I’ll try to answer the original question honestly. I think Self’s players have historically not been mentally prepared for several tournament games. Maybe Self wasn’t mentally prepared either. I think he preaches self sufficiency in life and on the court, and that can be good and bad. Good when his players figure it out and bad when they don’t, especially in big games.
Self’s idea of preparation is practice and planning. It isn’t entering a game with clear minds, full hearts (to steal a line from Friday Night Lights). Jaybate often refers to Self’s mental game. This year, it felt like it was deflated/exhausted. Maybe it was all of the hangups, both new (a team full of freshman with OAD dreams who couldn’t play defense, except for one very big injured player) and old/dejavu (underperforming point guard). Whatever it was, his mental game wasn’t there at the end. It felt resigned. I don’t blame him. If I equate the hurdles he’s had to equivelent hurdles I might experience at my job, I’d have a down year too.
I think Self is a good halftime adjustment guy, but bad at calling time outs, again because he’s a work through your mistakes/practice guy. Among the upper echelon of coaches, he is usually pretty average at adjustments while the game is going on. As many have said, he’s a system guy to a fault.
He’s gone away from the 3 ball (remember BRush raining corner 3’s, sometimes in transition?), he’s gone away from taking defensive chances (remember those 20-2 runs sparked by steals by Mario/RussRob?), and become overly reliant on slow-down offensive sets and conservative defense. That was a disastrous formula with this group, and came to a head with Embiid out, but then it was too late to adjust.
So I’d say he’s had a tough year with a lot of challenges, and he did not adjust his game plan to this players. Rather, he tried to adjust his personel to his game plan, while watering down his game plan, but not changing its nature.
There are other coaches whom I respect and appreciate in the ways they differ from Self. That is not to say I wish they were our coach. But I do appreciate the qualities that they have that Self may not be as strong in. I also believe Self misses some of his assistant coaches that moved on terribly, because I believe they possessed some of the qualities that Self has problems with (he’s acknowledge this in his book). I think not enough focus is being placed on the assistant coaches and the level of trust/ownership that they have with the team.
Here are some of the coaches/staffs that I appreciate as being great in game coaches: Izzo, Beilein, Donovan, Pitino. There are others that have shown a lot of talent, but these guys have completely proven themselves.
I love Bill Self. I want to see him get his mojo back next season. And I think that means I want Joe Dooley back. Since that’s not going to happen, that leaves me a bit uncertain about our bench. Also, I want Larry Brown to quit his job and spend all his nervous basketball energy daydreaming about what our guys could do with their talent. I want Bill Self to find a mental fountain of youth and stay fresh like the guys I listed above. I believe he can do it. I hope he does.
