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Stay John Collins!

I get what you're saying, but our turnover % is third best in the ACC in conference play so we have been valuing possessions. I believe it seems that we are not overall valuing possessions because of how bad our guard play is at the end of games - resulting in the most inopportune turnovers possible (making it seems more prevalent than it is).
 
CharlotteDeac1 said:
I get what you're saying, but our turnover % is third best in the ACC in conference play so we have been valuing possessions. I believe it seems that we are not overall valuing possessions because of how bad our guard play is at the end of games - resulting in the most inopportune turnovers possible (making it seems more prevalent than it is).
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We take a lot of dumb shots. I don't think you can expect college players to pass up good shots for better shots 100% of the time (though Bennett and Coach K get pretty close to that number), but I swear on about 10-15% of our possessions I know we are going to take a stupid shot before we get the ball across half court. Because Craw has that crazy eye look or Chill is in one of his funks and he hasn't been taken out yet or because based on the lineup, I know that we are going to dump it to Keyshawn with about 10 seconds left on the shot clock and he is going to spend 7 seconds looking for his shot before inexplicably passing it to Donovan Mitchell (or fill in the blank) with no ability to create his own shot in 3 seconds from the spot he receives the pass.

You can just see or feel the college basketball mind working in an irrational manner before it happens. Those aren't turnovers. Those are just dumb shots. And right now we are doing an average to below average job of altering that behavior.
 
jaybone said:
We take a lot of dumb shots. I don't think you can expect college players to pass up good shots for better shots 100% of the time (though Bennett and Coach K get pretty close to that number), but I swear on about 10-15% of our possessions I know we are going to take a stupid shot before we get the ball across half court. Because Craw has that crazy eye look or Chill is in one of his funks and he hasn't been taken out yet or because based on the lineup, I know that we are going to dump it to Keyshawn with about 10 seconds left on the shot clock and he is going to spend 7 seconds looking for his shot before inexplicably passing it to Donovan Mitchell (or fill in the blank) with no ability to create his own shot in 3 seconds from the spot he receives the pass.

You can just see or feel the college basketball mind working in an irrational manner before it happens. Those aren't turnovers. Those are just dumb shots. And right now we are doing an average to below average job of altering that behavior.
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That's fair - I don't know a place to find a "bad/dumb shots" stat but it does seem like we've been doing it quite a bit lately and resulted in our offense enjoying a steep decline in productivity.
 
DCDeac said:
Find me one post where I said we miss Collins on defense. Pretty much all of my posts are focused on our lack of production at the 4 spot and the ridiculous assertion that Dinos wouldn't have had much impact this year. Anyone who thinks our current team's struggles are just because Collins left is drastically overrating his play last year. Dinos and Moore together would have made up for most of his scoring and been better on defense, but for many posters here his poor defense was ignored and only his scoring was valued. We were barely a tournament team and lost too early in both the ACC and NCAA tourneys, and the sad truth is he got absolutely destroyed on defense while putting up nice offensive numbers in both of those games, basically breaking even. We underachieved and barely snuck to the right side of the bubble - this year with Dinos and Sarr backing him up I think we're right back on the bubble. But we'll never know because they're both playing for millions of dollars.

To Lurker, I have no problem with you hunting down posts. Hunt for hours if you like. All the hyper negative posters who predicted we'd be horrible last year and not sniff the tournament will never say a word about how wrong they were then, but have no problem going on witch hunts to find individual posts to call out posters now - particularly anything positive - with the express purpose of mocking those Wake fans with LOL's and shitposts, not actual basketball discussion. There are hot takes left and right about how awful we'd be, but outside of the occasional "Wolford will never be a P5 QB" reference nobody who actually enjoys Wake sports would think to go digging for them.

I tend to think my "sanctimonious" posts are in response to the absurd absolutist negativity that infests this board and has coined the "miserable fucking fanbase" tag on so many threads. I probably know a dozen or so Wake fans in real life who have long since ditched these boards because of how overwhelmingly negative they are. I also know a couple Wake athletes who thought the board was absolute garbage because of all the venom spewed here. A few used to post here but they are lonnnng gone.

Anyway, enjoy your callout posts. Any time you actually want to discuss or refute something about actual basketball let me know.
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This is what bothers me. You climb up on a high horse and try to shame anyone who is negative about the coaches all while actually, either explicitly or implicitly, blaming the players. You did it with [name redacted]. You are doing it now. I don't know if it is worse to say "we have too much talent to go 8-10, Danny isn't doing very good" or "Danny is doing all he can do until he can get more talent into the program", but I know I feel better about blaming the guy who is making $1.3M per year over the guys drawing a $3k stipend. That's just me.

As far as last season goes, the median prediction on this hyper-negative board was 18. We won 19. That perhaps explains why there wasn't as much praise showered down on him as you apparently expected.

I was happy with our season and with Danny last year. The most negative I was was early in the season when we kept losing close games to good teams, and I was frustrated because what we were seeing on the court and in the advanced stats was not translating into wins.

But, now with a little distance, my interpretation of things suggests that Collins might have been more of the driving force than Manning. So, yes, it grinds my gears when someone gets on his high horse about anyone who expresses concerns about this season when that same person was really harsh on Collins at times. I will put any hot take I have had against the notion that Collins should have been benched in the K-State game.
 
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So arguing about basketball = high horse and shaming posters.

Personal attacks and shitposts = all good as long as it's bashing Wake fans.

Got it. Not that I have any idea what "shaming" I've been engaging in. You're the one hunting down old posts and pulling dead threads up to apparently call me out. And wasn't that Ayo's reply? So you hunted down this old thread and had Ayo respond? That's weird as hell.

And who said anything about benching Collins against K State? There's no objective argument to be made that Collins didn't give up huge numbers defensively in those games, just as there's no objective argument to be made that he wasn't our best player and largely responsible for our tournament appearance. No need to make up arguments.

Actually, I just took a quick look at your past posts since you've been scouring mine. I see things like "Manning's system doesn't call for more than one guy over 6'8" and "Manning doesn't actually call any plays" and "no guard has improved since CJ Harris" and "Doral has improved minimally at best" and you loved some Dino Gaudio. Whatever authority you've given yourself to police and report on others doesn't seem to have any more validity than any other poster here, so forgive me if I ignore your request. At the very least I stick to my posts and am happy to own up to them. This little nugget from you "I was happy with our season and with Danny last year" is just completely dishonest.
 
Ayo said:
LOL
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jaybone said:
Don't think it is quite fair to compare stats from this year to last year as we are only about 1/3 of our way through our ACC schedule. Let's see Craw's % at the end of the year. My guess is they are going to be much lower at the end season as to now for obvious reasons. Chill's numbers are about his improvement. But anyway, I see your point.

I think you can talk numbers all you want but you also have to factor in the fun factor. Last year, by the time we got to about game 8 and it dawned on the team they were playing with an NBA borderline lottery pick, the Wake swagger was back and we went into every game thinking we were going to win because of talent. It was nice. And it makes a huge difference to the psyche of kids. Right now, we have to be nearly perfect and honor every possession. Well, we have never honored every possession (the way Coach K led teams essentially do, hate to admit it). Not under Manning, not under the Coach who shall not be named, and not under Prosser. The last time you could argue we did was when Chill and Timmy D shared the court. Was that Coach Odom? Or the perfection of two greats? Not sure.

I am resigned to the fact that it is hard to get a college team to honor every possession (due to ego) and the best you can do is to honor every defensive possession. But it does bother me that 2 1/2 years in and Crawford is very very far away from honoring every possession - both offensively and defensively. Some of that has to be coaching, and by coaching I mean coaching intensity. I don't expect Manning to ever froth at the corners of his mouth the way Coach K does. But Jay Wright doesn't froth at the mouth either. Her's hoping that Jay Wright has perfected a system of building a team of 3+ year 4-star players who earn 30 minutes a game in their 2nd or 3rd year in the program and he doesn't NEED to do it because 80% of his minutes is allocated to elite college players with experience. And THAT is what Manning is building or trying to mimic.

But history tells me that next year we will be super talented but young and that will be our downfall and then all that youth will go play pro and we will somehow back at square 1 or square 2. Hope I am wrong.
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These are great points and I can't really disagree with any of it. I'd just throw in that in a world where Collins and Dinos came back this year, and with Hoard and Mucius on the way - do we have any of these discussions suggesting Manning has these massive deficiencies? I'm not saying Manning isn't flawed - after the last few performances by Crawford it's hard to imagine there isn't something going on there. I'm baffled that Thompson is still starting and the lack of playing time for Chaundee certainly supports a lack of focus on the value of defense. I simply believe that primarily you've got to get players, and Manning is busting his ass on the recruiting trail and got screwed this year with 2 critical early exits while already facing an uphill battle after Bz. I think it's more likely that he improves in-game and tweaks his system than it is we fire him and nail the next hire, for obvious reasons. Even with that outlook I still see next year as make-or-brake, so I'm far from sold.
 
DCDeac said:
These are great points and I can't really disagree with any of it. I'd just throw in that in a world where Collins and Dinos came back this year, and with Hoard and Mucius on the way - do we have any of these discussions suggesting Manning has these massive deficiencies? I'm not saying Manning isn't flawed - after the last few performances by Crawford it's hard to imagine there isn't something going on there. I'm baffled that Thompson is still starting and the lack of playing time for Chaundee certainly supports a lack of focus on the value of defense. I simply believe that primarily you've got to get players, and Manning is busting his ass on the recruiting trail and got screwed this year with 2 critical early exits while already facing an uphill battle after Bz. I think it's more likely that he improves in-game and tweaks his system than it is we fire him and nail the next hire, for obvious reasons. Even with that outlook I still see next year as make-or-brake, so I'm far from sold.
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Lots of posters have been fretting about Manning’s in game coaching since probably his third game at Wake. It was immediately obvious that his rotations are all over the place, he struggles with in game adjustments and didn’t know how to use timeouts effectively. Over time, some posters, came to realize that his defensive philosophy is either totally mismatched for the players he has or is poorly taught. If you are winning despite these flaws the drumbeat surely gets softer but to suggest that people weren’t critical of Manning coaching capabilities until we started losing is wrong.
 
Manning got eviscerated at the end of the game by the Roll It Out Roy earlier this year in Chapel Hill. That should speak volumes about his coaching abilities.
 
Maybe some people are right and it's not his lack of coaching abilities but his coaching experience. Without making a judgement about whether or not we should have hired an inexperienced coach, is it outside the realm of possibility that DM improves? I generally see really good pregame preparation. We usually have pretty good plans to stop and attack certain teams before they inevitably adjust.
 
wakephan09 said:
Maybe some people are right and it's not his lack of coaching abilities but his coaching experience. Without making a judgement about whether or not we should have hired an inexperienced coach, is it outside the realm of possibility that DM improves? I generally see really good pregame preparation. We usually have pretty good plans to stop and attack certain teams before they inevitably adjust.
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Sure, but three and a half years in and the same problems persist. That is a seriously shallow learning curve.
 
Am I the only one who thinks it's weird to dig up old-ass posts just to stick it to someone when they were wrong or had a mistaken opinion? I guess if someone's being a dick about something, then it's fun to shove an error in their face, but who hasn't had an embarrassingly wrong take about sports at some point?
 
wakephan09 said:
Maybe some people are right and it's not his lack of coaching abilities but his coaching experience. Without making a judgement about whether or not we should have hired an inexperienced coach, is it outside the realm of possibility that DM improves? I generally see really good pregame preparation. We usually have pretty good plans to stop and attack certain teams before they inevitably adjust.
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Manning has been coaching since 2003. He spent many years under Self. The argument had some merit during his first year at Wake, but he is in his SIXTH year as a head coach now. We're talking 15 years of experience here. Are the Manning hopefuls thinking that he'll finally develop into a good coach by year 20 in the field? Do we continue paying him $2.5 million a year with the hope that he makes some sort of huge leap in year 16? 17? 18?
 
Was hoping he would be invited to the Slam Dunk Contest but with 3 of the 4 spots accounted for, it may be unlikely.
 
CantStandYa said:
Am I the only one who thinks it's weird to dig up old-ass posts just to stick it to someone when they were wrong or had a mistaken opinion? I guess if someone's being a dick about something, then it's fun to shove an error in their face, but who hasn't had an embarrassingly wrong take about sports at some point?
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No.
 
I never blame any guy or gal who wants to better themselves and go into their profession. Be it professional basketball, golf or a stock analyst. John Collins & Dinos both got a chance to make millions earlier than graduation--good for them. That is what you go to college for. Coaches need ot be ready for that in all situations. Deacons need to be ready also if Doral Moore does the same thing!
 
DCDeac said:
I enjoy your attempt to hunt down "gotcha" quotes of mine, but that one is right on the money. Wrote that before Dinos was leaving. Our front court of Dinos and Moore would absolutely have been stronger on the interior. Moore is a true rim protector and is going to blow past Collins block totals last year despite playing fewer minutes. The defensive backup to the 4 was typically Arians moving down, who had 3 blocks all year. Even with Sarr struggling on defense he's getting far more blocks and boards than that.

It's also a humorous time to post this, since the starting front court of UVA, the #2 team in the country, combined for 4 whole points last night against our "LOL" interior defense. Add the only other forward that played, Diakite, and their entire front court had 6 points on the night and didn't even shoot a free throw.

[B]Next, try going back and re-watching Collins playing "defense" against VaTech in the ACC tourney and K State in the NCAA tourney. Even with Dinos leaving, as long as Moore is on the floor our interior defense is still better than last year.
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[/B]

I haven't had the time to read all of the posts, but I felt that John's "defensive shortcomings" were because Manning and the staff tried too damn hard to keep him out of foul trouble. It worked in several close games, but VT and K State just went after him knowing that he wouldn't foul or try to block to many shots in fear of riding the bench for long periods or fouling out. I agree w/PH that although Doral was very raw - he needed to be in the game. We needed him to be the rim protector even if it was just for 10-15 minutes a game. Actually, I wish Danny would use all of his bigs more often & tell them to start dropping dudes when they try to attack the rim.
 
There were plenty of games last year where 10-15 min and 5 fouls by Doral would have come in handy.

It’s just hard to trust a coach who decided to protect his star big by playing him a C while instructing him not to play D vs. just playing him with a 7-foot rim protector.
 
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