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Danny Manning Credibility Watch

Improve them from between Day One and the last day. It's a minimal expectation.

I didn't watch the Florida game, so I cannot comment about that, but it does seem to me that the team is regressing before that game. If we played well against Florida, then I will retract this statement.

Come talk to us on the last day. Until then maybe lets not worry about whether our shit team is regressing to an even shittier team.

In all honesty all I care about is whether we are back to where the program was on April 6, 2010 by the start of the 2016 season.
 
DM isn't a magician. I have seen some marginal improvements but we have (a) mostly been playing games and in school during these last several weeks and (b)our talent level sucks.

And honestly when Coach K had a couple of years early in his career when his talent level sucked, his teams were terrible. But he still tried to instill his system.
 
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Yes. I do think that one of the top 2-4 best college coaches of all time would get more out of a team than a guy entering his 3rd year as a head coach. I do think that. Do you not? And if not, are you insane?

I said get MUCH more out of this team. At the end of the year K would get 2-3 more wins than Manning. I have no doubt that K would have kept some of these games more competitive. But, fielding a team that has no talent leaves a coach with very few options. K could coach Campbell and they'd still suck. At the end of the day a coach needs talent to win. No amount of hand waving and strategy will change that fact. Remember when K had no talent and took the year off?
 
I said get MUCH more out of this team. At the end of the year K would get 2-3 more wins than Manning. I have no doubt that K would have kept some of these games more competitive. But, fielding a team that has no talent leaves a coach with very few options. K could coach Campbell and they'd still suck. At the end of the day a coach needs talent to win. No amount of hand waving and strategy will change that fact. Remember when K had no talent and took the year off?

And that isn't necessarily true because K played the same pressure man d even when his teams were terrible. This early K Duke team gave up 100 points 7 times in a season. I am sure he could have kept it closer playing a different style, but to what purpose?

Duke 1982-83
--------------
8301 Nov27 H 70 65 W East Carolina
8302 Nov29 H 73 57 W Appalachian St.
8303 Dec02 A 70 79 L Colorado
8304 Dec04 A 71 76 L California
8305 Dec08 H 91 104 L *Virginia
8306 Dec11 A 65 74 L Vanderbilt
8307 Dec14 H 63 60 W Davidson
8308 Dec29 H 84 48 W New Hampshire
8309 Jan03 H 90 79 W George Mason
8310 Jan05 H 77 84 L Wagner
8311 Jan08 A 61 60 W LaSalle
8312 Jan12 H 76 91 L Louisville
8313 Jan15 A 86 67 W *Maryland
8314 Jan19 H 84 88 L *Wake Forest
8315 Jan22 A 82 103 L *N. Carolina
8316 Jan26 A 79 94 L *N.C. State
8317 Jan29 H 99 96 W *Clemson
8318 Feb02 H 73 71 W William & Mary
8319 Feb05 A 84 105 L *Virginia
8320 Feb09 A 66 67 L *Georgia Tech
8321 Feb16 H 89 80 W Stetson
8322 Feb19 A 104 110 L *Wake Forest (Greensboro)
8323 Feb21 H 90 101 L *Maryland
8324 Feb23 H 79 96 L *N.C. State
8325 Feb26 H 106 81 W *Georgia Tech
8326 Mar02 A 86 93 L *Clemson
8327 Mar05 H 81 105 L *N. Carolina
8328 Mar11 N 66 109 L *Virginia (ACC Tour - Atlanta)
 
Good point. My general premise was a good coach can make games more competitive and steal a few here or there but ultimately, especially at the college level, talent wins games.
 
I said get MUCH more out of this team. At the end of the year K would get 2-3 more wins than Manning. I have no doubt that K would have kept some of these games more competitive. But, fielding a team that has no talent leaves a coach with very few options. K could coach Campbell and they'd still suck. At the end of the day a coach needs talent to win. No amount of hand waving and strategy will change that fact. Remember when K had no talent and took the year off?

Doubtful. K's schemes are predicated on the concept of being able to shoot the BB from deep range and he's always enjoyed jacking up more 3's than his opponent. He would not have that luxury with this bunch.

I feel Manning has done well in a lot of respects with this bunch, but he can't control all of the dumb, mind-numbing turnovers that cost us in close games, games that get blown open late like the UF game despite good defense, press-breaking adjustments and contributions from guys off the bench when 2 potential starters are suspended. It's gonna take time, and I have questioned some of DM's late-game strategies, but I do believe he is trying to see what his "go-to" guys are made of when the chips are down. Unfortunately for him, he's learning he doesn't have much in the way of clutch, end-of-game performers. It will take a concerted team effort where we dominate the defensive glass, contest the 3 aggressively, hit 5-8 3's of our own and keep the turnovers down to a manageable, reasonable level (less than 12 per game at least).
 
Florida is not the best example to look at because we were playing with 8 scholarship players, two scholarship guards, and a walk-on played 5 minutes, but we cut the lead to one with like 7 mins left.
 
Florida is not the best example to look at because we were playing with 8 scholarship players, two scholarship guards, and a walk-on played 5 minutes, but we cut the lead to one with like 7 mins left.

Actually we were down 3 with less than 5 mins to play after CMM's 4-point play I think. But if anything, that game should be a good example of DM's ability to coach within the context of the game as we were never totally out of it thanks to UF's lackluster shooting and I guess our fairly solid D. However, I was scratching my head with his rotation choice at the 4-min mark going back to Darius over Glue and forcing MJ back in the game when the Tree\CMM ball-handling combo seemed to be working fine. Although our half-court O was pathetic against Donovan's aggressive 3-2 matchup zone that he switched to after the under-8 T/O.

DM still has plenty to learn, but he is getting more from some of these players than I expected. Then again, not sure what my expectations were if I had any at all really.
 
He also made some pretty good halftime adjustments to get us some good shots that Dinos hit.
 
Improve them from between Day One and the last day. It's a minimal expectation.

I didn't watch the Florida game, so I cannot comment about that, but it does seem to me that the team is regressing before that game. If we played well against Florida, then I will retract this statement.

I'm sure he is trying to do that. I'm sure he is developing a plan for the future based on recruiting. I'm not calling you out but the expectation that Manning was going to turn this on a dime is silly. It took Bzz how long to ruin the Skip/Dino program... check that. But it's easier to demolish a program than build it back up. We aren't even into the ACC season of his first year with the Bzz recruits and people are questioning him. That's simply stupid.
 
It's tough to blame Manning when the veteran players we should be relying on are so bad. Devin has been a huge disappointment so far, Codi is a 2 who airballs consistently, but drives pretty well, and Madison is just bad.

Just based on the recruiting, we will be a much better team in 2016.
 
Devin is just a waste of space until he gets his shit in order!
There is no excuse for him not balling out this year especially against these bunny teams.
 
Some coaches can win a lot more games without a lot more talent. Bob Knight was hired by Texas Tech after the 2000-01 season had ended and the recruiting season was over. He inherited 4 players from a team that had just gone 9-18 overall and 3-13 in the conference.....and only two of those players were starters. He picked up a couple of JC transfers at the last minute & a couple of walk-ons......and took that team to the NCAA Tournament with a 23-9 overall & 10-6 conference record....in his very first year there.



Big difference---jucos--we can't get any as a stop gap. Texas Tech is a state school with over 28,000 undergrads. We are private with just over 4500 undergrads, yet we both have the same $1 billion endowment. They can get in who they want, we can't. Hard to rebuild here immediately, but DM will get us there!
 
It's tough to blame Manning when the veteran players we should be relying on are so bad. Devin has been a huge disappointment so far, Codi is a 2 who airballs consistently, but drives pretty well, and Madison is just bad.

Just based on the recruiting, we will be a much better team in 2016.

Devin is just a waste of space until he gets his shit in order!
There is no excuse for him not balling out this year especially against these bunny teams.

He's averaging a double double and is easily our only go to guy in the paint. I'm not sure it makes a ton of sense to be pinning this season's troubles on Devin. He could be playing better but he's an undersized four who really outperforms on the glass and uses good hands and footwork to score. Obviously his head is a liability. But to call him a "waste of space" is kind of insane given the roster and his contributions.
 
Jesus, start your own Bob Knight hero worship thread.
 
I said get MUCH more out of this team. At the end of the year K would get 2-3 more wins than Manning. I have no doubt that K would have kept some of these games more competitive. But, fielding a team that has no talent leaves a coach with very few options. K could coach Campbell and they'd still suck. At the end of the day a coach needs talent to win. No amount of hand waving and strategy will change that fact. Remember when K had no talent and took the year off?

I fucking hate this argument. People, including RJ and other legendary basketball experts, were making the exact same argument five years ago. Not saying it is not right (although I am sure K would say he's a better coach now than he was during his first couple of years at Duke).

For the record, we had more talent but less experience [Redacted]'s first year. With Manning's coaching, the team is definitely better but may not be reflected in the record due to a tougher schedule (next year's looks to be even tougher, a bad decision).

He has recruited much better than expected so I am happy, but, like DV7, a little nervous that we hired someone with a very light resume, especially from a team building perspective.
 
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