How bad is it? We have two veteran guards (Carter and Reynolds), a veteran power forward of some accomplishment (Graves), one of the best pure talents in the country (DeShields, playing her second year), a 6'6" center (Russell) who was a blue-chip prospect, playing her second year, an excellent athlete/prospect swing forward (Nared), one of the top freshman guards in the country (Cooper)--and we go into the ND game, a team with less overall physical talent than we have, and maybe even considerably less, and just hope not to be embarrassed! That's when you know it's bad.
Muffet McGraw schools our staff EVERY time we play. The players change--but the basketball lesson is the same every year. Her teams are smart, play fundamental basketball, run sets that get layups, and shoot well--and the irish play like this almost every year!
The Vols, on the other hand, stand around, make bad passes, have no confidence, can't shoot, get lackadaisical on defense--and IT'S THE SAME EVERY YEAR. Our fundamental skills are TERRIBLE. Different players, same problems, same script--every year.
Every post-game presser, Warlick looks at the stat sheet, and mutters, 'turnovers.' And yet the staff is completely incapable of reducing them--has not been able to reduce them for several years. Has not been able to improve our passing, our shooting. Last year, with Burdick and Harrison, two good players and two good leaders, we were considerably better than this, to be fair. But turnovers were still a problem, the offense was still a problem, as it always it--and even with them when we played ND and other good teams we lost. You don't need to be a Sherlock Holmes to figure out where the problem starts.
