Pre-Spring Presser - March 14

[teachercd]

On 3/17/2018 at 12:56 PM, Mavric said:

 

A lot of comeback wins would disagree with this take.

Yeah, no kidding.  If anything Bo was the king of comeback wins and of winning close games.

[Enhance]

I think the key word in @HS_Coach_C's opinion there is 'consistency' because there's no doubt teams take on the personality of their head coach. It's almost inevitable. In a vacuum, hanging one's hat on comeback wins sounds reasonable unless you're also victim to routine blowout losses and a lack of composure at times.

 

It's one of the reasons I have great hope for Frost - he has always seemed like a straight forward, tough and disciplined player/coach. I'm confident the majority of the players under his regime will take on this mentality.

[Mavric]

6 hours ago, Enhance said:

I think the key word in @HS_Coach_C's opinion there is 'consistency' because there's no doubt teams take on the personality of their head coach. It's almost inevitable. In a vacuum, hanging one's hat on comeback wins sounds reasonable unless you're also victim to routine blowout losses and a lack of composure at times.

 

It's one of the reasons I have great hope for Frost - he has always seemed like a straight forward, tough and disciplined player/coach. I'm confident the majority of the players under his regime will take on this mentality.

 

Two things I disagree with.

 

The original post implied that they always acted a certain way - "the minute they felt something wasn't going their way they fell apart."  Now, allowing for the ability to determine how a separate group of individuals "felt", it's pretty obvious there were a lot of times when things weren't going their way and not only did they not fall apart but they came back to win.

 

Second, I'm not even sure that statement was even true in a majority of those situations.  We remember the times it went bad because they stand out more.  There were definitely games that seemed to fit that description - two if not three Wisconsin games and 2012 Ohio State for example - but there were at least as many games if not more where they got behind early but kept fighting and came back to win - needing to win the last six games of the 2012 regular season after that Ohio State blowout to win the division, several comeback wins in 2013, etc.

 

So I think it's a architecture for when people want take shots.  But I don't think it's all that accurate.

[BIG ERN]

Frost > Pelini, Solich, Callahan, Riley....all that matters. 

[HS_Coach_C]

1 hour ago, Mavric said:

 

Two things I disagree with.

 

The original post implied that they always acted a certain way - "the minute they felt something wasn't going their way they fell apart."  Now, allowing for the ability to determine how a separate group of individuals "felt", it's pretty obvious there were a lot of times when things weren't going their way and not only did they not fall apart but they came back to win.

 

Second, I'm not even sure that statement was even true in a majority of those situations.  We remember the times it went bad because they stand out more.  There were definitely games that seemed to fit that description - two if not three Wisconsin games and 2012 Ohio State for example - but there were at least as many games if not more where they got behind early but kept fighting and came back to win - needing to win the last six games of the 2012 regular season after that Ohio State blowout to win the division, several comeback wins in 2013, etc.

 

So I think it's a architecture for when people want take shots.  But I don't think it's all that accurate.

My original post wasn't worded well, but since it keeps coming up, I'll address it again.

*Note - I liked Bo.  I thought he was a good coach, I thought he did well with off the field stuff, and I thought the players did well in the classroom on his watch.  I didn't like his sideline behavior or how he left Nebraska, even if almost everything he said about Eichorst was true.

 

Bo's teams fought and played hard in almost every game, there's no doubt about that.  They were consistent in winning 9 games each year and usually beat the teams they should.  They were also fairly consistent in falling short in games against ranked opponents.  There's also a pretty good argument that they weren't overly disciplined in their play.  Turnovers and penalties were too high, though I could argue a lot of this could be tied to the offensive system.

 

When I said a team takes on the personality of the coach, that's obviously a generalization.  I shouldn't have used an absolute.  Some players imitate the coach more than others or reflect his coaching style more than others.  That in turn often leads to a team matching the coach's personality to some extent.  I think Bo's sideline behavior was not exactly the image of self-discipline, and sometimes the players lacked that discipline on the field as well.

 

YEAR - GAMES VS RANKED TEAMS - WINS - LOSSES - LOSSES TO UNRANKED TEAMS

2008 - Virginia Tech, Missouri, Texas Tech, Oklahoma

2009 - Virginia Tech, Missouri, Texas Tech, Iowa State, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona

2010 - Texas, Oklahoma State, Missouri, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Washington

2011 - Wisconsin, Michigan State, Northwestern, Penn State, Michigan, South Carolina

2012 - UCLA, Ohio State, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia

2013 - UCLA, Minnesota, Michigan State, Iowa, Georgia

2014 - Michigan State, Wisconsin, Minnesota, (USC - didn't coach)

 

In 7 years: 9 wins vs. ranked opponents, 16 (17) losses to ranked opponents, and 11 losses to unranked opponents

I don't think this shows a whole lot - I was just curious.  Some good wins, some bad losses, a few really ugly losses.

 

I don't even want to start with Riley.

 

With Frost, it appeared that his UCF team took on his personality.  In general, they fought and played hard, acted like a family, and seemed rather composed most of the time.  Obviously there were times they looked good and times they didn't look as good.  I want a team that succeeds on and off the field and does it with class, and I think Frost will get us there.

[Enhance]

3 hours ago, Mavric said:

Two things I disagree with.

 

The original post implied that they always acted a certain way - "the minute they felt something wasn't going their way they fell apart."  Now, allowing for the ability to determine how a separate group of individuals "felt", it's pretty obvious there were a lot of times when things weren't going their way and not only did they not fall apart but they came back to win.

 

Second, I'm not even sure that statement was even true in a majority of those situations.  We remember the times it went bad because they stand out more.  There were definitely games that seemed to fit that description - two if not three Wisconsin games and 2012 Ohio State for example - but there were at least as many games if not more where they got behind early but kept fighting and came back to win - needing to win the last six games of the 2012 regular season after that Ohio State blowout to win the division, several comeback wins in 2013, etc.

 

So I think it's a architecture for when people want take shots.  But I don't think it's all that accurate.

I guess I didn't take him literally. If you asked him honestly, I don't believe he would say they fell apart 100% of the time when things went bad. He was being hyperbolic as people often are when they talk about these things. 

 

Regardless of his meaning, in general, BP mostly kept his cool and did a good job. He sometimes lost his composure (explosively, in some cases) and did a bad job. His teams mostly did a good job. They sometimes lost their composure (explosively, in some cases) and did a bad job.

 

Or, to put it more simply, BP was an above average coach. His teams were above average. I think describing that as framework for 'taking a shot' at BP is a tad disingenuous.