Rick Barnes - worst coaching job this season

Rick Barnes - worst coaching job this season

Worse than Roy Williams, who took a preseason top-3 team and last year's national champion to the NIT?

Or Jim Calhoun, who's top-10 team had a meltdown far worse than ours?

 

I don't even follow college basketball that much, but when I did watch the Texas games it was very frustrating.

Anytime down the stretch it always seemed that the team would settle for horrible offensive possessions time winding down shots, poor free throw shootingl...etc no coordination on the offensive side.

And it just seemed that there was hardly any energy on the Texas side once there 17-0 start came to an end.

 

What's weird is how quickly they turned south. I'm not a UT fan, so I don't know if there are some behind the scenes issues. But that disappearing act from #1 overall to #8 SEED is mind-boggling.

Perhaps the moral of the story is that Barnes needs to recruit more PGs.

 

I think they just stopped competing at times... inconsistent play from a lot of different players like Pittman, Brown, Bradley, and Hamilton. Free Throw shooting cost them a few games but really... it was the mental toughness that they lacked after they lost a few games... they were never able to recover from it. Then, they started to lose their defensive intensity near the end of the season... It's really been an inconsistent season on every little thing they had done.

 

Agreed: all of which can be chalked up to poor coaching. The talent was there. This team should have at least made it to the next round, possibly even the Elite Eight. The ever-changing rotation, the never-addressed free-throw problems, etc. all point to Coach Barnes. I'm not saying he should be fired or anything. But he'd better put up a better record next year, or he might find himself on the hot seat.

 

How do you blame the coach for FT shooting problems and how do you know it was never addressed? A boatload of college teams don't shoot FTs well. Same for NBA players. Are these also a fault of coaching?

 

Fire him?

maybe.

 

Ah, sorry - yes, I agree with that. Whatever he was trying to do this season simply didn't work. It will be interesting to see if/how he changes his approach next year.

I think one thing he needs to do is focus less on recruiting the one-and-done's and more on that next tier of players that likely stay 3-4 years and develop over time. His teams never develop any continuity because he seems to be switching out major players every year. He needs more PJ Tuckers and James Thomases and A.J. Abram type guys.

 

From #1 to one-&-done is not acceptable with the team he had. I'm sorry but he isn't doing a "great job overall", did you see the FT% of this team? Clearly he has had trouble to find success and it shouldn't be that hard when you have lottery picks such as Hamilton and Bradley. On the other side teams like Ohio can beat Georgetown, and you can't even get passed a depleated WF?

 

Why is a preseason ranking indicative of the talent on the team? The Tar Heels were not a very talented team this year, despite what McDonalds will tell you. John Henson was supposed to be a stud, but he's about a few years away from being a factor in college. Ed Davis has zero offensive game, and they have no one on the perimeter who can score.

 

Barnes has always been very solid so it was surprising to see him struggle coaching this team this year, but I'm not sure I put all the blame on Barnes. The freshmen were overhyped and not ready for the big-time. Hamilton is the biggest chucker I have ever seen and doesn't seem to try very hard on defense. Brown chucks at a slightly lower clip but still tends to dominate the ball. I like Bradley the best of the 3, but he seemed to be a bit overhwhelmed and unsure how to asserts himself offensively. The seniors were just as disappointing. Pittman made all taht effort to get in shape but then couldn't deliver any kind of consistency. James was our best player but he couldn't take over when he needed to nor inspire the rest of the team. FT shooting was terrible all year.Maybe it's the coach's fault, but I put a lot on the players, too.

 

This sentence makes no sense. Are you comparing Texas to Ohio or Georgetown?

What seems to be clear is that some people still thought Texas was the 17-0 Texas instead of the Texas of the last month plus. Don't forget they lost players to injury. Balbay isn't an NBA quality PG or anything, but he was their best guard defender, and what you saw last night was a team that couldn't stop dribble penetration, which resulted in layups or offensive rebounds.

Even given Texas should have won the game if they could just hit free throws, and even if they had, they still wouldn't have won the game as much as Wake Forest would have lost it. When Wake had their dry spells they were still getting solid shots (but just missing them) and still getting second and third opportunities (just not converting).

Wake Forest should get killed by Kentucky, but Texas would have gotten dominated, too. They couldn't keep Ishmail from dominating them and no-name bigs from seriously outrebounding them, there's no way in hell they'd have been able to stay close with John Wall, Bledsoe, Cousins and Patterson.

So, could this loss be a blessing in disguise? Will all the freshman realize that they haven't matured their games enough to come out in the draft. Will they work on their games, and work on their FT's and come back a better team?

 

I would love for Texas to fire Rick Barnes so my school could hire him. And my school has historically had much more success and fan support than UT has had in hoops.

 

Very disappointing. Barnes needs an offfensive minded coach to help him. If he had let J'Covan and Hamilton play earlier he would not at the end of the season have been trying to save games after big deficits putting in relatively inexperienced first year players.

Very disappointing.

 

Agreed on the breaking the young guys angle. However, the previous freshman he allowed to play were much better than this years guys who were somewhat overrated and not really ready to play as freshman. Bradley needed to work on offense and Brown and Hamilton were very poor defensively.

 

I think they needed a few things

a) A legit point guard. No one on the team could handle it. If ANYone, it was Balbay.. when he went down late in the season, any shot at the sweet 16 was wayyy over. Without one, they never really got set, and as many have said, the freshmen lost their way. Damion James is solid, but he can't run a team. He's a good glue guy for college.

b) A consistent shooter. Bradley was streaky, J'Covan was on and off, Lucas was up and down when he played.. James and Mason aren't really shooters. There was no one around to spread the defense. I think they would have given anything to have an Abrams or an Augustin or a Gibson just as a shooter (even if the guy wasn't able to run the point)

c) Pittman. He really fell off. Looked solid last season, and was showing some signs of improvement early this year. He regressed a bit after that, and he still has the stamina issues. Without him, there was no post play going on.



What you're left with is a team without a point guard whose only consistent threat is its athleticism. Not a good formula for success


EDIT: And this ties into the coaching thing in that...I think they weren't prepared to be a good team this season. They had talent, but they weren't set up to be a good team. I don't know if I put that on his coaching skills, his recruiting skills, or his recruiting choices. But I don't think it was terrible in-game coaching as much as not having the personnel to execute

 

I would say the same for Texas. None of the freshmen were ready. Pittman was overrated. The team just wasn't that talented.