This sentiment is exactly correct. Its all about Mooney. Any and all criticism is really directed at him! If we went 23-10 the last two years and won an A-10 or got an at-large one year there would be no criticism on here! But we didn't. We have struggled mightily the past two years. Its the coaches job to win. Period. That's what he is paid (quite handsomely) to do. That's the mandate. (And to be clear, its not win at all costs, but to win with good solid people and to represent the University well etc. Not one or the other - - both).
So we haven't won. One possible reason is the players aren't good enough. The 2nd possible reason is the players are good enough, but the coach isn't good enough at deploying them etc.. The first (players not good enough) can be subdivided into two possibilities - - (a) they didn't have the potential to be good enough to start with (recruiting); and/or (b) they weren't developed well enough to now be good enough. All of that is on the coach. So are virtually all of the excuses - - e.g. we lost players unexpectedly (Khwan and Buck). Coach is responsible (and in Bucks case, yes he is responsible even if one believes Buck left him no choice but to kick him out). Injuries are tougher to say the coach's culpability. Clearly no coach can really be held responsible for one of his players being injured. But he can be held responsible for how prepared you are to deal with it and how you ultimately do deal with it (like having depth to deal with injuries or making adjustments to your scheme etc.). See Golden State currently without Durant or Auburn in the NCAA's this year. But yes, a coach should get some leeway when injuries are part of the equation. But not all injuries justify all results that follow. Nick's (and most players) impact is truly hard to "measure." how much should it impact a team - - - without Player X we should still win that game but not that other one - - - can't be done. But for me, I point to this - - we struggled with Nick for all of 2017-2018 and all of 2018-2019 that we had him. The Delaware and Jacksonville and Longwood etc. debacles all included Nick and our overall performance with and without him has been pretty similar so I think its hard to say his injury is a real difference maker . And to be clear, I am not saying any of that is NIck's fault. Its not. I am saying its the Coach's fault. Because its his job to win.
We lost 40 games in the last 2 years to all kinds of opponents under all sorts of circumstances. But the bottom line is that we have lost a lot more than we have won, lost a lot more than we we have over the past many years (and yes Mooney certainly helped create the standard that we should now hold him to); lost to a number of teams we have no business losing to and lost to all to often in the same way (solid efforts and games that we somehow find ways to lose). It's the Coach's job to win. Yes, I think we should have held the coach responsible for that! And yes, its probably fair that almost anything I say in any string is at least "infected" by belief we should have moved on.
And last but not least, I am actually a good bit madder at Hardt than Mooney for his failure to do HIS job - - - but that's a discussion for another day!
