To be fair, Cooks' production is not reflective of a McDonald's AA and never was. She never started at Michigan State, and we now see why.
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To be fair, Cooks' production is not reflective of a McDonald's AA and never was. She never started at Michigan State, and we now see why.
Vic always beat up on a lot of lesser opponents. That was one way he inflated his record. Last year, this team lost to two unranked opponents, and nearly lost to Vandy and Auburn 2x. The team was overrated last year but was ranked in the top 15 due to respect for Vic.
Coach needs to get control or move on to another job. Right now it’s all on her. Coach and do your job or hit the road. We don’t tolerate it in any other program and shouldn’t in WBB. If you can’t harness the talent on this team, you never will at any SEC school.
I mean they were 27-6, and finished second in the SEC with multiple ranked wins. They were going to be a 2 or 3 seed had the tournament been played. They weren’t as good as our previous three teams and weren’t going to win a national title, but I don’t think I’d say they were overrated. And they pretty clearly got better as the season went on, and were playing their best basketball of the season leading up to the SEC title game against an SC that was just better than them.
I just don’t agree with the spin that this roster actually isn’t all that good. They don’t have a McCowan or a Vivians, but there are plenty of good pieces there. And they’ve now lost three games they should not have lost, with a bunch more difficult games still to play.
Atleast we #Woke. Thanks Nelle!!
Dawg2003 has a half decent point in that other teams really closed the gap last year as we played a lot more close conference games than we had in previous years. Almost all those teams brought in transfers and such and got better.
We basically traded Danberry and Bibby for Hayes so we lost a lot there. Danberry was clutch in a lot of games last year.
Everyone expected Matharu and Jackson and even Mingo to make jumps but it hasn’t happened. How much of that is Nikki I don’t know but are any of those players playing better than they did last year or even showing new skills?
We are underperforming for sure but at lot of SEC teams got a lot better the past 2 years as well.
This I agree with. And I was actually hoping this year that RJ would be in the league VV was as a JR and SR. But she is not even close and, as you stated, not even playing as well as last year. Biggest difference to me in this year's team is they can't play consistent through a game. They will have a stretch or a quarter when they look like a really good team but then they lose all intensity on defense or just get lost on whatever it is they are trying to accomplish on offense. They can get by with that playing the lower half league teams but they will lose doing that to any of the upper half teams. I look for TA&M and SC to both beat us by double digits.
Some of you are jumping through quite the mental hurdles to justify why a team this talented is this bad. They were 27-6 last year with virtually everyone back. There is no way you can justify this.
Also, its not just losing, but how we lost that makes it worse. To get beat because you don't shoot well or the other team lights it up, thats one thing. To get beat because you are lazy and take poor shots is another. Jessika Carter would not have shot another ball from outside of 15ft from the rim or she's out. You CANNOT be a friend and a coach.
We very well may lose the next two, and I will be interested to hear how some justify being 8-5 with this team.
To add: Can we please stop saying all of this idiotic crap about how Vic wasn't really as good of a coach as we thought, how they were lazy last year, etc...
HE GOT US TO TWO NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS. The man is one of the best coaches in the country. He didn't inflate anything with inferior opponents. He constantly beat REALLY good teams. My gosh you have to be elementary minded to try to make an assertion that he wasn't that great.
I brought up this problem last year and it seems even prevalent today. We started star chasing about Vic's 3rd or 4th season and last year you were starting to see the results of that. At first he would recruit one big time player and a bunch of grinders and 3 and D players. Once you get away from that and bring in the "AAU All Americans" then there's no turning back. You have to be an AMAZING coach to be able to mold and mesh together all that talent and all those attitudes. Vic is a good enough coach to do that. Penson will have to learn how to do it and do it fast. And being their friend isn't the way to do it. You have to be tough and you have to be a coach. It doesn't mean you hate your players, but when you step between those lines you're coaching to win. That's why Vic was so rare. He knew how to perfectly balance that love for his kids and still being able to be a hardnose coach.
Agree and it’s something Nikki seems to be struggling with. Be curious what type of players she recruits.
Some posters are also really undervaluing what Danberry did for that team last year both on offense and defense. We haven’t replaced her production at all and combine that with Rickea really struggling and it’s an issue.
Agree that effort is lacking but we had a lot of defensive problems last year as well. We got beat last night simply because they made about 10 hustle plays in the second half and we had none that I can recall. Right now I’m assigning blame on both players and coaches for that
I guess my pep talk after the OM near disaster had the opposite results..
and there is no “first year” honeymoon. She has been a head coach already and took over a well oiled machine..
Black / white/ man /woman ... doesn’t matter
JC better hope this gets turned around.. that seat of his better be getting hot..
The good thing about basketball versus football is that losses are redeemable if you get on a tear at the end of the year. NMP may figure it out, but I do not like what I see right now.