Big East Awards 2022

[MHettel]

Jones has improved. His rebounding and recent surge in scoring is a welcome benefit.

Odom is different this year as he is playing more minutes and his turnover rate, assist rate and FT% are pretty solid.
He is not going to launch 5-6 three pointers anytime soon.

I do put a small % of Zach's lower performance to hi slack of health due to his foot AND he is no longer playing center.

Dont overlook the impact of adding Nunge and removing Carter has on Freemantle's productivity. Free played the 5 with Carter out there, and he was the MAIN big guy trying to gobble up boards and provide post scoring. With Nunge, he's playing more of a 4, and is not carrying the same burden to score / rebound.

[X Factor]

Dont overlook the impact of adding Nunge and removing Carter has on Freemantle's productivity. Free played the 5 with Carter out there, and he was the MAIN big guy trying to gobble up boards and provide post scoring. With Nunge, he's playing more of a 4, and is not carrying the same burden to score / rebound.

Don't think so

[Jumpin_Jamal_Forever]

See if you can find any team in the BE or in any major conference where two preseason All-Confeence players flamed out. I know I can not recall any. Does Jay Wrights ever have two players of that caliber regress. Maybe part of it is the argument that Paul is a more natural 2. Then that would be on the coach for pushing him to play the 1 or even agreeing to let Paul play the 1 (if it was Paul who begged to do it to have a better shot at the next level).

Maybe part of Free’s struggles have to do with his injury earlier in the season, making it hard for him to find his place after Nunge became the go-to guy inside. Regardless, Steele had all season to work on finding a good way for him to fit into the offense and yet he just decided to him play around on the perimeter shooting threes instead of making his inside power game and his rebounding a priority.

If part of Free’s problem is going to be blamed on him becoming more immature and establishing the wrong kind of attitude, I would point to the fact that it was clear Free was acting this way during games earlier in the season and Steele was doing nothing about it. He let Free’s bad attitude and immature behavior continue and become a distraction instead of setting him straight about gown it was negatively impacting the team and his even own goals to play at the next level. The reason we know Steele didn’t have the “get your head on straight or your going to blow it for yourself and this team” talk is because Free continued his antics (getting technicals and laughing about them, laughing it up on the sideline during games he was playing poorly and creating many fouls) foe many games. It didn’t stop after the first time he did it ot the second time or the third time.

It didn’t seem until fans really start getting down on him (maybe a coincidence) that Zach seemed to change his tune. That shows me the coach is not doing what needs to be done - like playing the role of the tough coach who has to raise his voice at least a little to get through to some of the players.

I do like Steele’s demeanor for the most part. I like that Xavier has a nice, approachable guy as a coach who doesn’t snap at the media or throw players under the bus. Yet, the same old “I told my guys” approach apparently is not getting though to players or effective in getting results. Sometimes it is necessary to set your players straight when they are not doing what you think they should be doing. A good coach sets expectations on and off the court. He will find roles for each player that both plays to their strength and helps make the team stronger.

Sure, players are expected to give their best, but it is the job of the coach to put each players in the best place for him and the team to succeed. In other words, the buck stops with coach Steele. Enough excuses. He either wakes up and recognizes that some of his approaches (his ways of communicating, his strategies for the game and his roles for certain players) are not working and figures out approaches that do work, or he’s gotta hand over the job to someone else who can do it.

This seems like a fair assessment to me. I think we slightly over-rated our talent this year but we had a veteran team returning. That was an appropriate reason for optimism. Looking back, I don't think our pre-season expectations were unreasonable. That was borne out in our pre-conference record (although we had some cupcakes in the "W" column). We played well until we hit the B.E. which as we all agree, is tough league-good coaching, talented teams, tough venues. Plain and simple (to me) Steele committed coaching malpractice. He doesn't seem to learn from past experience and make adjustments. I think he led this team right over the cliff. His player management is stunningly poor. Sure, we can extend him and give him another year to figure it out and likely, in my view, will. But, he won't figure it out.