Paul Mills Not Hot Seat

[MikeKennedyRulZ]

I am going to continue my unpopular opinion. I don't think it is Mills or his system. It is an almost complete void of talent or cohesion that is the issue. There I said it. Some of the team play hard and with a purpose, the others just give zero effort and / or have little to no talent or BBIQ. There are times where Ballard and Pohto barely go after rebounds. That is the most infuriating thing to me. At a minimum I want to see all out, balls to the walls, effort.

[Ta Town Shocker]

My theory is the season as a whole will play out similar to the performances in individual games. A strong start followed by a slight decline towards half. Now that we're nearing the end of after half nap, the team will find a way to finish out the season on somewhat of a good note.

[Stickboy46]

I am going to continue my unpopular opinion. I don't think it is Mills or his system. It is an almost complete void of talent or cohesion that is the issue. There I said it. Some of the team play hard and with a purpose, the others just give zero effort and / or have little to no talent or BBIQ. There are times where Ballard and Pohto barely go after rebounds. That is the most infuriating thing to me. At a minimum I want to see all out, balls to the walls, effort.

Everything you named is a coaching problem. He might be an x and o guy (also not a lot that shows that's true) but effort, not rebounding, not going after loose balls means he's not a motivator.

[rjl]

I am going to continue my unpopular opinion. I don't think it is Mills or his system. It is an almost complete void of talent or cohesion that is the issue. There I said it. Some of the team play hard and with a purpose, the others just give zero effort and / or have little to no talent or BBIQ. There are times where Ballard and Pohto barely go after rebounds. That is the most infuriating thing to me. At a minimum I want to see all out, balls to the walls, effort.

Last night's game would probably have wound up with a 'W' if we had only marginally better talent, all else being equal. There were a few boneheaded passes or dribbles into double teams that could have decided the game. Had those gone the other way, it could have been us pulling away at the end and not Tulsa.

But there also seems to be a dearth of coaching going on. Tulsa is a dogshit team that a good coach should be able to beat even with bad talent.

I find it hard to believe a team that somehow captured the all-time top team GPA is also, at the same time, not smart enough to grasp simple concepts when they are coached. That does not add up.

[Dan]

I am going to continue my unpopular opinion. I don't think it is Mills or his system. It is an almost complete void of talent or cohesion that is the issue. There I said it. Some of the team play hard and with a purpose, the others just give zero effort and / or have little to no talent or BBIQ. There are times where Ballard and Pohto barely go after rebounds. That is the most infuriating thing to me. At a minimum I want to see all out, balls to the walls, effort.

We have a team of filler bench players and a bunch of them are playing 30 mpg. A guy like David Kyles or even Jaron Pierre would be the best player on this team.

[BOBB]

Last night's game would probably have wound up with a 'W' if we had only marginally better talent, all else being equal. There were a few boneheaded passes or dribbles into double teams that could have decided the game. Had those gone the other way, it could have been us pulling away at the end and not Tulsa.

But there also seems to be a dearth of coaching going on. Tulsa is a dogshit team that a good coach should be able to beat even with bad talent.

I find it hard to believe a team that somehow captured the all-time top team GPA is also, at the same time, not smart enough to grasp simple concepts when they are coached. That does not add up.

Maybe it does. Like Forest Gump in the army. Not thinking just doing as he’s told. Not wondering why, or if the coach really meant…, or what if I tried it this way?

[Shockm]

You kids get off my lawn.

Since you brought up my kids, they paid almost all of their own way through college too, with little help from me, and no hand outs. They’ve never needed to live off of me or live in my basement. if they would have needed my help, I would have offered, but they made a clean break after college, and didn’t need me. Now they do better than me. Good for them. It makes me proud of them.

[BostonWu]

Since you brought up my kids, they paid almost all of their own way through college too, with little help from me, and no hand outs. They’ve never needed to live off of me or live in my basement. if they would have needed my help, I would have offered, but they made a clean break after college, and didn’t need me. Now they do better than me. Good for them. It makes me proud of them.

What's that got to do with today's NIL era and trying to get quality recruits in our program? None of us may like it but either adapt or die.

[Stickboy46]

What's that got to do with today's NIL era and trying to get quality recruits in our program? None of us may like it but either adapt or die.

Also kids on the basketball team generally can't have jobs .. that's the point of NIL and such.

[pinstripers]

Ask any sports fan what it means if your basketball team keeps losing the second half, see what they tell you.

[Aargh]

This may be way off base, but I'm getting to be skeptical of some of the analytics and metrics. Maybe there's too much focus on details (where a shooter should take a shot) and not enough on basics like dribbling and passing. Turnovers from careless dribbling and passing are likely costing as much as 8 - 10 points per game. Every turnove is one less opportunity for the good guys and one more for the bad guys.

Here's a hypothetical. Take a good shooter and determine the exact spot where he's most effective. Tell him that's where he should be taking his shots and he would shoot at a 3% higher rate. Then give him the ball in a game when he's got an open look, but is 3' away from his sweet spot. That player has to make a decision. Take a shot from the "wrong" spot or move before shooting. I would speculate that that shooter will be less confident if he's shooting from the "wring" spot, or will try to get that extra 3% by moving to the "sweet spot", which gives his defender more time to recover.

All that attention to detail on shot location may actually impair a shooter. The lack of attention to fundamentals makes the scoreboard go the wrong direction.

I've watched other programs that run Mills style (KSU and Baylor). There's a BIG difference. Baylor and KSU RUN the motion. WSU tends to have one or two guys who jog the motion or forget where they're supposed to be or go to.

Fingers can (and I think should be) pointed at both coaching and at players.

[rjl]

Here's a hypothetical. Take a good shooter and determine the exact spot where he's most effective. Tell him that's where he should be taking his shots and he would shoot at a 3% higher rate. Then give him the ball in a game when he's got an open look, but is 3' away from his sweet spot. That player has to make a decision. Take a shot from the "wrong" spot or move before shooting. I would speculate that that shooter will be less confident if he's shooting from the "wring" spot, or will try to get that extra 3% by moving to the "sweet spot", which gives his defender more time to recover.

I think at this point the average WSU player's heat map looks like an arctic blast.

[Dan]

I think at this point the average WSU player's heat map looks like an arctic blast.

Pohto - layups only
Ballard - dunks only
Beverly - layups only
Bell - 2 foot floaters on the left side
Rignal - 3 pointer from the corner or dunk
Cortes - ice cold from everywhere
Rogers - he seems to like the top of the key 3 and the elbow jumper but not great at either
Degray - layups on backdoor cuts only

not very hard to scout

[Atxshoxfan]

Ask any sports fan what it means if your basketball team keeps losing the second half, see what they tell you.

So true. Good teams underperform to their expectations of a bad team in the first half. Their coach belittles them for allowing a bad team to outdo them. So they come out fired up and play their normal game in the second half. Which blows the bad team out. Happens all the time when good teams meet bad teams.

This team is just plain bad. No highly skilled players in this team. I doubt there is a coach out there that could win much with these players.

[Husker4Shockers]

Thinking we should play “what does Coach Mills tell the team at halftime” game.

I’ll go first.

”Did everyone get a juice box”?

If his half time speeches are anything like his post-game interviews he probably has to wake the team up before the second half.