@Lulufulu
I would define Coach Self as a hybrid.
And I think that is the best position to be in as a head coach in D1. I would also say that I think Bill used to lean more on being a system guy.
Bill’s system and discipline has brought him a large percentage of those 600 wins. But a few years ago, Bill realized he would have to make more adjustments in order to stand much of a chance in March. Much of the criticism leveled on him related to being too predictable. And when something wasn’t working, he would stick with it to the dire end.
His defensive philosophy is largely system (as it should be).
Over recent years, Bill’s offense has become more fluid and adjusted somewhat to the players he has had. I think it was a big thing having Wigs. I don’t think we utilized him correctly, but the overall impact was that Bill had to keep trying different things to make that year work out. Had JoJo stayed healthy… there was a decent chance we would have come home with the big trophy.
So I’m thinking that the OAD situation has played a big role in pushing Bill to offer more than a rigid system. OADs are NOT looking for rigid play.
Just look at our current offense. We are (so far) a perimeter shooting team. The ball isn’t sticking either. So guys are whipping the ball around until we have the wide open trey and our guys are knocking it down because they have made their offense into a game of H-O-R-S-E from the trey line. Think back many years ago and our rigid hi/lo offense wasn’t about having motion in the offense. It was just about spacing and passing quickly, trying to catch a seam in the defense on either the perimeter or in the post. Remember some of that stale offense where we had 3 perimeter guys standing on the trey line whipping the ball back and forth and nothing happening? So someone like Sherron or whomever would have to force a last second shot on the shot clock.
Those days are over. Bill has learned to turn his hi/lo into a hybrid hi/lo, really becoming a motion offense. Heck… half the time it looks a lot more like a dribble-drive offense instead of the hi/lo.
When we had players like Jamari… I really loved what Bill schemed for Jamari to slash through the post and receive the pass while in motion and then just an easy continuation finish for him at the rim. Wish we would have seen more of that, but what we did see I loved.
Bill is in a conundrum right now over his post offense. He wants to get some back to the basket offense going, and maybe he will. But I think his end goal is to challenge his post players so they struggle. Struggle leads to major development (usually). I expect we will see some new twists from our post over the next months. One thing is for sure… we need to see more “post to post” scoring (passing from a post player to a post player).
