Recruiting Forum Football Talk VI

[Vols4us]

Okay, we average 13.6 OREB a game. Here are the rebound stats in our losses:
Colorado: O- 12 D- 26
Arizona: O- 9 D- 21
Kentucky: O- 4 D- 19
Florida: O- 18 D- 25
Vanderbilt: O- 13 D- 24

So in the 5 games we have lost, we OREB below the mean on 4 of them. Vandy and Colorado are not significantly below the bell curve. UK I would say is significantly lower.

Point is, the blanket statement "we are timid on the offensive glass" isn't statistically accurate when we are 1st in the P5 on the offensive boards. Have we been timid in some games? Could be argued. Did that timidness result in a loss? I'd say likely against UK. But our losses don't reflect the cause and effect here.

Let's look at how we rebounded in other games:
Kansas: O- 15 D- 30
Southern Cal: O- 14 D- 24
Maryland: O- 21 D- 27
Vandy G1: O- 12 D- 24
Texas: O- 11 D- 27
Auburn: O- 15 D- 32
Georgia: O- 10 D- 33

So in some games where we've absolutely crushed teams, we've OREB'ed below our mean. Probably because we shot at a higher percentage (which I think is the biggest problem in losses - poor shooting - not being timid off the glass. We have the T-8th highest rebound margin in college basketball. T-4th in P5.

Not disagreeing because I do not know. But take it a step farther and look at the minutes of the players in those 5 games and who got the OREBs. Is there a connection?

 

[VolsFan-TX]

US soccer is coaching. That’s our problem. Talent is finally there now, the coaching is not. I wouldn’t say we are tougher than other teams either.

Coaching at what level? I agree about coaching issues at younger ages, but the national-level coaches are good. I think the breakdown in US soccer is multi-layered and centers around the sport as a money-making enterprise lacking any specific national goals/techniques. For example,

• Unlike some countries, US soccer does not try to instill any particular style of play across the board from the earliest ages. When you take kids to the national level, they are coming from across the country with a multitude of style differences. Unless these kids play together a lot, they will not be play cohesively. I would like to see more education from the national level instructing youth leagues and coaching clinics to drive a particular style. Do we want to play more physically like England, more efficiently and structured like Germany, the tiki-taka Spanish style, or more individually-skilled play like Brazil?
• The youth coaches, who are influencing kids from ages 3 to say select/club age, often lack the appropriate background and coaching experience to develop players. The knowledge and experience with the sport of many youth soccer coaches are far less than basketball, baseball, and football coaches. When this happens, the biggest, fastest, and strongest kids will dominate the games at the early ages, when a lot of the true skill and touch should be developed.
• Soccer in the US is too disjointed with too many leagues, academies, etc. My youngest child to go through the youth programs was in three different leagues with her club team as well as ODP (olympic development program) and her high school team. The US would benefit from a more strongly structured national level driving the organizations through the youth leagues. The proliferation of leagues has confused parents and resulted in leagues with watered-down talent. The youth systems have USSSA, AYSO, SAY, and USYSA among others setting rules and requirements.
• Club soccer in the DFW area typically costs in excess of $3,000 per year not counting uniforms (which may run $500), out-of-town tournaments, and position-specific training (keepers, for example). While scholarships do exist, the sport often loses good players due to the exorbitant cost. This cost was traditionally for the club-level players beginning at U11, but the introduction of the youth academy programs has now pushed higher costs to the younger ages.
• Soccer in the US lacks the unstructured play seen with other sports. For example, it is common to drive by a park and see kids playing basketball or football, but less common to see a bunch of kids playing soccer without coaches. This is one of the largest hindrances to soccer achievement in the US. When you visit Brazil, Argentina, Spain, etc., you will see young kids playing at the parks playing soccer. The skills and experience learned from the actual unstructured play are tremendous.

Sorry for the long response, but soccer is a sport that I have been involved in for a long time. I have coached/managed youth soccer for more than 20 years and been actively involved in leading youth leagues during that same time. With the talent we have in the US, there are no excuses for not dominating on the world stage.

 

[Woodlawn VOL]

That's what she's done-- bring in power hitters instead of slappers. Her new philosophy is hit or sit. She's also shored up the pitching. Trying to ride 1 or 2 pitchers has been an issue for years. They open on Friday, so we'll see.

Good deal! I hope they have a great season. GBO

 

[TheRain]

click full screen...

 

[RudyVol]

Can't believe we lost to Vandy

 

[engineerVOL]

Anyone know the Sacramento CA area? Never been, go at the end of the month for work for about a week.

 

[mtvols]

LMAO... no one can explain how this team can do what it did, and beat who it did the first of the season, and yet now we can't even beat Candy, who's lost 12... At this rate we will most likely drop another 5-6... No way we are beating Mizz, bama, KY, A&M, Ark, or AU playing like this ... I'll say again and again, this is on Barnes...

the team has been overrated all year. Now that the schedule has toughened up, they will take some losses.

 

[SugarCC]

And people are calling these kids greedy for wanting to get ALL they can get for themselves and their families??

 

[SoilVol]

Picked up a serious stomach bug. Not recommended.

 

[SoilVol]

the team has been overrated all year. Now that the schedule has toughened up, they will take some losses.

Overrated? Number 1 defense in the country. Won the Battle for Atlantis tournament beating USC (3rd in Pac12 rn) and Kansas (3rd in Big12). Have beaten Texas as well (1st in Big 12) not 2-3 weeks ago. Wins over 2 top 10 teams. Sitting at 3rd in the SEC.

That's "overrated"?

Maybe, this may be a hard concept, the team is fatigued and nagging injuries are catching up to them late in the season due to the physical toll of playing lock-down basketball for a nearly full season in the SEC?

 

[SoilVol]

Not disagreeing because I do not know. But take it a step farther and look at the minutes of the players in those 5 games and who got the OREBs. Is there a connection?

Good question. Don't have time to check that out right now.

 

[volinbama256]

Overrated? Number 1 defense in the country. Won the Battle for Atlantis tournament beating USC (3rd in Pac12 rn) and Kansas (3rd in Big12). Have beaten Texas as well (1st in Big 12) not 2-3 weeks ago. Wins over 2 top 10 teams. Sitting at 3rd in the SEC.

That's "overrated"?

Maybe, this may be a hard concept, the team is fatigued and nagging injuries are catching up to them late in the season due to the physical toll of playing lock-down basketball for a nearly full season in the SEC?

All teams are fatigued at this point, we aren't special-- I will agree on the injuries, but we've got too much talent depth not to still put it in the basket... fatigue doesn't mean going cold shooting, missing layups, shooting 29%, etc... Our issues seem to be just as much mental as physical...

Yes, we've beaten some great teams, but we've also laid an egg against Colorado, KY, Florida, and Vandy... all teams we should have beaten... heck, we should have lost to AU this past weekend if I'm being honest... We need to get our heads out of our arses, focus, play confident, and quit rolling over when things get tough...

 

[VolsDoc81TX]

Look, tonights loss was frustrating. But losing tonight does not mean we will lose in the first or second round of the tournament. Any more than Kansas losing to Kentucky by 18 at home or to unranked TCU at the end of the season last year mean they couldn't win the title.

It means we have flaws that are being exploited, and every team has flaws. The key is fixing them and getting back into our rhythm, which we have plenty of time to do.

16-0 the rest of the way til we ain't @VolsDoc81TX

That’s the spirit!

 

[BearCat204]

click full screen...

Third wire..................................pffffffftttt

 

[Smyrna ATL Vol]

Coaching at what level? I agree about coaching issues at younger ages, but the national-level coaches are good. I think the breakdown in US soccer is multi-layered and centers around the sport as a money-making enterprise lacking any specific national goals/techniques. For example,

• Unlike some countries, US soccer does not try to instill any particular style of play across the board from the earliest ages. When you take kids to the national level, they are coming from across the country with a multitude of style differences. Unless these kids play together a lot, they will not be play cohesively. I would like to see more education from the national level instructing youth leagues and coaching clinics to drive a particular style. Do we want to play more physically like England, more efficiently and structured like Germany, the tiki-taka Spanish style, or more individually-skilled play like Brazil?
• The youth coaches, who are influencing kids from ages 3 to say select/club age, often lack the appropriate background and coaching experience to develop players. The knowledge and experience with the sport of many youth soccer coaches are far less than basketball, baseball, and football coaches. When this happens, the biggest, fastest, and strongest kids will dominate the games at the early ages, when a lot of the true skill and touch should be developed.
• Soccer in the US is too disjointed with too many leagues, academies, etc. My youngest child to go through the youth programs was in three different leagues with her club team as well as ODP (olympic development program) and her high school team. The US would benefit from a more strongly structured national level driving the organizations through the youth leagues. The proliferation of leagues has confused parents and resulted in leagues with watered-down talent. The youth systems have USSSA, AYSO, SAY, and USYSA among others setting rules and requirements.
• Club soccer in the DFW area typically costs in excess of $3,000 per year not counting uniforms (which may run $500), out-of-town tournaments, and position-specific training (keepers, for example). While scholarships do exist, the sport often loses good players due to the exorbitant cost. This cost was traditionally for the club-level players beginning at U11, but the introduction of the youth academy programs has now pushed higher costs to the younger ages.
• Soccer in the US lacks the unstructured play seen with other sports. For example, it is common to drive by a park and see kids playing basketball or football, but less common to see a bunch of kids playing soccer without coaches. This is one of the largest hindrances to soccer achievement in the US. When you visit Brazil, Argentina, Spain, etc., you will see young kids playing at the parks playing soccer. The skills and experience learned from the actual unstructured play are tremendous.

Sorry for the long response, but soccer is a sport that I have been involved in for a long time. I have coached/managed youth soccer for more than 20 years and been actively involved in leading youth leagues during that same time. With the talent we have in the US, there are no excuses for not dominating on the world stage.

It seems like you agreed and disagreed with me. I agree that youth is not taught as well and we need more organization on how we want to play. I played select from when I was nine until I went and played in college. I was also in ODP. I know plenty about soccer.

My comment was on the national team. We did not look well coached in the World Cup. We have no movement up front and rely on our midfield to literally do everything. They have to play defense and create chances up top. They were exhausted at the end of every game. We played three forwards who were mostly in defensive alignments too. The one time we finally crashed the goal, CP basically gave his nuts for us but no one else tried to do that ever. It was frustrating to watch.

 

[UTProf]

My prediction:

This basketball team makes a deep tourney run

Something feels like Cuonzo’s last year to me - fans are writing off a talented team they think is underperforming.

My optimistic thought is that the team responds, digs deep and makes a run.

We will see what happens!

It feels like Cuonzo's last team because we're seeing a team that we know full well has more than enough talent throw opportunities away. There's not much more frustrating than watching teams that you know have talent just refuse to do anything with it. To Cuonzo's credit that team came to life when it mattered but it never had a 10th of the talent this team does. This team lack self-discipline in a lot of ways and we need someone to pick up the slack whenever Vescovi is bottled up. Otherwise we will keep having pathetic games on offense. IOW, there's got to be more than one person the offense can run through.

 

[Weezer]

Anyone know the Sacramento CA area? Never been, go at the end of the month for work for about a week.

Never been, but I bet they have a great Applebee's.

 

[Weezer]

Picked up a serious stomach bug. Not recommended.

 

[Ulysees E. McGill]

Going into February, the Vols were holding opponents to 22% from 3. The single season record is 25.3%.

Since then:
at Florida 35%
vs Auburn 11%
at Vandy 40%

Avg 28.7%

Perhaps this is a regression to the mean and we should expect opponents to hit more 3's. Maybe this is an away/neutral court problem. I think it's something to keep an eye on.

Or MAYBE Vandy just got hot for one of the only times this year...it is basketball...it happens.

 

[Ulysees E. McGill]

Do you realize how whiny that sounds?

Speaking the f'n truth? That's not whining...it's calling a spade a spade.

 

[Ulysees E. McGill]

He is calling our guys pu$$ies.

I'm not calling them pu$$ies...but I do think they need to figure out how to deal with it better....still the fouls should be called, at least the f'n ridiculously egregious ones.

 

[Ulysees E. McGill]

Basketball is a contact sport. It’s how the game is played.

It is...to a degree.

 

[Ulysees E. McGill]

Define “wilderness”. Wasn’t that long ago we were nervous about chances to make the NIT. This is a program that’s never been to the Final Four! I know we’re not disagreeing, but the general sentiment you’re responding to is madness. We start winning 20+ regularly and our fans order a sense of entitlement on Amazon.

Boom

 

[VolsFan-TX]

It seems like you agreed and disagreed with me. I agree that youth is not taught as well and we need more organization on how we want to play. I played select from when I was nine until I went and played in college. I was also in ODP. I know plenty about soccer.

My comment was on the national team. We did not look well coached in the World Cup. We have no movement up front and rely on our midfield to literally do everything. They have to play defense and create chances up top. They were exhausted at the end of every game. We played three forwards who were mostly in defensive alignments too. The one time we finally crashed the goal, CP basically gave his nuts for us but no one else tried to do that ever. It was frustrating to watch.

I agree with the lack of offensive identity in the WC, but we also could have had more offensive power with through team selection and playing others on the roster. We have a young team, which is an improvement over past WCs. I like building up from the back for offense, but we need game-changers up top too. I also like active defenders who become involved in the offense as well, but I dislike having to rely on our forwarders to support the defense as much as we have recently. Thankfully, US soccer is getting better, but it is slower than expected. The US could have benefited from having the WC back sooner…it has been a long time since 1994.

 

[Ulysees E. McGill]

I remember not paying attention to college basketball other than to check in to see if the men were on the bubble. I remember sitting at .500 in January talking about what the team needs to do to get a bid and feeling like we'd achieved something if we made the tournament.

Now people seriously want to fire Barnes and think we won't end up with another Donnie Tyndall, or revert back to the days of crossing our fingers and finishing middle of the pack in the SEC.

Barnes isn't gonna be here for another 10 years. He may not be here for 5. He's going to retire eventually. Lets just enjoy being good and let a first ballot HOF coach ride off into the sunset before we subject ourselves to the unknown again. Why the rush?

Boom.