Will contemporary basketball keep emulating Bill Self, or Will It Try to Sign 6 >39% trifectates all as athletic as Top 25 players, but mysteriously ranked 75-100?
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Isn’t the question posed in the title really the critical question facing college basketball coaches these days?
Should they keep emulating Self’s strategy of tough M2M defense and 4-1 offense foundationed on 3-2 High Lo Carolina passing offense principles, or should they try to find 6 > 39% trifectates in bodies as athletic as top 25 ranked recruits but ranked between 75-100 as per Jay Wright and the world’s most anomalous college basketball team, since UK’s 10 stack and Duke’s 9 stack of OADs. You know who I’m talking about: last seasons remarkable Villanova 75-100 Rank CATS.
If Jay Wright’s model were legitimate, i.e., if they were not a bunch of sand-bagged ringers channeled to Jay over the last few years, then we should expect many coaches to be copying what worked for Jay, the same way they have copied what worked for Bill?
In Bill’s case, what Bill does seems remotely attainable for quite a few coaches. Not many can get the adidas cream players Bill gets, which increasingly amounts to 2, or less. And some years he can’t even play the 5-stars he signs, because of baggage.
Mostly Bill goes after 5-stars, loses them to the NIKE-EST programs, then signs athletic 4-stars and “coaches’em up”! Lately, he has been leaning toward short 4-stars that can drain the trey, but even on his bumper crop years, he never has more than three >39% trey dingers on the floor at once. Bill just can’t seem to find any more than that. Heck, he even has trouble recruiting bigs that can make free throws, much less trey ding at a >39% clip.
So: many coaches apparently view Bill’s model as something they can at least partially aspire to emulate, even if they can’t get the adidas, or Nike cream players with baggage in similar numbers.
See: Jay’s model is so sexy right now after Nova pounded everyone in their path to a March pulp last season.
And Jay’s model, if one buys the official story, works with 75-100 rank guys. Heck, even Squeaky at Farm&Home, er, KSU can sign 75-100 rank guys, right?
So: Jay’s model of six trifectates shooting 10 or more treys (and making > 39% of said attempts) than the opponent including two bigs stepping out and draining treys, and the highly athletic team of 75-100 rank players running the floor like gazelles to play a super matchup zone, should be being emulated by at least half the majors in each power conference, right? i mean they would be crazy not to emulate Jay Wright now, because the basic math is all in favor of his scheme, and, well, it only takes 75-100 rank players to execute, which any major coach can recruit to a Power Conference school, right?
Wrong!
The fly in the ointment caveat is that six, including two bigs, have to shoot and make lots of treys at a>39% clip.
If Bill Self, John Calipari, Coach K, and Roy Williams cannot find six > 39% trey shooters, including not one but two bigs, in the Top 25, how are coaches going to pull it off from the 75-100 ranked guys they draw to Lubbock, or Champaign Urbana, or Knoxville, or Berkeley, or Pullman, or Minneapolis-St. Paul or Iowa City, or Stillwater, or Baton Rouge?
Better yet, how did Jay Wright pull that little trick off in the City of Brotherly Love, where Fran Dunphy, at least as savvy a coach cannot pull such a fete off?
For god sakes, if Jay has been developing this for several years, Fran couldn’t have missed this, being just across town at Temple, right? Heck, Temple is even another Catholic school, right? Talk about an easy emulation, right? Watch. Copy. Win.
Seriously.
How did Jay do it?
I mean was it a divinely inspired, papal kind of intervention, or what?
What gives here?
I want to believe.
I’ll even convert just to get 2 bigs alone that can run the floor, guard their position, rebound and shoot >39% from trey, as well as those guys on Nova did.
And why isn’t anyone else asking how Jay really did it?
I’m not saying he cheated. I’m saying I can’t figure out how he ended up with 6 highly athletic >39% trifectates, including two trey dinging bigs in the paint, that can run the floor and overwhelm teams laden with Top 25 talent, by recruiting guys from 75 to 100 ranked.
Its almost biblical, like turning water into wine, like loaves of bread into fish, or was it the other way around?
Heck, if it were divinely inspired, let’s all get religion.
If it comes from Roman Catholic faith, lets rehire Sheahon pronto.
Was it a miracle?
Or what?
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He is good at identifying talent and players that fit his system. Kids willing to red shirt and develop etc…
