Where's DCDeac to defend?
Your obsession is flattering.
From day 1 I said this team's expectation should be the NIT. I've called this year a failure of coaching a dozen times over the course of the season. With Codi's injury and then playing like ass I think our ceiling was more like VaTech/NC State, pardon me if I could give a shit if we win 1 or 3 or 5 ACC games on the way to missing another postseason.
The problem is that if you think coaching lost the game last night then you're an idiot. We missed half our free throws and gave up a million offensive boards, including an offensive rebound that gave up the 3 to send it to overtime. You don't hear a word about how productive our offense must have been to send the game to double OT on the road to a likely NCAA team with those free throw and rebounding stats - just how Manning's an idiot for not playing Moore in OT. The same posters who blasted Manning for not putting Wilbekin on the floor in a free throw situation are blasting him for running an ISO for him this time with a timeout available. Wilbekin gets stuck in quicksand, Codi panics and doesn't call a timeout and throws a horrible pass. UVA runs the exact same split all the time with Brogdon when he gets single coverage. We scored on like our first 3 consecutive set inbounds plays as well but who cares, coach is a moron.
Manning may fail or succeed at Wake, but all these armchair coaches calling him an idiot or that he knows nothing about coaching - it's just laughable. Is it reasonable to disagree on Moore not playing in OT? Sure. Did Moore give up rally-killing consecutive 3 point plays earlier in the game? Yes. Everyone kicked and screamed about Trent VanHorn's PT early in the season even when we were winning - later Manning tightens the rotation like most wanted and we start losing. 10 different posters throw 20 different lineups out - Dinos at the 3, Codi on the bench, bring back McClinton, etc - when Manning plays with odd lineups he gets torched as if there's some magic winning lineup he's not using.
Another routine comment - Manning never plays zone. Actually we've broken out a zone for multiple possessions in just about every game sine Indiana, and against Pitt we ran a 2-3 and a matchup zone at them for much of the game. We struggled to rebound out of that zone which is the usual trade off - and now Manning can't coach effort.
This year has been a pick-your-poison experience, cemented in horrid free throw shooting and inconsistent play from everyone not named Devin Thomas we just a very flawed team. There is a ton of fair criticism for lineups, minutes, energy, etc - and there's no arguing the aggregate is a truly horrid, epically bad season. In my opinion, Manning looks like a coach that has a very, very difficult time straying from his plan. Moore is a project, develop him in practice, play him 4 minutes a game, plan for the future. When he proved himself early there was no adjustment to the plan. Same with the starting lineup, with Codi, with switching defenses, etc. Same with Dinos, although he has drastically reduced his minutes - it just took forever. I've heard Manning believes in earning change in practice, not in games - and all fans see is games. Until we actual win there will always be a disconnect there.
I think there's still hope that he can build a good program on the backs of guys like Crawford, Moore, and Collins. Everyone keeps talking Tony Bennett - but he lost over 30 games in his first two years and didn't win a real ACC tournament game or an NCAA tournament game until year 5 - and he had legit talent in Mike Scott and Joe Harris among others.
Is my belief that he's going to be successful diminished after this year? Sure. But the sky-is-falling internet warriors that think the majority of the basketball world is simply wrong about Manning and that he's spent almost 15 years coaching only to become a bumbling moron of a coach is just as ridiculous as second guessing every coaching move in a game we that we should have coasted to an easy win.
So yeah, I guess DCDeac defends. But if you know the first thing about basketball it's virtually impossible not to given how hypocritical so many of the criticisms are.
