🙄 No Holds Barred Thread - A Haney/DavetheWave Production

[jphat007]

I don’t think anyone (except maybe Dave, truly) wants Tony gone. But you want him to do things that he doesn’t want to do. He’s not going to do them. As he says in the interview, if I can’t do things in the way that I think they need to be done in this new environment, then CBB is not for me.

It’s just my own opinion about future coaching success. Times were different in the Holland and JJ era. I don’t see us having much success after TB unless we catch lightening in the bottle. That’s just my own opinion. It’s a crap shoot with not very good odds.

[Hoos9412]

@jphat007

It’s just my own opinion about future coaching success. Times were different in the Holland and JJ era. I don’t see us having much success after TB unless we catch lightening in the bottle. That’s just my own opinion. It’s a crap shoot with not very good odds.

Imo the JJ era is more or less what this program will be whenever TB steps away. Guy directly after TB might struggle but ‘the guy after the guy’ should do fine. Hard to mess up top 10 practice/weight room facilities, a gorgeous arena, rich recruiting ground, and top 15 budget in the sport but so badly.

Basically I think looking at the level the program was at pre-JPJ and Paul Tudor Jones investment isn’t very informative. We were a low budget team (by ACC standards) with an aging arena. Of course it was tough to attract good coaches and players.

[haney]

@jphat007

But you want him to do things that he doesn’t want to do.

I don’t want to overdo this, but this can be a bit of a slippery slope. I’m all for the most amount of autonomy that is reasonable (I enjoy it myself in my own jobs / career), but there’s a limit. If I were an AD would I want a brinksmanship with Tony over streaming the B/W game? Almost certainly not, but I would think it’s odd that my coach has made that a brinksmanship type thing… (I know I’m short-handing complex interpersonal dynamics here…)

[jphat007]

Yes it would be interesting to see how it goes down. I very much doubt Tony says “if you do things like stream or post lengthy highlights, I’m outta here”. So I’m sure they’ve asked him in the past and he says I don’t want to give any possible competitive advantage away with my very fine line for success, and there isn’t much more thought given to it than that.

[haney]

Good discussion. Need to run along for now, but have appreciated the chatter with you, @NorVaHoo, and the others I disagree with. But as always, I mostly appreciate when people agree with me.

Kidding! (if that were true, I wouldn’t stay married)

[NorVaHoo]

We’ll I’m gonna lose this argument amid a bunch of people who are frequenting a UVA sports message board on a Monday afternoon. This group cannot be sated.

But everything that involves the UVA basketball program and its players falls under Bennett, so yes he must spend time being involved in what is being asked of his program. He has a proven approach in his program that yields continuous success, and at a level few ever achieve. If he doesn’t want to spare time on peripherals but would rather focus on what he considers essentials, and the fruits of that are what we’ve seen in the last 10 years (and never prior), then I’m perfectly fine with that. I got 30+ games I get to watch and he seems to be finding his 2-3 recruits most every year that love his approach and give us the promise of sustained high-end results.

And for some fans, it’ll never be enough. They’ll take whatever the program is offering and then want more and more. Until we’re the Kentucky fan base.

Edit: this is a general response and not to any particular poster.

[DavetheWave]

@Hoos9412

Imo the JJ era is more or less what this program will be whenever TB steps away.

Ok JJ era… so:
8 seasons.
5 NCAA berths
6-5 record in those 5 appearances including an Elite 8 and a Sweet 16
1 NIT Championship
2 losing seasons

[Hoos9412]

Looks about right. Maybe instead of 2 losing seasons we have another NCAA or NIT appearance in an 8 year stretch.

[DavetheWave]

They streamed the game and a lot more highlight packages from 2014-2019 … our best stretch of winning … why not simply do now what they did then?

[NorVaHoo]

Didn’t we just have a mediocre football coach who quit rather than replace a hopelessly bad DC that he was told to replace? Coaches like things their way and to be in charge of their programs, and why would we ever irritate a supremely successful coach about doing a bunch of non-essential things that he clearly doesn’t want to do?

[NorVaHoo]

I don’t remember a scrimmage stream but I probably never had enough interest. They do postgame highlights and interviews now, which is what I recall from back then.

But to answer your question, because Bennett doesn’t want to. If he gets good recruits and wins conference and national championships, that’s good enough for me. And he’s not being an insufferable prick like the ferret down the road.

[HooSinceBirth]

@haney

If that’s no longer UVa hoops, then so be it.

This seems selfish on his part… shouldn’t we the people of LRA get to decide when he moves on?

[Wahoos]

@DavetheWave

Ok JJ era… so:
8 seasons.
5 NCAA berths
6-5 record in those 5 appearances including an Elite 8 and a Sweet 16
1 NIT Championship
2 losing seasons

Dave, are you happy with these JJ seasons? You usually seem unhappy with Tony’s stats, so it’s kind of surprising if you’re okay with these.

[DavetheWave]

I didn’t post an opinion on it … just posted how we did under Jones…

[Hooandtrue]

I feel like part 2 is more appropriate for this thread to spare the preseason thread LOL

One-on-one with Tony Bennett (Part 2): Embrace the Pace

[AdventiveQuasar]

People negatively recruit against us a lot. I say if they can win as much as we have and they can produce as many guys into the NBA, then go ahead and talk about it. And if they can’t, it’s probably best just to focus on themselves. You know, our guys are not just a flash in the pan in the league.

Now this is the stuff, I love this energy from TB.

[MaineWahoo]

Love that quote. And I’m one of the folks that wishes we could speed up just enough to be firmly bottom quintile in speed but not dead last. But if that’s how Tony wants to do it, I’m good with, and I love his take on it. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not a major concern.

I also completely agree with him on what makes college basketball so special - all the different styles of play. I hate when folks try more and more to make the college game like the NBA game. I like the NBA, but it’s a much more homogenized product. It’s got the best athletes and most skill, so it’s still fun, but a lot of what is being run by any given team isn’t that different than the other teams in the league. College doesn’t have the best talent and has massive talent disparities between teams, but the huge differences in systems make things competitive and fun. This is a super long of way saying leave the damn shot clock alone!

[Hoos9412]

Love how he notes 301st and 50th in pace are not that far apart! Yes Tony! Get us up to 301st in offensive possession length and all the jabs about pace disappear!

[haney]

(posting this here b/c it’s a bit ponderous and want to keep the preseason thread open for those “streaming wars” flare-ups)

Listening to that STL pod today. You should all go and listen because it’s interesting b/c the two LRA alums are obviously smart kids and know their hoops, and the host was good, too.

But an idea came up whose logic I think is a bit off, at least IMO. I’m not attributing this to anyone, and it’s strawman-ish, admittedly. The idea is this:

1. The top 6 guys will stay the top 6, more or less, but will only lose a few minutes
2. One of the main reasons we were bad last year is that if a starter wasn’t playing well, let’s say Armaan Franklin, then we really didn’t have any options, so if he was streaky, and went 0-7 from 3, were just kind of stuck. Hence so many bad losses.
3. Whereas this year, we will have a lot of options behind that starter, so rather than going 0-7, he will go for 0-3, and then we can bring in a guy who can hit some jumpers, instead (presumably Isaac M.).

I feel like this theory is a bit of a contortion, logic-wise to pay homage to (1) what Tony was trying to do conceptually with the lineups last year, (2) the fact that hey, we’re the “development place” so guys will just get better by being here longer, and finally (3) doesn’t really start to grapple with the problems of brining in younger guys. And also, (4) it’s a way to assert that the problem with last year was guys that are gone (Kody, Malachi, Igor, Carson) without directly asserting it, and (5) kind of ignores that one of the guys being implicitly relied on in the analysis was here last year (Taine) and Tony more or less never tried to implement the theory being relied upon.

My basic view is if you think the problem with last year’s team was that we didn’t have guys that were good at shooting, or – stated differently – had guys that were streaky and couldn’t be relied upon, whereas this year, we will have guys that can be relied upon … THEN why would we playing the former guys more minutes and the latter guys less minutes?

I just think that a bench-led theory of improvement seems incorrect to me. If the bench is better, shouldn’t they play more minutes than the guys who need to be replaced? **

** The obvious and underthought response will be “Defense” but remember that the bench-led theory posits that the bench guy will be playing defense as well as offense for those minutes where he’s playing

Basically, if you think this team is going to be more than marginally better than last year, I think the theory should be that we are replacing someone in the core 6. (Which is my theory of improvement, but my theory also acknowledges more growing pains early on this year, because we’d implicitly be undercutting the “all that experience” talking points).

[Hoos9412]

To clarify the top 6 they were talking about replaced Caffaro with BVP. You can argue that’s not enough change but that’s the group of 6 they were talking about playing every night.

I think most on this board believe it’ll actually be 7 and McKneely will be an every night guy. Again, one can argue that’s not different enough but it is different.