Why the Deac Not
Frederic Fuckin' Chopin
Odom can coach defense. Odom didn't miss the post season once after the first couple years recovering from Staak, even when Josh Shoemaker was his best post player. Winning the NIT was a joke, but Odom would have a much better run team.
JC, without Dinos, Arians and with an injured Key and hero ball Crawford playing for the NBA scouts, would not be as effective as the previous year, is my prediction. He'd still dominate but we would not win as many games as the previous season, in my opinion.
Amen regarding Odom...his effectiveness as a defensive-minded coach who was able to make lesser teams better (more with less) is downplayed way too much on these boards. Or folks just don't like "living in the past" because it is a niggling reminder of how consistently good we used to be (ahem, historically competitive).
On point 2, I agree. Certain folks conveniently like to forget that we blew several games we could have won (not sure you can say we *should* have won considering how lousy we were defensively) and we're fortunate to hold onto other close game leads and escape with a win. IOW, we weren't exactly dominant against anyone aside from BC and Pitt. Perhaps margin of victory isn't as important in BB, but it speaks to how we struggled to assert control of a game after a scoring burst. So many times I remember we'd go on a 12-2 run, then just start jacking up 3's in the middle of the half thinking all we had to do was hit 1 or 2 to put the dagger in. Not so fast...that sloppiness often resulted in closer games down the stretch than they should / could have been.