Well then I guess it's a good thing that I've never said that. But hey, let's not let the truth get in the way of a good rant.
I mean you realize that a player could be your best center without being a prototypical center, right?
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- Thread starter TheOldDirtyPanther
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Well then I guess it's a good thing that I've never said that. But hey, let's not let the truth get in the way of a good rant.
I mean you realize that a player could be your best center without being a prototypical center, right?
Regardless of whether you thought Mike Young was a center or Mike Young was a two guard; Mike Young, himself, didn't think he was a center and didn't want to be forced to play like one, with any consistency. And THAT is one of the glaring reasons why Pitt won a whopping one postseason game, by a whopping one point, with him as a team "leader" over his final three seasons. Under both Kevin Stallings AND Jamie Dixon.
My guess is that Stallings saw the same play in the post that you and DT described. My guess is that Stallings did not instruct him to change and to play as a two guard. When Young did that, what choice did Stallings really have? Bench him and give up or hope for the best? With a senior and only a limited number of games remaining (with no realistic options), I know what my choice would have been.
And yet he did, and as a junior he did it well enough that the coaches and the media voted him the 12th or 13th best player in the league, depending on which poll you prefer.
One of the main jobs that a coach has is to get guys to do things that aren't necessarily what they want to do but they are what the team needs them to do. Everybody wants to shoot the ball a dozen or more times a game. Everyone can't do that. Everyone wants to play about 38 minutes per night. Everyone can't do that. It's up to the coach to get players to buy into doing what is best for the team, not what is best for the individual player. Sometimes, a coach just decides that it's easier not to try and doesn't bother.
A coach only has one real "weapon" to get guys to buy into what he thinks they need to do. Playing time. The day that Stallings decided that he wasn't going to use playing time as a "weapon" in an attempt to get guys to play the way that the team needed them to was the day that the season was over.
Maybe Young played in the post as a junior not because of how hard the coach tried, maybe it was because he had no choice(although I believe he still did what he wanted a good bit of the time). He could not grad transfer and had no desire to sit out a season.
A coach has leverage over a player as a junior, not so much as a senior with only 5 or 6 games to play.
Just curious - What day was that?
If you say he was playing the way we needed him to play for a stretch, how was that accomplished? What changed so late in the season that he would no longer play in that manner?
If Stallings had inherited Young as a sophomore, maybe Young never makes it to his senior year.
Am I honestly reading right on here that people believe that young decided on his own to play like a 2 guard, and that stallings couldn't do anything about it?
This is bizzaro world.
First of all Stallings runs a completely different offense than Dixon and players are encouraged to take the open shot . During his junior yr the grad transfers were available to help MY battle bigger stronger guys . He also had his face (eye socket ) fractured last yr which just might effect your desire to battle much bigger stronger guys without much help . Say what you want but for three out of his four yrs he was played out of position and he was still Pitts best player the last three yrs .
Stallings philosophy won 4 conference games, and it looks to be the high water mark for a few years
Quite true and Young didn't even have much to do with the one post season win.
Help me out here Joe, you said the notion that Young wasn’t a prototypical center is absurd. Am I stretching things to think that’s pretty darn equivalent to you calling him a prototypical center??
I guess that was supposed to be his position. But that wasn't how he played.
I think I can safely tell you Stallings did not say to Young: Your playing in the post has been fine, but now I think it is time you stop that and play like a two guard]
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Just to have you on the record:
You are the coach - a small number of games remain in the season - Young abandons playing in the post and starts to play as a two guard
What do you do?
Except young played like that most of the year. From the start. Don't Act like young went rogue.
Stallings even said back before the season last year he wanted young to be more of a perimeter player.
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/...-in-Pitt-Panthers-lineup/stories/201611110253
Stop defending the guy. This is how he wanted young to play, and it totally falls on stallings.
Way to deflect. You said stallings didn't tell him to play that way, but of course you can see in that article he told young to be more of a perimeter player.
I know though that you have a need to "blame the Dixon player with the bad attitude" rather than the coach that told him to act like a guard.
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No, the problem is apparently that you have a reading comprehension issue. I said:
"This notion that some people have that Young wasn't a prototypical center or the kind of center the coach wishes that he had so therefore it was OK to play his best center as if he was a two guard is absurd."
Some people think that because Young WASN'T a prototypical center and Young WASN'T the kind of center that the coach wishes he had it was OK to play him as a two guard. Young isn't a prototypical center. Young isn't the kind of center that Stallings wants to have. Young was, obviously, the best center on Pitt's roster last season. And second best wasn't even close.
Do you really not understand that it is possible for someone to not be a prototypical player at a position or not be the kind of player that a coaches wishes he had and yet still be the best guy you have to play that position? Because that really isn't a difficult concept to understand.
Right. Which is why you see seniors "going rouge" and ignoring the coach all the time the last couple of weeks of the season with no repercussions.
Or not.
I have no idea. It may very well have been before the season started. With the way the team played all year that certainly shouldn't surprise anyone.
You take him out of the game and explain to him why you took him out. Then you put him back in and see what happens. If he makes the changes you want then great. If he doesn't then you take him back out of the game again and again tell him why you took him out. And when you put him back in you see what happens. If he makes the changes that you want then great. If he refuses to do what you are telling him to do then he sits some more. Guys don't like sitting on the bench, especially when they think they are the best player on the team. At some point either his desire to play overcomes his desire to do whatever he wants out on the court or it doesn't and he sits on the bench a lot more than he wants to.
Do you think that a good coach, a Coach K or a Bill Self or a John Calipari puts up with a player doing whatever he wants rather than what the coach wants him to do?
I mean, I posted an article whe telling a specifically said he expected young to meet his previous years three point totals by the third or fourth game.
According to Gary, stallings wanted young to play in the post and young went rogue. Stallings never told him to take more threes or play on the perimeter.
I basically agree with this. Young just seemed determined to play not to help the team, but (in his mind) to demonstrate to the NBA that he had perimeter skills. With a half a dozen or games to go, that was HIS priority.
I thought the team played pretty well OC. I thought we started ACC play fairly well. The Artis suspension and the Young and Luther injuries had an effect.
What did we finish? 16-17? How far was that from 19-14?
We had some good OOC games, but we had some bad ones as well. We needed two overtimes to beat Eastern Michigan. We were down for much of the first half against Yale. We were in a seven point game with an awful Morehead team past the mid way point of the second half. We lost to Duquesne. We were ahead of Buffalo by one point later in the second half. The game against Rice was a four point game late. We played some of the worst defense in school history in the win over Marshall.
And then we started the ACC season 1-9. And that included a 26 point home loss to Miami and a 55 point home loss to Louisville. You really think that was playing fairly well? Yikes!
We had a good record OC (tough OC sched) - Would have been better had Artis not been suspended and we beat Duq.
ACC started with a bad call loss to ND - a win over UVA - a loss to an incredibly hot shooting Syr team at Syr, a loss at Louis (where we always lose) - I thought we represented in those games
That is when the season turned - The HOME loss to Miami - Luther did not play and Mike Young with his broken face and makeshift mask was 0-10.
I guess you do not believe that losing Luther and Young playing impaired had any impact on the season. It was just that incredibly poor coaching on the part of Kevin Stallings.
Yikes
Well part of the problem is that you think that an OOC schedule that includes Eastern Michigan, Garner Webb, Yale, Morehead State, Duquesne, Buffalo, Rice, Nebraska-Omaha and Marshall was tough. That's 9 out of 13 games against teams that barely have a pulse, and I didn't even include Penn State in that total. We played three tough nonconference games out of 13, SMU and Marquette on neutral courts and Maryland at Maryland.
And I can only imagine what you think we were representing in that game at Louisville where we trailed by 15-plus point much of the game until we put on a late, meaningless run that made the final score look a lot closer than anyone who watched the game knew it actually was. We were down 21 at the half of that game. We were down 24 at the 15 minute mark. We were down 18 with just over 7 minutes left. The fact that we made a run long after the game was in hand wasn't some sort of great sign, it was a sign of how piss-poor we played until the Louisville players lost interest.
You really think that Louisville game was a sign of Pitt representing something good?
And I can only imagine what you think we were representing in that game at Louisville where we trailed by 15-plus point much of the game until we put on a late, meaningless run that made the final score look a lot closer than anyone who watched the game knew it actually was. We were down 21 at the half of that game. We were down 24 at the 15 minute mark. We were down 18 with just over 7 minutes left. The fact that we made a run long after the game was in hand wasn't some sort of great sign, it was a sign of how piss-poor we played until the Louisville players lost interest.
You really think that Louisville game was a sign of Pitt representing something good?
Tough OOC schedule???? The OOC schedule last year was the exact same type of schedule that Dixon was laughed at for years about.
You're right on the ND game, we beat UVA. We repped well at Syracuse? We were down nearly 30 in the first half at points??? We only lost by 5 to Louisville, but you realize the only time they got within ten was in the last couple minutes. Pitt was never in that game.
Forget Dixon for a second, what exactly about stallings coaching resume gives you hope he can do well going forward. Remember, the last 5 years of Dixon were considered stale, bad, and many wanted Dixon gone. What has stallings ever shown that tells you he can do better than even Dixon's last 5 years.
That is the point. We hired a guy who's ceiling is probably a bubble ACC NCAA team a couple times in a 5 year stretch. For a fanbase that complained about elite 8 teams incessantly, how is what stallings brings to the table acceptable?
Gary, your post, just like fsgold blows my mind.
I've seen you mock the 2015-16 team as not that good, but then you sitg here and try to explain how 4-14 is acceptable.
Also Gary, I linked the article earlier where stallings, beflrethe year started, said he wanted young to play more on the perimeter. Are you going to address the fact you said young went rogue and stallings had no hand in him playing like a 2 guard?
I've seen you mock the 2015-16 team as not that good, but then you sitg here and try to explain how 4-14 is acceptable.
Also Gary, I linked the article earlier where stallings, beflrethe year started, said he wanted young to play more on the perimeter. Are you going to address the fact you said young went rogue and stallings had no hand in him playing like a 2 guard?
I believe I said we always lose at Louisville (make that wherever we play Louisville). I don't believe I made any remark on the score of the game.
My point about representing meant other than the bad call versus ND, we had played no worse than expected before our injuries. We could have very easily have been 2-2, winning our 2 home games and losing our 2 away games (one of which was against a team we never beat) We really outplayed ND throughout that game. It took several bad calls to allow ND back in the game.
You included that in one of the games about which you said "I thought we represented in those games". I'm just not sure how losing to a team that you always lose to in a venue where you always lose in a game that was a blowout most of the way is "representing" anything good at all.
However, if losing to Louisville at Louisville is still "representing" because we always do that, then how was losing to a Syracuse team that we usually beat also somehow still "representing"?
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