JT III

[hoya21]

For $2m per year I want some energy. Pops wasn't a great in-game coach, but his teams always came out with energy, toughness, and take-no-prisoners attitude..... That defined Georgetown basketball.......

The FabFive movie is an interesting measuring stick..... We were more FabFive...than morphed into a Duke.... lost the passion.. and now we are more Princeton.....

[michaeldm9]

I agree with the development of the bench. I am not sure about what goes on in practice but it hard for me to understand how a player performance is evaluated with 3 to 4 minutes of playing time. This has been my only knock on JTIII as well. Vee stepped up in the BE conference game last year against as well as he had a nice pre-season. But what for ever reason that didn't translate into minutes. I think there is something about our late season collapses. I think his focused is on the start players he has pegged with no emphasis on development of the other until next year. The players play the game. But when you have 2 season that resemble each other it time to change something. I think Vee deserved way more minutes than he got. Even Moses after the collapse of Julian.

[strummer8526]

Mar 19, 2011 7:52:02 GMT -5 calhoya said:

No interest in changing coaches, but very interested in the coach changing. JT III is a bright, classy guy who brings honor to the school in the manner in which he conducts himself. He is an accomplished coach with a good resume and would be a great addition to any program. These are traits that should not be overlooked in the heat of the moment following yet another end of year meltdown. However, it is definitely time for JT III to to step back and evaluate his own growth and show the flexibility that he flashed early this year in his coaching.

You want the 5 star players then you anticipate their early departure and have a back-up plan. You cannot run the "system" without bigs who can be a threat on both ends of the court. You cannot develop players on the bench--they need to get in the game. I don't care how lost Henry or Vee are out there, it is not getting better on the bench. Let Henry screw up a little and give him a chance to play out of it--as you do with Lubick, Vaughn and others. Why the short leash for some players ( Sims and Sanford) but endless chances for others (Julian, Clark, etc.)

It is time to have a second offense that the players are schooled in for games when the system is not working. It is time to have a commitment to defense by everyone who is on the floor. It is time for growth as a coach and not blind adherence to a system and a determination to force round pegs into square holes.

Stay at the school and honor it with your intelligence, class and commitment to doing things the right way. But, it is time to acknowledge that the program is stagnating and needs a tune-up. Players are expected to develop. So too, should coaches.

Well said. JTIII is the coach and should remain the coach. But he needs to look hard at his teams and their flaws, and take corrective measures. This "We'll figure it out" stuff after every bad loss isn't working. Time to "figure it out" on a larger scale.

[smittydakid]

jt3 isn't going any where and neither are we. I've stated before that jt3 is a average coach in a big time league. We'll win games but nothing more. Jt3 doesn't make adjustments and the VCU coach even stated it. The final four looks more lucky than the norm. Jt3 knows the princeton system and will stick to it know matter who the players are. Can you imagine if get A. Drummond? He'll be at the the top of the 3point line holding the ball, waiting for a guard to cut. Scary thought but true!

[adlai]

Mar 19, 2011 7:48:25 GMT -5 NCHoya said:

JT3 has some things to work on no doubt, but this embelished Hoya legacy thing is getting tired. True, JT2 had a sparkling record in the 1st round of the NCAAs, in a different era where the difference between a single digit seed and a double digit seed were enormous. But this myth that the Hoyas were a championship team every season is bogus.

I am not sure where this sense of entitlement from part of the fanbase is coming from. I am sorry how many final fours does JT2 have without Ewing? Why does this idea exist that the Hoyas are at the level of college basketball royalty with the expectations to match? What JT2 meant to CBB went well beyond wins and losses and if we are just sticking to Ws and Ls than JT3 stacks up very well with JT2. If you want to measure JT3 as cultural figure like his dad than you will never be satisfied.

JT3 is doing a solid job, he loses in March, so does Bill Self and for a long time Roy Williams. It happens, it is a one game opportunity, not sure how that makes him a bad coach. Does he have flaws, yes, but show me a coach who does not. Smart people, which are most on this board, have to understand one bad coaching game in March does not outweigh the 30 games before it, where Gtown usually wins 70% of the time.

I witnessed firsthand NC State get "bored" with NCAAs. I watched Wake Forest run a coach out of town because he lost too early in the NCAAs. I now see both of those programs uncompetitive in the ACC much less an NCAA team. How do you think those fanbases feel now that they got their wish? There are very few examples where a team is a top 25 program, fire its coach and gets better. When UNC hired Roy that team was an NIT team. When UL hired Pitino same thing, plus Crumb was old. UK ran Gillespie out of town, but I would never compare the Hoyas to UK.

This whole discussion is a waste of time. JT3 is not going anywhere. He has won 20+ games how many times in his 7 seasons? JT3 has us competitive in the BE and in the NCAA nearly every year. There are only a handful of programs that should have higher expectations UNC, Kentucky, Kansas, Duke, etc, the Hoyas are not among that group. Is that the goal? Yeah, but that takes about 15 years of excellence and it is kind of hard, ask the 300 other NCAA programs that have the same goal.

Great post, NC.

[hoyadestroya]

Zo summed it up best on senior day. JTIII is getting the best he can out of the players he has. Time to bring in the guys that can take this team back to greatness with defense and inside play. If the current coach can't pull that off, maybe a certain Hoya great looking for a HC job would be willing to.

[tigerhoya3]

Mar 19, 2011 8:31:10 GMT -5 hoya21 said:

For $2m per year I want some energy. Pops wasn't a great in-game coach, but his teams always came out with energy, toughness, and take-no-prisoners attitude..... That defined Georgetown basketball.......

The FabFive movie is an interesting measuring stick..... We were more FabFive...than morphed into a Duke.... lost the passion.. and now we are more Princeton.....

I wish we at least matched the effort that Princeton gave against Kentucky on Thursday. Despite not being as athletic as Kentucky, I think Princeton outrebounded them.

I'm a fan of JTIII (and will probably always be biased toward him). That said, it is more than fair to evaluate him considering the last four years. It should be noted that there have also been some great moments during that time (Big East Regular Season Title in 2008; Big East Tournament Finals in 2008 and 2010; Top 10 rankings in 3 of the 4 years). However, there have been disappointments (namely poor finishes to each season).

Going forward we need to be recruiting players that not only fit the system but are skilled at a number of different things (3 pt shooting; mid-range shooting, ballhandling, defense, etc. - these are all skills that the Princeton offense relies on to be successful). Having too many one dimensional players will kill a team because it prevents the team from making adjustments when things go wrong since those players don't have the variety of skills to change game plans on the fly. Having too many players not match the effort of the opponent will kill you.

[rammajamma]

Adlai- u are clearly upset .. as we all are. That said, Duke lost a better player than we did, and they did not miss a beat. You can blame this debacle on CW's hand or Austin's ankle, etc, but the fact us there was no one who could step in when they faltered and no plan to address the situation. JTIII is the leader- that is his job.

[RDF]

One thing has to stop being mentioned when referring to Princeton--defense.

They don't play good defense--they limit possessions in a game and use their offensive system to help milk the game and defend for them.

Good defenses make adjustments--this team in the last game of year and with several upperclassmen playing has players who still don't understand that when you switch to a smaller/bigger man--the idea is to do that--but also switch back (see Chris Wright finally yelling to Sims to switch back)--and this happened all year--all '10, all '09, all '08, etc.....but at least he had size in past which made it harder to shoot over in post in past seasons. That is basic defensive basketball taught at the youth ball level.

Good defensive teams gets points from their defense and create offense when they have poor night shooting.

How many times are Hoyas unbalanced after a missed shot--simple defensive rotations are ignored-and a missed jumper often becomes a fastbreak for opponents that result in basket or and 1 opportunity or just a foul and FT's for opponents? Again-that is basic fundamental defensive basketball--rotating back when someone shoots on your team.

Defensively--the idea of zone defense--is to keep ball out of middle---pick which guy on the opposing team you want to force to shoot and key is always weakside defender-because he's got to watch man or "area" and the ball--because opposing player will be running baseline, exchanging, faking and popping out, etc....and this group is awful at that.

It's a poor defensive team--and not just because they lack size/athleticism/speed--they also lacked fundamental basics that can make it at least harder for opponents to score.

This falls on Head Coach. He controls who is recruited, who plays, how the team practices, the schemes they apply, improving them individually/collectively and this just has to improve. It can--great thing about sports--there's always a chance--but the basics need to be stressed more then they've been and some things strategically just need to be changed and adapt to give team better chance to compete at the level they play.

[AltoSaxa]

JTIII is a talented coach and has directed good recruits to Georgetown. This being said a good coach makes his system fit the players and not the players fit the system. It appears he is immutable when it it comes to the latter. I think he needed to adapt the system to the type of players we had this year.

Other more knowlegeable posters point out we need multi-faceted, athletic, longer players with good defense skills. We just didn't have it this year with this group. Hopefully with continued recruiting it will get better.

I still prefer a different system then what we run, however, there is no reason we cannot have some bigs with back-to-basket talent. Ideally, it would be nice to have a long athletic 3 (? GW) as the point forward but I hope Adams can give us a post presence ... we do "look for the best shot." Unfortunately a post play hasn't been part of our arsenal since ... not really sure.

[tigerhoya3]

They call it the Princeton Offense and not the Princeton Defense for a reason. That said, even if the offense is successful in shortening the game and limiting the number of possessions for the other team, a team running the Princeton Offense still has to play good defense when the other team has possession of the ball. For example, if they let the other team score everytime they have the ball despite limiting their possessions, that will be a problem since the Princeton Offense also minmizes the number of possessions for the team running it.

[deacon]

JTIII can coach, but he's stubborn to a fault but most good coaches are.

There's nothing wrong with the system, just the wrong mix of players. However, that's on him since he recruited them. Regardless, it doesn't matter what system you run, you're not going to be successful if you don't value the ball, rely way too much on the three-point shot and play terrible defense.

There's nothing wrong with this team that a multi-faceted big, a heady point guard and a few pure shooters wouldn't fix. In the mean time, I'd like to see us getting back to breeding competition in the program. Jason Clark did absolutely nothing this season to guarantee himself a starting position next season, but I'd bet anything he starts even if he gets outplayed by Bowen/Sanford/Trawick. Great programs make it known that if you're not playing up to snuff, you will be replaced and if you don't like it, you're more than welcome to continue your education elsewhere. Competition needs to be in your program's DNA and I don't know if it's in our's at the moment.

[hoyahalffull]

During the season, I thought Man to Man defense was our best defense against any opponent. We had the athletes and bodies to match up with most teams, especially after inserting Lubick into the starting lineup. During our Big East winning streak, we played more man than anything . . . zone during spot minutes to protect certain players from foul trouble, or on sideline/under the basket out of bounds. Coach K, Bilas, and even Boeheim have commented that over the course of the year, teams get better at playing Man defense. Their reads and communication improve. This was the case during our winning streak (e.g. Julian/Henry/Nate effectively hedging and recovering with Chris/Jason off screens).

What I could not understand last night, was why we decided to play a gimmick defense for the entire first half. The match-up zone, while I understand we've played it in the past (e.g. Big East Tournament during nights 3 and 4 when our legs are gone/tired to protect Monroe from foul trouble), absolutely burned us. During the first 15 seconds of possessions we would talk trying to figure out who each player would finally take as a man. When we decided to match up, it constantly put Hollis on Skeen, Julian on Rodriguez, sometimes Chris on Skeen, and often, left Rozzell wide open for the kick three. Moreover, instead of trying to fight through screens and recover, the match up zone encouraged us to switch every screen, creating more mismatches. It is a gimmick defense, like a Diamond/Box and 1, Triangle and 2, and we didn't switch out of it until late in the first half/early in the second half. Why we played it, and stuck with it for so long, was inexplicable.

[RDF]

Mar 19, 2011 9:40:58 GMT -5 tigerhoya3 said:

They call it the Princeton Offense and not the Princeton Defense for a reason. That said, even if the offense is successful in shortening the game and limiting the number of possessions for the other team, a team running the Princeton Offense still has to play good defense when the other team has possession of the ball. For example, if they let the other team score everytime they have the ball despite limiting their possessions, that will be a problem since the Princeton Offense also minmizes the number of possessions for the team running it.

What's Princeton ever achieved though? That's the issue with so many. Princeton wins a single NCAA game and that is achievement--FOR THEM--and should be due to the level of athlete they can get considering what a great school it is. I NEVER want Georgetown basketball to be like Princeton---that isn't the goal of the program--nor should it be as long as they are a member of the Big East.

[757hoyafan]

Totally different situations though. KI was gone early in the season & they had a seasoned player to take over his role; we lost CW @ the end & he was replaced by guys that were unable to provide what he offered. That is why they went on w/o any issues..

Mar 19, 2011 9:12:25 GMT -5 rammajamma said:

Adlai- u are clearly upset .. as we all are. That said, Duke lost a better player than we did, and they did not miss a beat. You can blame this debacle on CW's hand or Austin's ankle, etc, but the fact us there was no one who could step in when they faltered and no plan to address the situation. JTIII is the leader- that is his job.

[adlai]

rammajamma - to summarize your posts, you first tried to blame JTIII because we didn't grow over the course of the season and now you've moved on to blaming him for failure of leadership and the bench. Your evidence still seems to be the play of the last five games in isolation.

G'town likely would have been a 2-seed if Selection Sunday had been prior to the Marquette game. That is not a major failing as a coach. As can be demonstrated, JTIII teams have had success down the stretch in some years past and not in others. I for one choose not to judge JTIII's leadership abilities on a five game stretch where one of his key players has a broken hand and it seems that there is strong evidence to suggest another player had a nagging injury which affected his play (plus even beyond Austin, Jason was wearing a brace on his left hand last night).

If you think that there are a lot of teams that could lose players as critical to their success as CW when Clark is in one of his slumps and Freeman is not playing well (which given his four year career I think is likely related to his ankle injury), then there's really not much to say. BYU lost an inferior player than CW and is now a completely different team; Purdue was much worse after Hummel's injury last year. The list could go on. Even for your Duke example, if you actually watched them play they were not as good of a team after losing Irving, so I'm not sure why you claim they "didn't miss a beat". They also had three months to figure it out including a lot of home games against relatively weak competition. Personally, that seems a bit different than what happened to us at the end of this year.

A better example would have been how ND actually improved last year after losing Harangody. This could suggest that Brey has great leadership in bringing his team together. However, the fact that they went from a bubble team to a six seed after changing their whole style of play actually suggests to me that Brey erred during the first three months of the season--they should have been playing that style all year. If a team improves as a result of an unexpected event such as an injury it does not reveal the strength of a coach as much as it reveals that he was not doing a good job with the team prior to that injury.

We all wish that the end of this season had gone differently. Could JTIII have done a better job? Probably. Does that mean he's a bad coach or that he "failed" at his job? No. He put together a great team this year once again that encountered some bad luck at the end of the season.

As for my own feelings, please feel free to explain how that affects the strength of my logic regarding how we should think about JTIII as a coach.

[sleepy]

Mar 19, 2011 9:27:36 GMT -5 RDF said:

One thing has to stop being mentioned when referring to Princeton--defense.

It's a poor defensive team--and not just because they lack size/athleticism/speed--they also lacked fundamental basics that can make it at least harder for opponents to score.

This falls on Head Coach. He controls who is recruited, who plays, how the team practices, the schemes they apply, improving them individually/collectively and this just has to improve. It can--great thing about sports--there's always a chance--but the basics need to be stressed more then they've been and some things strategically just need to be changed and adapt to give team better chance to compete at the level they play.

This more than anything else summarizes the last three years. I'm far from convinced that this is changing anytime soon.
Major changes need to be addressed starting today. that should include both the staff, the roster, recruits, and facilities. If anyone thinks this is going to get any better by continuing the philosophy of the last 3 to 4 years better get ready for years of tuesday night games in the BET.

[lurkerhoya]

I think people are underestimating the extent of Freeman's injury in all of this discussion as well. He clearly hasn't been right since the MU game, at least offensively. Between him and Chris that's our two best players basically lost in the middle of February. We knew going into the season we weren't particularly deep, and if you want to hang that on recruiting that's fine, but it boggles my mind that anyone thinks there is some coach out there that we could hire tomorrow or in a week who could have done more with this situation.

As for long term, JT3 has flaws, but NCHoya is spot on here. I'll take these losses if down the road it means winning 2 titles in 3 years (Williams) or even 20 years like Magoo. I hate to speculate, and I'm not, but maybe there was just something about this group that never quite clicked. I have no idea. But this was basically JT3's second recruiting class even though he's been here 7 years so I'm not quite ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

[RDF]

Mar 19, 2011 10:29:24 GMT -5 lurkerhoya said:

I think people are underestimating the extent of Freeman's injury in all of this discussion as well. He clearly hasn't been right since the MU game, at least offensively. Between him and Chris that's our two best players basically lost in the middle of February. We knew going into the season we weren't particularly deep, and if you want to hang that on recruiting that's fine, but it boggles my mind that anyone thinks there is some coach out there that we could hire tomorrow or in a week who could have done more with this situation.

As for long term, JT3 has flaws, but NCHoya is spot on here. I'll take these losses if down the road it means winning 2 titles in 3 years (Williams) or even 20 years like Magoo. I hate to speculate, and I'm not, but maybe there was just something about this group that never quite clicked. I have no idea. But this was basically JT3's second recruiting class even though he's been here 7 years so I'm not quite ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Freeman wasn't shooting well prior to injuring his ankle. He had a lot of time to recover--the team played 3 games in 18 days or something like that? How much recovery time do you need? If you are on the court--you are capable and if you aren't--it's up to him to step aside and tell coach he can't go and give someone else the chance to play.

You don't improve by quitting--and you don't improve by hoping it'll get better with more tenure either. You get better when you sit and watch the flaws---address that change in the philosophy on offense/defense is needed and most importantly you get better players. Thing is-to get better players--you've got to allow them to play on instinct and talent and then adapt to what they do well in terms of how to put together an offensive/defensive system. From there--seeing who your opponent are/what they do well/poorly--you gameplan. Then according to how a game is being played--you adapt/make adjustments.

Sports are about adjustments. Nobody is perfect and nobody is as awful/great as they seem. The teams that win understand basic principles-players with talent are not just needed--but they need to be allowed to play off talent/instinct and each season and each team you have over course of career is different. I think it's biggest issue with program right now--they don't adapt/adjust and expect results to change. Look at VCU comments about "kept waiting for them to adjust and didn't happen....." and how sad is it when an opposing player mentions "they played harder at the end of the game...."--interesting--who was in the game when that took place/who wasn't?

You can be same person--but that means you better recruit people who are self motivated, and if you can't motivate/get messages across-get coaches to help you that can or find players that are motivated by suiting up.

Either adapt/change or keep suffering same fate.

[hoyas big supporter]

Mar 19, 2011 10:44:22 GMT -5 RDF said:

Mar 19, 2011 10:29:24 GMT -5 lurkerhoya said:

I think people are underestimating the extent of Freeman's injury in all of this discussion as well. He clearly hasn't been right since the MU game, at least offensively. Between him and Chris that's our two best players basically lost in the middle of February. We knew going into the season we weren't particularly deep, and if you want to hang that on recruiting that's fine, but it boggles my mind that anyone thinks there is some coach out there that we could hire tomorrow or in a week who could have done more with this situation.

As for long term, JT3 has flaws, but NCHoya is spot on here. I'll take these losses if down the road it means winning 2 titles in 3 years (Williams) or even 20 years like Magoo. I hate to speculate, and I'm not, but maybe there was just something about this group that never quite clicked. I have no idea. But this was basically JT3's second recruiting class even though he's been here 7 years so I'm not quite ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Freeman wasn't shooting well prior to injuring his ankle. He had a lot of time to recover--the team played 3 games in 18 days or something like that? How much recovery time do you need? If you are on the court--you are capable and if you aren't--it's up to him to step aside and tell coach he can't go and give someone else the chance to play.

You don't improve by quitting--and you don't improve by hoping it'll get better with more tenure either. You get better when you sit and watch the flaws---address that change in the philosophy on offense/defense is needed and most importantly you get better players. Thing is-to get better players--you've got to allow them to play on instinct and talent and then adapt to what they do well in terms of how to put together an offensive/defensive system. From there--seeing who your opponent are/what they do well/poorly--you gameplan. Then according to how a game is being played--you adapt/make adjustments.

Sports are about adjustments. Nobody is perfect and nobody is as awful/great as they seem. The teams that win understand basic principles-players with talent are not just needed--but they need to be allowed to play off talent/instinct and each season and each team you have over course of career is different. I think it's biggest issue with program right now--they don't adapt/adjust and expect results to change. Look at VCU comments about "kept waiting for them to adjust and didn't happen....." and how sad is it when an opposing player mentions "they played harder at the end of the game...."--interesting--who was in the game when that took place/who wasn't?

You can be same person--but that means you better recruit people who are self motivated, and if you can't motivate/get messages across-get coaches to help you that can or find players that are motivated by suiting up.

Either adapt/change or keep suffering same fate.

Your assessment of Austin's struggle is just stupid, but I'll just leave it at that for now since you are clearly still writing off of emotion.