RoseyMustGo said:
The key point to your post was "before things unraveled at the end". This is a recurring theme for a DeCuire-coached team. So, do we just give it a pass, or call it for what it is?
I'm assuming, by your reply, that you did not watch the final 2 minutes.
I would not blame "the unraveling," as it occured, on the coach; Montana's game plan and play throughout was solid,; they were positioned to win in Cheney. But Montana simply did not capitalize on several earlier situations where a missed (several wide open) trey could have given the Griz breathing room at crunch time.
Instead, the game was tied at 57 with 1:54 remaining. I would not "blame" coach DeCuire for Brandon Whitney's foul, Josh Bannan's two "missed" layups, or missed open trey attempts by Josh Vazquez and Lonnell Martin. Simply put, that's how the game tilted in the final 110 seconds of play. I "blame" the loss on Montana's 17.9% shooting from the perimeter... all very open looks.
I took Jud Heathcoate's excellent "Coaching Basketball" course at UM and still remember one of his core philosophies (repeated endlessly to us). THIS (a rough paraphrase, with the cussing removed :lol: ): "A winning team is one that consistently prevents an otherwise good game from being decided in the final seconds (by the opponent or by a ref, and sometimes by you). But when that happens, you simply gotta accept all the strange and crazy things that happen and learn how to NOT let it happen the next time you play." What Jud kept repeating is that winning teams learn to win by kicking things up a gear or two over the final 10 minutes of a game... something that he said a coach couldn't always teach his players. You know... players like Eric Hays.