Doubtful. Skip won early with Odom's players who already knew some basics of defense plus the 3 he had recruited already who had heart--Vytas, Taron & Levy. After that it was ALL offense for Skip and NO defense. Never taught help-side defense and never taught using the baseline as the 6th defender--two things that came back to haunt us many times in key games [like the NCAA game vs WVA].
And I had a player on the 2005 team tell me that defense was never stressed by Skip! 2 other coaching faux pas' I witnessed first hand from 8 rows behind the bench in that WVA game alone was Skip not knowing the Technical foul FT rule of when the 2 shots were shot & in what order. He sent Levy [a 50% shooter to the line for his FT's plus the T FT's which came first then due to the new rule that came into play a year earlier. I watched as both CP3 & JGray both tapped Skip on the shoulder telling him they wanted to shoot the first FT's & he sent Levy to the line anyway where he went 1-4.
Late in the game when we were clinging to a small lead in regulation, he called a TO & was calling a play for Big E. Except E was not one of the 5 players sitting on the bench in the game. Chris Ellis tapped Skip on the shoulder to tell him so. He had to change the play. Many times in the 2nd half Beilein outcoached Skip, changing his defenses coming out of TO's--moving his players up, changing to a zone and back & forth. Skip was baffled and our guards couldn't even get the ball into an offense until only seconds were left in the shot clock. Watched in horror as our 40-27 halftime lead whittled down to nothing. Watched Gansey go right down the middle as Ellis & Big E provided no help-side defense & watched Sally went baseline, never to be cut off. 105-111 loss in double OT. Yep RJ, the man could coach!