The Arizona State and University of Arizona basketball programs may be going through similar two-year problem stretches separated by one year.  This is something I recently thought about after watching the UA/Charleston Southern game.  Some things I mention are contentious and have exceptions, but the overall situations of the two basketball programs are similar in many ways.

First, two coaching greats have made important comments about having a strong basketball program:

(1) John Wooden—was a strong believer in having five set starters, and bringing in only three players off the bench.  It is necessary to have the five players play together to obtain cohesion and improve as a team through the season.

(2) Lute Olson—mentioned that his long streak of having top rated and Big Dance qualifying teams was due to a good spread of players between the classes.  Ideally, there is one senior, junior, sophomore, and freshman.  The fifth player fits in somewhere. 

Both Sendek and Miller have been faced, for various reasons, into having to deal with an abnormal influx of new players. 

(1) Three years ago, Sendek had only the second Sun Devil team in over 30 years to come in as high as second in the conference.  During the next two years, he had a large influx of new players each year.  During these two years, Sendek played way too many players in way too many combos IMHO, contributing to poor cohesion and two terrible years.

(2) Miller got to a sweet sixteen with Derrick Williams year before last.  Last year, he had a big influx of highly rated players.  Miller wound up playing way too many players in way too many combos IMHO, resulting in poor cohesion and a very poor year compared to Arizona ’s high standards.

There were some interesting similarities between the two programs last year:

* Both teams had key players missing— Carson at ASU due to academics, Parrom recovering and limited at UA from the gun shot wound.

* Both teams accumulated personnel losses from dismissed players and transfers

* Both teams pressed shooting guards into service at point guard

CONCLUSIONS

Sendek has now cleared the unbalanced recruiting problems.  He is starting five set players, each of which played 30 or more minutes in the Sun Devils opening game.  The line up reads: one senior, two juniors, one sophomore, and one freshman.  It looks like he will have three, maybe four, players coming in off the bench.

It appears that Miller is in year two of the unbalanced recruiting problem.  In the Charleston Southern game, Miller played around 10 different players in many combos.  The team seemed like 10 individuals doing their thing--certainly, not a cohesive appearing team.  I think Miller will be in the “too many players in too many combos” situation for the remainder of the year.  He has a lot of seniors to play together with a kluge of highly rated players that expect to see the court.  One would think Miller probably promised extensive playing time to many of the incoming players.

Coming out of the two year period, Sendek signed three players.  Miller is signing two so far this year with one or two other possibilities.  That would be about right if Miller is coming out of the two year unbalanced recruiting problem next year.

MoDevil wrote:

The Arizona State and University of Arizona basketball programs may be going through similar two-year problem stretches separated by one year.  This is something I recently thought about after watching the UA/Charleston Southern game.  Some things I mention are contentious and have exceptions, but the overall situations of the two basketball programs are similar in many ways.

 

First, two coaching greats have made important comments about having a strong basketball program:

 

(1) John Wooden—was a strong believer in having five set starters, and bringing in only three players off the bench.  It is necessary to have the five players play together to obtain cohesion and improve as a team through the season.

 

(2) Lute Olson—mentioned that his long streak of having top rated and Big Dance qualifying teams was due to a good spread of players between the classes.  Ideally, there is one senior, junior, sophomore, and freshman.  The fifth player fits in somewhere. 

 

Both Sendek and Miller have been faced, for various reasons, into having to deal with an abnormal influx of new players. 

 

(1) Three years ago, Sendek had only the second Sun Devil team in over 30 years to come in as high as second in the conference.  During the next two years, he had a large influx of new players each year.  During these two years, Sendek played way too many players in way too many combos IMHO, contributing to poor cohesion and two terrible years.

 

(2) Miller got to a sweet sixteen with Derrick Williams year before last.  Last year, he had a big influx of highly rated players.  Miller wound up playing way too many players in way too many combos IMHO, resulting in poor cohesion and a very poor year compared to Arizona ’s high standards.

 

There were some interesting similarities between the two programs last year:

 

* Both teams had key players missing— Carson at ASU due to academics, Parrom recovering and limited at UA from the gun shot wound.

 

* Both teams accumulated personnel losses from dismissed players and transfers

 

* Both teams pressed shooting guards into service at point guard

 

CONCLUSIONS

 

Sendek has now cleared the unbalanced recruiting problems.  He is starting five set players, each of which played 30 or more minutes in the Sun Devils opening game.  The line up reads: one senior, two juniors, one sophomore, and one freshman.  It looks like he will have three, maybe four, players coming in off the bench.

 

It appears that Miller is in year two of the unbalanced recruiting problem.  In the Charleston Southern game, Miller played around 10 different players in many combos.  The team seemed like 10 individuals doing their thing--certainly, not a cohesive appearing team.  I think Miller will be in the “too many players in too many combos” situation for the remainder of the year.  He has a lot of seniors to play together with a kluge of highly rated players that expect to see the court.  One would think Miller probably promised extensive playing time to many of the incoming players.

 

Coming out of the two year period, Sendek signed three players.  Miller is signing two so far this year with one or two other possibilities.  That would be about right if Miller is coming out of the two year unbalanced recruiting problem next year.

 

 

Thank you for taking the time to write that, it was an interesting read. Unfortunately the only parallels I see our schools have in hoops is that we both play home games in AZ.

fuofa wrote: Kentucky should be in a world of hurt this year using this logic.  AU has consistently had stellar recruiting classes, ASU has not.  Our mediocre recruits should yield mediocre results, not too confusing.

MoDevil wrote:

fuofa wrote: Kentucky should be in a world of hurt this year using this logic.  AU has consistently had stellar recruiting classes, ASU has not.  Our mediocre recruits should yield mediocre results, not too confusing.

Yes, Kentucky is a point off the curve.  What I described is more of a normal situation.  It would probably apply to say Michigan State, Syracuse, Louisville sort of teams. 

ASU is normally mediocre over the past 30 years, so dropped to the bottom.  UA is usually elite level and they dropped to mediocre.  From what I described, they may be around mediocre this year as defined by higher UA standards.

MoDevil wrote:

fuofa wrote: Kentucky should be in a world of hurt this year using this logic.  AU has consistently had stellar recruiting classes, ASU has not.  Our mediocre recruits should yield mediocre results, not too confusing.

Yes, Kentucky is a point off the curve.  What I described is more of a normal situation.  It would probably apply to say Michigan State, Syracuse, Louisville sort of teams. 

ASU is normally mediocre over the past 30 years, so dropped to the bottom.  UA is usually elite level and they dropped to mediocre.  From what I described, they may be around mediocre this year as defined by higher UA standards.

MoDevil wrote: Reading the above posts it appears that people are missing my point.

1. ASU is a medocre program, mostly 3 star recruits.

2. UA is an elite level program 4 & 5 star recruits

ASU went through a two year period where we dropped to the bottom because of recruiting inbalances and played too many players in too many combos.

UA is now in year two of the same situation--playing too many players in too many combos.

John Wooden?  To make sense of Sendek ? John Wooden is rolling in his grave.

SoCalRay wrote:

John Wooden?  To make sense of Sendek ? John Wooden is rolling in his grave.

AS i have been a person who has voiced my doubts about Herb and ASU, I do respect MO for being positive on here and supporting Herb. I think Mo is simply pointing out that playing a "Set" group will benefit us - 7 players that is.

After one game, it might be pre-mature, but at least Mo is TRYING to be positive on here.

Because its a new season, a new team basically, I m optimitic always and its nice to see herb FINALLY playing man defense and pushing the tempo. I hope we play even faster!

SoCalRay wrote:

John Wooden?  To make sense of Sendek ? John Wooden is rolling in his grave.

MoDevil wrote:

SoCalRay wrote:

John Wooden?  To make sense of Sendek ? John Wooden is rolling in his grave.

I picked up on John Wooden's comment when we fired our coach Steve Patterson back in the late 80s/early 90s.  Patterson played for Wooden at UCLA.  Apparently, Wooden had advised Patterson on several occasions that Patterson played too many different players which leads to too many combos, poor team development.  Patterson felt that if players came to practice and worked hard, they deserved to play.  I saw Patterson's teams--Wooden was right on ' too many players in too many combos.'

I remember Patterson too, for a while I was hoping he would succeed. Patterson had three problems, 1 ) he could not recruit 2) he was not a good coach 3) He was very uptight and the wrong personality for a coach.

John Wooden, and any other great coach have the gift to REACH young people, long before they TEACH young people. His principles and pyramid of success is a summary of what he did to communicate to his players. Wooden would be cool under fire, not go nuts like Patterson if things went wrong. That’s why his players loved him and came back and visited him in his old age.

Patterson, sadly was an uptight coach, that yelled at players and made players feel afraid to make mistakes -- does this remind you of someone ? -- Joey Johnson would have done better under a coach like Tarkanian. Player rotation really had much less affect than having the feeling that you got your coach waiting for you to make a mistake so he can yell at you and bench you. Joey Johnson quit the game because he got yelled at. That’s why I don’t like Kevin O’Neal of USC. And to some degree lost respect for Ben Howland, although he yells at players in practice not games.

I have been watching ESPN and the inside access to Kentucky basketball. Calipari communicates with his players, and you can tell he cares about them, and talks to them when he thinks they need to have their confidence built up, he has words of encouragement.  Kentucky starts each year with many new players and combinations, and by end of the year they do fine. Notice Kentucky keeps the plays simple, so it does not take years to master the playbook.

The system a coach runs matters too. When they fired Mike Brown in LA, Mitch Kupchak said it was unfair to say Mike Brown ran the Princeton offense, that they just used some concepts from it. Michael Thompson the color commentator for the Lakers on ESPN said they ran a Princeton derivative offense. He said players felt uptight, thinking too much instead of just playing without thinking too much where they were supposed to move next, and often passed to guys thinking they’d be in one spot when they cut to another spot on the court.

Bernie Bickerstaff the interim coach in his news conference said his directions from Kupchak was to reduce the number of plays. And to Keep the plays simple. And to let the players play freely so they don’t over-think each possession so they would have more energy.

Jerry Buss then  decided the coach should be D’Antoni not Phil Jackson. Because the NBA has changed and the up-tempo teams like the Thunder and Heat are the Laker’s competition. And the Triangle-Offense has been passed by. Kind of how four corners offense was obsolete after the introduction of shot clock. Triangle creates spacing on the floor, but it’s a half court offense, and these days offenses start from the start of the transition after a rebound.

So what does that tell me ? Next to Ned Wulk, Frieder was the best coach ASU had because he let the players play freely and run ! He kept the playbook simple so they had energy to play. And he made the game fun for the fans.  Question now is how long before ASU hires a progressive Coach like that instead of a guy fond of 1960’s, Steel Mills, and Gold Watches.

SoCalRay wrote:

MoDevil wrote:

SoCalRay wrote:

John Wooden?  To make sense of Sendek ? John Wooden is rolling in his grave.

I picked up on John Wooden's comment when we fired our coach Steve Patterson back in the late 80s/early 90s.  Patterson played for Wooden at UCLA.  Apparently, Wooden had advised Patterson on several occasions that Patterson played too many different players which leads to too many combos, poor team development.  Patterson felt that if players came to practice and worked hard, they deserved to play.  I saw Patterson's teams--Wooden was right on ' too many players in too many combos.'

I remember Patterson too, for a while I was hoping he would succeed. Patterson had three problems, 1 ) he could not recruit 2) he was not a good coach 3) He was very uptight and the wrong personality for a coach.

John Wooden, and any other great coach have the gift to REACH young people, long before they TEACH young people. His principles and pyramid of success is a summary of what he did to communicate to his players. Wooden would be cool under fire, not go nuts like Patterson if things went wrong. That’s why his players loved him and came back and visited him in his old age.

Patterson, sadly was an uptight coach, that yelled at players and made players feel afraid to make mistakes -- does this remind you of someone ? -- Joey Johnson would have done better under a coach like Tarkanian. Player rotation really had much less affect than having the feeling that you got your coach waiting for you to make a mistake so he can yell at you and bench you. Joey Johnson quit the game because he got yelled at. That’s why I don’t like Kevin O’Neal of USC. And to some degree lost respect for Ben Howland, although he yells at players in practice not games.

I have been watching ESPN and the inside access to Kentucky basketball. Calipari communicates with his players, and you can tell he cares about them, and talks to them when he thinks they need to have their confidence built up, he has words of encouragement.  Kentucky starts each year with many new players and combinations, and by end of the year they do fine. Notice Kentucky keeps the plays simple, so it does not take years to master the playbook.

The system a coach runs matters too. When they fired Mike Brown in LA, Mitch Kupchak said it was unfair to say Mike Brown ran the Princeton offense, that they just used some concepts from it. Michael Thompson the color commentator for the Lakers on ESPN said they ran a Princeton derivative offense. He said players felt uptight, thinking too much instead of just playing without thinking too much where they were supposed to move next, and often passed to guys thinking they’d be in one spot when they cut to another spot on the court.

 

Bernie Bickerstaff the interim coach in his news conference said his directions from Kupchak was to reduce the number of plays. And to Keep the plays simple. And to let the players play freely so they don’t over-think each possession so they would have more energy.

 

Jerry Buss then  decided the coach should be D’Antoni not Phil Jackson. Because the NBA has changed and the up-tempo teams like the Thunder and Heat are the Laker’s competition. And the Triangle-Offense has been passed by. Kind of how four corners offense was obsolete after the introduction of shot clock. Triangle creates spacing on the floor, but it’s a half court offense, and these days offenses start from the start of the transition after a rebound.

 

So what does that tell me ? Next to Ned Wulk, Frieder was the best coach ASU had because he let the players play freely and run ! He kept the playbook simple so they had energy to play. And he made the game fun for the fans.  Question now is how long before ASU hires a progressive Coach like that instead of a guy fond of 1960’s, Steel Mills, and Gold Watches.