So I was contemplating Kopps comments on what appears to be a disagreement between CCC and himself and his role in the offense. Also been following lots of discussion on the LU board about Porter Moser. Could not start to compare their two journeys. Moser had a lot of experience in a lot of places with a lot of different systems and coaching philosophies. He also had a lot of failures along the way. CCC had one year in the WNBA as an assistant, two years under Tommy Amaker ( a Dukee) then an assistant at Duke....My point being that he really has had a myopic view, the Duke view.....maybe this is a hole in his coaching skill set.....He has also lost a lot of assistant coaches that may have brought some different perspectives. He has two assistants on staff whose experience is playing at NU....another that was his high school coach with a lot of NBA experience and the one who has experience at NIU under Mark Montgomery who worked under Tom Izzo at MSU..........just saying , not a lot of ingredients in the pot.
CCC experience?
- Thread starter loyolacat
- Start date
Good points. Also, how much coaching and teaching do you really need to do at Duke? Guys like Zion, RJ Barrett are essentially finished products and Duke is almost always going to have more talent than the other team. It's a different skill set to coach up guys like Clayton Custer than Zion.
The Coach K coaching tree does not have a great track record and I think it's because Duke is such a unique and singular place. What you learn there simply doesn't translate when you don't have a constant influx of NBA talent.
The Coach K coaching tree does not have a great track record and I think it's because Duke is such a unique and singular place. What you learn there simply doesn't translate when you don't have a constant influx of NBA talent.
This is blasphemy.
You left out the part about Brian James (Chris Collins' high school coach) being his TOP assistant - the one who tries to develop the players in practice, the one who calls the plays during our games...
His NBA experience was largely for Doug Collins.
Can you post what Miller Kopp had to say? I haven't seen it.
You kill me, but I have to give you credit you take every opportunity afforded to blame the Coach and throw out the Nance must play with Young stats on every topic.
Maybe there just isn’t that star(s) player here to be successful. I know you will throw Kopp’s good games as evidence that CCC fouled him up every which way.
How did we every make the tourney with key players like B Mac, Scottie and Pardon being so lightly recruited? Must have been better than their ratings because they sure as hell couldn’t have been coached up by a guy who can’t even figure out to play Young and Nance together!
Hey PPD...
I'm just frustrated with what should have been this past season.
I was on board with Collins in the early days.
But the numbers really don't lie.
I think Kopp was a decent player, not as good as Young or Nance, maybe a touch better than Buie and Audige at this point.
We'll be okay next year.
As for the B Mac NCAA team, I honestly think those guys figured out how to work together mostly on their own, with constant support/leadership from Sanjay Lumpkin. They were a very well connected team and guys knew their roles and played for each other. The next year it all fell apart, which is inexplicable on paper.
That's it. The coach doesn't matter at all. Got it. That also must mean that Moser didn't matter at LU.
I can understand the frustration and I think a change is inevitable. I just don’t understand how everything can be CCC’s fault now and in the same breath he gets little credit for the Law/BMac squad that made the tourney? You say it was the players figured it out themselves. Fine, I can agree with that, it’s the players. I also think it is the players now too. Sorry, I don’t see NU making the tourney with this core group of upperclassman. Maybe they will. I sure hope so. I just think a lot people here, way overestimate our talent relative to other B1G programs. We keep hearing about player combinations saving NU, one of those combinations better include PBJ.
Ideally it would always be the coach, watching what guys can do, can't do, which teammates have chemistry, which guys don't seem to get along, all that stuff. Its a lot to keep track of. With the right players, they just care about winning, not who scores the most points or gets the ball with 10 seconds left in a close game. A successful coach almost always figures out what combinations work best and puts the players in their best situations to succeed. Collins plays so many lineups in the course of a game, it indicates to me that he is unsure. To be honest, I can really only say that about this past season, when I had the data, but it seems like a consistent issue.
I think Young is underrated, obviously. He was the best player on the team 2 years ago and the coach took his starting role away from him to try an experiment that went wrong most of the season. I'd say he is an above average big guy in the Big Ten. I'd say the same of Pete Nance. I trashed Buie at times last year, but he is probably "average" with upside. He has to overcome a tendency to sulk (real or imagined) ... Audige is good some days, bad others. Plenty of upside. Plays hard. Ty Berry played better than the standard box score shows. I think he will be above average next season, hoping for more. Obviously I think Matt Nicholson has potential. He certainly has size and can run the floor. Robbie Beran? His play alongside Young was credible. His play alongside Nance was terrible. Put the guy in the right position with the right teammates and maybe he steps up his game. It looks like the incoming freshmen can add a spark right away...
We'll be okay without Gaines and Kopp. We may even be good! I'd love to see Nance, Young and Beran all out there together just once for a 5 minute stretch, just to try it.
I suspect that Collins and the team were well served by Gates and Baldwin, and their departures have something to do with the teams performances since.
As well as how easy it is to find that talent in a very limited pool.
But back to LoyolaCat. Good post. I don't disagree that CC has a limited view, especially when you compare it to Moser's resume.
However, after eight years, that explanation no longer works for me with Collins. I was always a bit uncomfortable bringing in an assistant - even a Duke assistant. And if you're going to hire the assistant, from an NU fan perspective, I'm willing to give him time to grow. I'm not in love with it, but it's one of those points of realism as an NU fan.
But he needs to have to full view after five years, or don't hire him.
I don't think Collins is given enough credit for adjustments he makes throughout a season on defense. I think he does an decent job.
But on offense? Eh.
In the end, there's not much to be gained from discussing the weaknesses in his profile except to learn from it for the next guy - whenever that may be. And the one absolute I REALLY don't want in a coach anymore is someone who hasn't had head coaching experience at any level of the college game. I've heard too many head coaches say how drastically different it is being the head guy, rather than the guy who whispers in an ear at the beginning of timeouts.
And I think we've seen it throughout the evolution of Collins.
Moser is the type of guy I may like to see as the next coach - the Belichick model: a guy who bombed on one job, but has the background and better circumstances to make it work with another opportunity. But I understand it's awfully difficult to separate the garbage from the worthwhile possibilities in that group.
Collins will get an extension after we reach the sweet 16 next year
1) It's super hard and CC should be given credit for raising the bar on the talent he finds. There were not a lot of people agreeing with me a while back. But I believe if you are recruiting for NU, you take "best available". We don't have the luxury of passing on a say Top100 guy just because we already have 4 guards. I am not advocating ending up with 13 guards, at some point you need to recruit for length (more than so than for position). But, to a great extent, you get the highest quality you can get. And you adapt, work the portal, work the system you play in. We've all see big time programs playing with what seems to be a 3 or even 4 guard lineup. The one thing you do not compromise on, regardless of academic formal standards, is character. Which is, of course, incredibly hard to verify
2) I agree 100% on the assistant route being so much more of a crap shoot than the crap shoot it already is hiring a coach, period. And, yet, considering power conferences, and making an exception for Cincinnati, the following higher profile programs did it this year (not counting DII or interim time as significant head coaching experience):
-Penn State/DePaul/Minnesota/North Carolina/Arizona/Texas Tech
-Oklahoma/Indiana/Boston College/Cincinnati/Iowa State/Marquette/Utah - hired with HC experience
6 with no experience, 7 with. Probably points to the difficulty of finding someone with head coaching experience you feel comfortable with.
The CCC experience: 8 years of blood, sweat and tears and we're where back we started. All the NU fans are frustrated.
He gets next year to be competitive. If not, it's time to admit the mistake and start over, which likely guarantees another 4 years of fighting to keep out of the cellar. Or maybe the high sherriffs will still be agonizing over the AD selection and there will be nobody to fire him.
It would be nice to get a transfer or two at or above Kopp's level - somebody scoring, say, 12/game.
He gets next year to be competitive. If not, it's time to admit the mistake and start over, which likely guarantees another 4 years of fighting to keep out of the cellar. Or maybe the high sherriffs will still be agonizing over the AD selection and there will be nobody to fire him.
It would be nice to get a transfer or two at or above Kopp's level - somebody scoring, say, 12/game.
He normally predicts our upsets but you’re bound to do that when you predict a Northwestern win every time. 😂
Similar threads
