Hello Followers. Hope you’re having a good week.
Well, as we head into the final week of the regular season, there is a lot to chew on in Cougar World.
Wanna check out my thoughts on this weekend’s games plus several thoughts on Ken Bone?
Then read on.
Followers. There has been a lot of stuff written here and elsewhere about whether or not this team is underarchieving. As I mentionned here a few weeks back, for much of the conference season, this team has shown itself to lack several of the tangibles and intangibles needed to become a very good, or even great, basketball team. And consequently, the statistics (whichever ones you want to use) bear that out: Some of our stats are very good, some of them not so much, some of our players have really good stats, some are considered “invisible,” and so forth. Of course, when you average together high numbers, low numbers, and those in that are in the middle, you get “Average” written in neon lights. And so, in that respect, I guess we are what our record says we are.
At the same time, that argument continues to feel quite circular to me. And to illustrate quasi-point #2456 for this year, I draw from the experience of my good buddy “Jethro.”
For starters, you all should know that Jethro is a pretty smart dude. But, in spite of being smart, Jethro got mostly C’s and low B’s in high school, with an occassional A and/or D sprinkled in there. Average those grades together and you get Jethro’s cumulative GPA: 2.71.
Given that Jethro’s received several grades over the course of his career, its pretty easy to say “Hey, Jethro’s an average student–look at his GPA.” Its also easy to say, that Jethro is average because other indicators of his aptitude also aren’t that great, such as SAT scores that are right around the 50th percentile.
So, when you look at the “facts” its easy to say “Jethro’s average because his stats say he is average.” Moreover, when Jethro’s teacher tells us that he thought Jethro’s GPA would be right around 2.71, its easy to extend that argument further “Because his teacher thinks he’s average–he MUST be average.”
The problem with this argument is that Jethro has gotten a few of his limited A’s in Physics, Chemistry, and AP English. And so, while his overall academic profile looks to be in the middle, the flip side of the coin is that Jethro has shown that he can achieve at the highest level in courses that you CANNOT do well in unless you have several sharp tools in the cerebral shed. And so, while it is easy on one hand to say “Jethro is who he is”, the other side of the ledger is that Jethro has has shown that, at the very least, he has an important precursor to becoming a “developed” academic talent: He has POTENTIAL.
So, where this Cougar team is concerned, the question for me is not whether or not this team is average or not. Instead, the question is “who is responsible for moving this group from being “average but potentially good” to flat out good?” Because, during the Hawaii tournament, Ken Bone was quoted as saying that he thought this team had the potential to be “awfully good.”
But now, with the season in a precarious state, he suggests that we are “about where I thought we would be.”
And, at least in my mind, there are a couple of reasons for this apparent flip-flop:
Reason #1: He wants to tick his players off by telling them that he thinks they’re average, hoping that they go out to prove him wrong.
Reason #2: He thinks his players don’t respond well to high expectations, so he’s lowering the bar to take pressure off them.
Reason #3: He’s trying to protect his backside from not getting the job done (to date).
Personally, the reasons for Bone’s lowering of the bar really don’t matter to me. What does matter to me is that bar is being lowered AT ALL at this time of year. Simply put, with two must-win games coming up at home, I personally appreciate coaches who set the bar high for their players; and within, tell them that they expect them to achieve difficult tasks for the precise reason that they are capable of doing so.
So, can we beat SC tomorrow night? Absolutely. Should we beat SC tomorrow night? Absolutely. Should it be considered a collosal faillure if we lose to SC tomorrow night? You bet.
Because, while USC is solid, they are incredibly thin. While USC applies a tremendous amount of backcourt pressure and physicality, like Washington, they are small in the backcourt. And so, if Reggie and Klay play their games, this is a game that we should not only win, its a game that we should win by double digits at home. Period.
Now, where UCLA is concerned, well, I just hate the flipping match-up. And frankly, outside of Klay, I don’t like one stinking match-up that we have on the floor. Moreover, with a short break between Thursday and Saturday afternoon, the “X” factor in those types of games frequently comes down to talent and coaching. And, we lose out big time against UCLA in both categories.
That said, teams that are well coached, well disciplined, and properly motivated, often find ways to win games that they shouldn’t–particularly at home on the last game of the year. And in this sense, good teams find a way to “win ugly” (tip of the hat to you, P-Town) in those types of games; like we did in Kelvin Sampson’s last year in knocking off Jason Kidd et al. at home.
And so, with the season hanging in the balance on Saturday, it will be interesting to see if we can find a way to scratch, clay, fight, and will our way to a win against a much more talented and polished team. Will we do it? I don’t know.
But I do know that we WILL NOT WIN ON SATURDAY it if the players believe that they are “about where they should be.”
In the meantime, beat SC.
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