In the 1st half last night we had 1 asssit and 11 turnovers...

[fishwater99]

This teams lack of offensive production is all on Ray.
Our "motion" offense sucks and we don't have a serviceable PG.

Quote of the night...
"The offense will come, we just need to concentrate on defense"... Really??

Rick, it will come once you leave S-Vegas ...

[Outside Dawg]

I couldn't watch it any more after halftime. I couldn't handle any more travels, passes to people out of bounds, passes to people who dropped the pass out of bounds, constantly driving in the lane to get it stripped, failed in bounding plays, and bad shots in the first 10 seconds of the shot clock. It was the bad news bulldogs. I checked the final score at some point in the middle of the night when the baby woke up.

[Irondawg]

I'm not giving him a free pass, but this isn't ALL on Ray. Everyone who coached most of these guys at any point past 7th grade should be ashamed of the pure lack of fundamentals and basketball IQ. Same holds true for most players on just about every SEC team.

Watch some SEC basketball and then go watch a Gonzaga

[MetEdDawg]

The turnovers are what have soured me on Ray, and I was one of his biggest supporters. High turnover/assist ratio years one and two were understandable with a very young team. But we are in year 3 with a bunch of guys who have logged a lot of minutes together and it's still a huge issue.

I'm alright missing shots and having bad shooting games. That happens. But we turned the ball over 15 times on 5 assists in a HOME game against a team of equal strength. That's horrible and there are no signs that portion of our game has gotten any better under Ray. That 15 turnover game last night came off a 24 turnover game to Arkansas and an 18 turnover game against UT. It doesn't get much worse than that.

But Ray is going to get next year and he's going to get the opportunity to right the ship with Sword, Thomas, and Ware as seniors. And I will say it again. This is setting up like Croom part 2. First 3 years were awful and excuses were made that it was cleaning out the program, 4th year we get into a low tier tournement/bowl, then year 5 the wheels fall off again and we finally make the decision to make a change. I mean the closeness of how these two careers at MSU have the potential to unfold is remarkable.

[LC Dawg]

I'm not giving him a free pass, but this isn't ALL on Ray. Everyone who coached most of these guys at any point past 7th grade should be ashamed of the pure lack of fundamentals and basketball IQ. Same holds true for most players on just about every SEC team.

Watch some SEC basketball and then go watch a Gonzaga

I agree. If you can get past how bad we are and focus on watching our opponents you will see that a lot of them are not very good either. I watch a lot of 4A/5A level high school basketball in Mississippi and even a little junior high every now and then and in the last ten years the decrease in basic basketball fundamentals is alarming. From watching SEC basketball I would guess this same thing is occurring across the South.

[1bigdawg]

I'm not giving him a free pass, but this isn't ALL on Ray. Everyone who coached most of these guys at any point past 7th grade should be ashamed of the pure lack of fundamentals and basketball IQ. Same holds true for most players on just about every SEC team.

Watch some SEC basketball and then go watch a Gonzaga

It is on Ray; he recruited these guys. If they did not have the fundamentals and basketball IQ then he knew or should have known that when he signed them and adapted his coaching strategy accordingly. If he can't adapt, he should sign different players. He has done neither. It is on him.

[quickstrike2]

The turnovers are what have soured me on Ray, and I was one of his biggest supporters. High turnover/assist ratio years one and two were understandable with a very young team. But we are in year 3 with a bunch of guys who have logged a lot of minutes together and it's still a huge issue.

I'm alright missing shots and having bad shooting games. That happens. But we turned the ball over 15 times on 5 assists in a HOME game against a team of equal strength. That's horrible and there are no signs that portion of our game has gotten any better under Ray. That 15 turnover game last night came off a 24 turnover game to Arkansas and an 18 turnover game against UT. It doesn't get much worse than that.

But Ray is going to get next year and he's going to get the opportunity to right the ship with Sword, Thomas, and Ware as seniors. And I will say it again. This is setting up like Croom part 2. First 3 years were awful and excuses were made that it was cleaning out the program, 4th year we get into a low tier tournement/bowl, then year 5 the wheels fall off again and we finally make the decision to make a change. I mean the closeness of how these two careers at MSU have the potential to unfold is remarkable.

Your right, we are just going to kick the can down the road and drag out the inevitable longer. Scott has a lot of pride in this one, and Ray was guaranteed next year before the first tip this year in my opinion. After losing to USC Upstate and Mcnease State, Ray's future was sealed for me, you can't lose those. Yes, we did have a stretch where we looked better, but now we look terrible again.

[SouthMsDawg]

As bad as people HAMMERED on Stan's offense we averaged more assist with his offense than Ray's

[Irondawg]

It is on Ray; he recruited these guys. If they did not have the fundamentals and basketball IQ then he knew or should have known that when he signed them and adapted his coaching strategy accordingly. If he can't adapt, he should sign different players. He has done neither. It is on him.

My point is that is his recruiting area, there aren't many guys with D1 athleticism and fundamentals or basketball IQ. We aren't going to be able to pull a lot of midwestern kids to Starkville. There is a reason beyond coaching that TN, AL, AU, LSU, MSU, OM, ARK struggle to have any consistent success. The ones that can recruit at a high level (Stans, Pearl for example) can make you competitive but we all knows stans record of tourney success.

To illustrate this - go look at Bama's recruiting over the past 5 years. They should be good. So is it Grant or are the players just so fundamentally flawed that it's too much to overcome consistently? Grant did much better with players not quite as athletic but with better fundamentals when he was at VCU.

[msstate7]

Our assist/to ratio has to improve. That said we made some good passes that should've been assists, but the shooter missed easy shots.

[Barking 13]

My point is that is his recruiting area, there aren't many guys with D1 athleticism and fundamentals or basketball IQ. We aren't going to be able to pull a lot of midwestern kids to Starkville. There is a reason beyond coaching that TN, AL, AU, LSU, MSU, OM, ARK struggle to have any consistent success. The ones that can recruit at a high level (Stans, Pearl for example) can make you competitive but we all knows stans record of tourney success.

To illustrate this - go look at Bama's recruiting over the past 5 years. They should be good. So is it Grant or are the players just so fundamentally flawed that it's too much to overcome consistently? Grant did much better with players not quite as athletic but with better fundamentals when he was at VCU.

Skreet ball mang***

[Irondawg]

Thinking about this made me think about Rodney Hood vs. Ravern Johnson.

In my opinion Ravern had the higher upside. He was more explosive and had a beautiful shot. Then why is Hood in the NBA and Ravern not?

Hood can pass well, and handles the ball adequately and plays decent defense. Ravern was terrible at all 3 things.

[1bigdawg]

My point is that is his recruiting area, there aren't many guys with D1 athleticism and fundamentals or basketball IQ. We aren't going to be able to pull a lot of midwestern kids to Starkville. There is a reason beyond coaching that TN, AL, AU, LSU, MSU, OM, ARK struggle to have any consistent success. The ones that can recruit at a high level (Stans, Pearl for example) can make you competitive but we all knows stans record of tourney success.

So if you can't get both "athleticism and fundamentals," focus on one and develop a strategy to go with it. I said that he should either adapt his style or sign a different type of player and that he has done neither. Your argument is that it is hopeless, therefore we should let him stay. I want to live in hope.

[Irondawg]

So if you can't get both "athleticism and fundamentals," focus on one and develop a strategy to go with it. I said that he should either adapt his style or sign a different type of player and that he has done neither. Your argument is that it is hopeless, therefore we should let him stay. I want to live in hope.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that it's not just on the SEC coaches - the lower level coaching needs vast improvement to improve the skills of the player pool that the SEC draws from. If coaches have to spend half their time on jr. high fundamentals it takes away from other things.

I don't like Ray's offensive approach at all and I've commented in numerous threads about that. But you have to admit there are other things at work as well.

[Percho]

Most basketball players today out of high school can only run and jump. They can't dribble, pass, catch, nor shoot. They can run and jump, so the college coaches take them to run, jump try to teach a little defense because they can run and jump and foul a lot. To H with scoring. The bad thing is for most after 3 and 4 more years all they can do is run and jump.

[War Machine Dawg]

This teams lack of offensive production is all on Ray.
Our "motion" offense sucks and we don't have a serviceable PG.

Quote of the night...
"The offense will come, we just need to concentrate on defense"... Really??

Rick, it will come once you leave S-Vegas ...

I was wondering if I was the only one who picked up on that and thought it was crazy. Ray's answer to shitty offense wasn't "execute better" or "score more" or one of 1000 other things you'd expect. No, it was get more defensive stops. Because trying to win games 42-38 is apparently his idea of good basketball.

[HoopsDawg]

I was wondering if I was the only one who picked up on that and thought it was crazy. Ray's answer to shitty offense wasn't "execute better" or "score more" or one of 1000 other things you'd expect. No, it was get more defensive stops. Because trying to win games 42-38 is apparently his idea of good basketball.

You guys are making too big of a deal about those comments. There's not much you can do in-game about offense. Almost all good coaches focus on defense during the games/timeouts and figure the offense will come around. Unfortunately, for us it rarely does.

[civildawg]

I can't believe he's getting paid a million a year. Jesus Scott what the heck were you thinking