He and the coaching staff have had to change the focus of the team several times during the season. First the loss of Berry, then Langborg and then Nicholson. Huge changes and winning the games he had to win to get the job done. Changing the focus from O to D
I have to feel that this is CCCs best coaching job.
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He definitely did. We had no major injuries last year, we had the element of surprise, and we had more depth.
CCC deserves COTY again but they’ll probably give it to Hoiberg.
Hoiberg did a great job resurrecting that team, but with the easiest B1G schedule
Last year was equally impressive to me because he had to take a bunch of players who had never achieved success and make them all buy in. The first tournament team kind of built on the prior years. Last year’s team had to overcome some really bad vibes.
Totally. Way easier to get a team to believe in itself when they’ve been successful before.
Something clicked for CCC last year. I would argue that a lot of his Nance-led teams had “bad luck” and should have won more games, but a lot of that is having guys with me-first, bad attitudes like Miller Kopp.
Now we have guys playing for each other, celebrating each others’ success.
Separately, I was thinking the other day about how much better Brooks is relative to Kopp. Similar “big guard” build but Brooks is just smarter, faster and stronger. Oh and his shots actually go in regularly.
I think Collins’ biggest step forward is finding players who reflect his personality. But this season he’s been masterful in adjusting to the injuries. Without any specific knowledge, I feel like over the past couple of weeks he introduced some new action to generate open looks.
This year, Collins proved his development as an in-game and in-season week to week coach. Last year he proved his ability to do something truly surprising to develop guys over an offseason. Truly a complete 15 months for Coach CC.
Boo Buie reflects CCC’s personality? I find that hard to believe.
I agree that he and the team have adapted beautifully to the injuries.
If you don’t think Boo and Collins have similar personalities, I don’t know what to say. Both are engaging, talented, persistent, loyal, and committed to tackling very tough challenges.
They have very different personalities.
I have a hard time imagining Boo embarrassing himself on national TV over contested calls like CCC has repeatedly.
Lots of support to that argument of yours…
The refs make bad calls, and especially at Purdue in favor of Purdue - have you not seen that?
You must be a new fan of the program.
I’m sorry but CCC’s outbursts have hurt us several times. Not least of which against Gonzaga in 2018 and during at least one other loss in 2024.
If he handled himself with the class of Izzo in moments of duress, then maybe he’d gain the benefit of the doubt.
Izzo is a massive cry baby on the court in moments of mild duress. I'm not sure he's the guy I'd want to model behavior after. I mean, sure he isn't Iowa's rage machine, but cool, calm, and collected aren't words to describe either of them when things go bad.
He has emotions but leverages them to get calls.
CCC just seems to anger the refs further with his outbursts to the point where they hurt us. They may very well be why so many questionable calls go against us in the heat of the moment.
I have to look at Ben Johnson. I think NEB had 9 BT wins last year and improvement to 12 with the schedule they had was not as great as the improvement Minn had
That call was the most egregious call I’ve ever seen, and it took place at a critical moment of a tournament game where we were attempting a huge comeback. And that was after a first half where every call went Gonzaga’s way. Anyone who blames CCC for his response to that travesty of reffing is purely looking for any reason to blame him.
It was a mind-blowingly awful call.
However, running onto the court is never warranted. The technicals helped stick a fork in our comeback.
He’s a young coach and has more than made up for that gaffe. Gonzaga would have been very difficult to beat even without the bad call & technical.
But Brad Stevens was able to bring Butler to the national championship - twice! - with an incredibly calm courtside demeanor. He’s someone to emulate. I do at my office job.
It was a call that cost us the game because it was a 5-point turnaround. Anyone would have lost it.
I’d like to think that, if I was getting paid millions of dollars to calmly win basketball games, then I wouldn’t do something to get ejected with a game on the line.
But hey. That’s just me. I similarly see people engage in roadrage and also ask “why?”
Nobody would have been calm after that scenario, especially if they actually cared about winning.
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