Rick Barnes has been good for this basketball program. He has made it relevant and put it in the spotlight.
That said, I think that everyone must admit that he is what he is when it comes to the postseason. His 25-26 record in the NCAA isn’t just some fluke number.
I’ve read a lot of discussions on VQ about why that is. A lot of it is pure junk, but mingled in the garage you’ll always find some possible jewels, I think. (1) He recruits for defense first. (2) His teams play ‘tight’ offensively because they don’t feel like they free to just play. (3) He doesn’t adjust well offensively when things aren’t working. (4) He doesn’t recruit well offensively. (5) He cannot make the big get in the portal. (6) He wears the players down through the season and there isn’t a lot left in the track come March. Etc, etc, etc. I’m not suggesting that all of these are accurate - just that those thoughts are out there.
I don’t pretend to know the answer(s) or have the solution(s), but I’m not being paid over $5M/year to find them. I do know that there are issues; for just one example, our press offense sucks. We have trouble getting people open against the press for the inbound and when we get them open we then have trouble attacking the press. If I was coaching against this team in a close game, I would use an aggressive trapping press from the 4 minute mark every time.
I’m not advocating for CRB to be put out to pasture. It is just frustrating as a fan to feel like the postseason is something that is beyond your reach.
He does recruit for defense
As for tight offense, note how many substitutions in the 1st 4 minutes yesterday - due to TOs. Yeah, there were a couple of bad ones but if a player feels he is going to be yanked for a single TO then he tends to play VERY conservative. Example? Glad you asked, see Zakai earlier this season. It took several games for him to recover from the very public benching.
We got BJ in the game finally yesterday, for what, maybe 2 nanoseconds?
I do believe his practices wear down the team. It has happened far too often to be coincidence.
That is exacerbated by his weird and often lack of substituting.
Weird, having Santi and JJJ on the bench together at a critical time late in the game yesterday is exhibit A IMO
Whoever on the staff is responsible for the bigs is letting Barnes and the team down IMO
I gave up attempting to understand the substitution and PT for the bigs a LONG time ago
Mizzou without us having Zakai available is a very difficult matchup.
Mizzou is an in your face defensive team and without a good ball handler we suffered. Their #5 is a lot like Zakai on defense, very good
Also, we had nobody that could defend their big guy, the lack of adjustments to defend him was disturbing as well
I tend to say off VQ after losses, the SC(e) game convinced me of that - got to the hotel after the game and took one look at the meltdown on VQ and never looked at it again for 3 days
