the 3-ball better and move the ball quicker.
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This is what happens when you take a shot at CTB:
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article274761611.html
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Yep- plus we tend to ârun our offenseâ as weâve done all season, but it doesnât always translate to wanting to punish the smaller team, for example from inside-outâŚwith that said since UMBC I no longer watch the first tournament game that we play (typically when we are a higher seed), since there is no upside to watching it- so I could be wrong about how we are playing during those games.
Lol. Yes and no. I worked in consulting for a while, and it was kind of astounding to what degree the projects ran the gamut. My particular area was supply chain and vendor management but Iâd get brought in for all sorts of âoperationsâ projects on occasion.
On the one hand, I can think of two projects (both with big financial services institutions) where we got paid a bunch of money and accomplished basically nothing. In one case, the initial concept was a clusterf**k from the start (the client basically had a yes/no question about whether a product would work and by some magic it got turned into an entire project. The answer ended up being ânoâ and the BS we did on the side added minimal value. And there was a TON of drama along the way.) and the other was actually a really interesting review of their strategic positioning that came up with a bunch of ideas way ahead of their time (your ATM footprint is great, youâre pouring money into whatâs already a solid website⌠why exactly do you need branches, again?), but the guy who brought us in had less buy in from the board than he thought. Like 80% of the way in they decided they didnât have an appetite for what we came up with (though the main guy loved it), so we told to just summarize what weâd come up with so far for their records and split.
The two big situations where we really added a lot of value were when we brought in to big, sleepy, dominant companies that hadnât really been challenged in a long time. It was a struggle to get them to bring us in, but when we did we could save them a LOT of money.
Like, a company had been using the same vendor for something for literally 25 years. The guy whoâs entire job was managing that relationship fought us tooth and nail politically, but we finally won and took it to an RFP. The current vendor won⌠with a 40% reduction in prices and they fired the guy who was basically gatekeeping for them.
The other time value was obviously being added was when the company needed serious strategic help on something, and the partner in charge of the project was an obvious genius. They couldnât very well pay the partner the $15k/hour he literally would have been worth to solve the problem, would have looked weird. So instead, the partner brings in the army of junior folks to crunch numbers and find minor analytical problems to solve, while he huddled with senior management and figured out the big problem. The junior folks get billed out at a big markup and add some value, and everyone gets to the right numbers without it looking weird.
And that situation sounds weird, but folks like that can be in insular roles and a fresh informed perspective that doesnât share gossip can actually add a lot of value in framing the problem. Like, one time, the head of purchasing for this big company we were working for wandered over to us. I was the only one there, and she didnât want to talk to me, she wanted the partner but he wasnât around so she settled for me.
In a nutshell, they had a major meeting with their biggest vendor on a huge infrastructure thing. Hundreds of millions over 2-3 years. Theyâd been negotiating for a couple days, and as the meeting ended the CEO had turned to her and said âIs this a good enough deal?â and she said sheâd let him know by the net day. She and her team had done the math a million ways and it was a good deal, but it was a big deal so she figured sheâd see if we had any ideas.
After a lot of back and forth, I made the point that she was looking at it the wrong way. Her job in this case wasnât to be an analyst, it was to be the guard dog. Her job was to convince the CEO that the purchasing department did not let a single dollar go out until the vendor had shed blood. She had to go back and ask for further concessions, not because they were warranted, but because that was her role in the organization. Other people could say âyesâ, she had to say ânoâ.
She was worried the vendor would split, but it was a huge deal for both sides. If they were literally going to walk, then the CEO would overrule her and make the deal happen anyway. As long as she was professional about it, there was no downside.
So she went back the next day, demanded more concessions and the vendor coughed up another $20M in price cuts, which she grudgingly agreed to. She maxed out her performance review that year, our project got extended for another 3 months and I got an excellent end-of-project evaluation. Just because I happened to be there to give her the right pep talk.
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You make some good points, but my experience working with an international management consulting company aligns with Jazz
They a) ignored everyone who knew something about the problem b) demanded a lot of data to feed into some Excel spreadsheets so they could compare us to other very different organizations to find âproblemsâ c) generated recommendations to align with what the customer wanted + others that were either unrealistic to implement or expensive to implement and were abandoned within 1-2 years.
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Wow that was a really long post. I hope you donât expect me to pay you for it.
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Sadly no. I mean, Iâm not a consultant anymore. Now Iâm just a guy who avoids anything football related.
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Yeah. It kinda sounds like they sucked, which is too bad.
More legitimate championship than bass fishing
https://twitter.com/coachbeansttu/status/1706015405087551593?s=46&t=tvElakV32391zkmPjLG4FA
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I literally was expecting roller blades when I read this⌠this is much worse.
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You thought a guy named Cletus was really good at rollerblading? Man youâve lived in Europe too long.
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