Looking into next season - men's basketball

[spiderstudent17]

Alright, now that our men's season is officially over, I thought I would make a thread that looks at what I think we need to do better in order to improve. Given this season, you can imagine it's going to be a lot. I get coaching change would be an important element too, but I am going to operate on the assumption Mooney returns for next season. I hope we can at least keep firing Mooney as one of these things out of this thread, as it is brought up in every other thread. I plan to do one for women's basketball too.

Roster/Recruiting:

• We either need to do a better job at identifying the right talent to bring in or closing the deal on the right talent. We have had way too many misses with high school recruits the past several years to feel confident that next year is going to be different.
• I would much rather we focus our efforts on getting 1-2 definite game changers than 4-5 players and hoping one of them turns out to be good.
• We desperately need a stud point guard and a stretch 4 who can shoot the 3 ball and play good defense.
• We need to have at least 3 A10 starter level kind of talent on this team and 2-3 A10 role players for us to be top of the conference.

Practice:

• We need more intensity in practice. I think it was Burton who said in an interview that the intensity at Villanova in practice was like nothing he experienced at Richmond
• You play as you practice. I want intensity and physicality. This is where you set the tone for the season
• I want us to focus more on rebounding. I don’t care what the stats say about fast break points or not. I have watched a ton of basketball and the best teams play very physically and can rebound the ball well. I don’t think that is a coincidence.

Making adjustments:

• That JOC article of Mooney saying he doesn’t want to make adjustments (again I’ll try to give as much benefit of the doubt) and instead stick to his guns seemed rather tone deaf to me. Either get players who can shoot the ball well (see recruiting above) or make changes to the offensive/defensive scheme to adapt to the players skillset.
• There has to be more than one defensive system we can implement in the games that the players can feel comfortable doing.
• Hire an outside assistant who can give fresh perspectives on basketball schemes

NIL:

• It’s been reported that other A10 teams are spending up to $3 million for men’s basketball per year. If that’s the case, then we need to spend $3 million too.
• However, please, please don’t be dumb on how we allocate this money. This is not little league youth sports where everyone gets the same prize. If Mooney wants to give players more money for staying longer, fine, but make it proportional and relative to the impact they have on the team.
• The better players get paid more. Period. Every other player can choose to be happy with what they get, get better so their NIL value increases, or transfer.
• Going back to recruiting. Don’t be afraid to spend big on players. I haven’t completely given up on our staff’s ability to identify the right players for this program. Go out and get them. This is basically professional basketball now. Pay $500K+ for a player if need be. First prioritize keeping our best talent on the roster, and then go out and find the very good players needed to make us a top program. Don’t worry about hurt feelings on who is getting paid more or not. This is how the real world works.

Scheduling:

• I think we should try and create a schedule that aims at getting us 10+ wins OOC. Ideally this would involve at least 1 Q1 opportunity and 2-3 Q2 opportunity, but for me its more important to have a good record than the quad games. It doesn't do us any good playing a team like Auburn 13 times OOC and getting blown out every game.
• Please go to a respectable OOC tournament where we know the teams/schedule more than 2 weeks in advance
• Try to avoid non-D1 opponents at all costs. I get some of it is how things are nowadays, but I would rather play the worst ranked D1 opponent than D2/D3 teams.

Other:

• Hire people who run the athletic department that can spell check. Maybe minor in the big scheme of things, but it sets the culture and represents the athletic department as a whole.
• More focused efforts on advertising the games to the community not just fans who have season tickets/gone to games in the past. I think we did a good job with this on the women’s side but can do a lot better with the men’s team.
• Finally, if you’re going to do a red out SUPPLY THE SHIRTS. It’s not that hard, like others have said it can easily get subsidized by advertisements. It looks amateurish to want to do one and have people showing up in different color shirts. Even La Salle was able to do this!!

 

[MrTbone]

Good thoughts 17. Idk how we have a serious conversation about change when everything flows from the top but I’ll respect the ask.

1. We have to fix the defense. #1 thing to keep us in games when offense isn’t flowing. I don’t ever want to see the switching man defense again, or not until we have guards who can reasonably defend against a big if switched.
2. Schedule real games, no more D2 nonsense, and find legit Q2 games. We don’t have to go up against auburn and Kansas but we do have to play quality opponents.
3. No more developmental redshirts. Just stop that nonsense.
4. Win more.

I say the last thing somewhat jokingly but the product is all that matters, everything else is noise.

 

[spider23]

Change culture of softness
Change culture of comfort
Change culture of its hard to win on the road"
Change culture of its hard to.......
Stop pulling guys for one turnover but not for giving up multiple blow buys on defense.
Have a system.....but also ADAPT, like you hear every other successful coach speak to.
Look in the mirror and use feedback instead of being a little bi#$%. Yes a little bi@#$$ who does not accept criticism and makes excuses. Disgusting leader, just the worst.

 

[Eight Legger]

All good thoughts here. The problem is we already know what will happen unless there’s a coaching change, and it’s not most of those things.

 

[gospidersgo]

We need to have at least 3 A10 starter level kind of talent on this team and 2-3 A10 role players for us to be top of the conference.

We need a minimum of 5 A10 starter level guys. Too often we operate with much less and you can see the results.

Good list and thoughts overall though.

 

[GKiller]

A schedule with 1 Q1 ooc game. Sigh. Please for the love of all that is holy, take scheduling off your list.

 

[spiderstudent17]

We need a minimum of 5 A10 starter level guys. Too often we operate with much less and you can see the results.

Good list and thoughts overall though.

5 A10 starter level caliber players would be phenomenal and could even put us in at-large and top 25 contention, so I’m not going to complain about that!

I may have a higher expectation of A10 starter, which is someone who could theoretically start for most any A10 team that is best reflected by A10 awards. We had 3 A10 starter caliber players last year: King (A10 co-POY & 1st team), Quinn (2nd team), Dji (co-most improved).

Role players are solid players who make the team better when playing and still have an impact, but aren’t necessarily the main contributor. Hunt last year was a very solid A10 role player (he then became A10 starter material this year before the injury. But I think was a a very good player complementing King last year) and so was Bigelow.

In my eyes, we had 3 A10 starter players last year and 2 A10 role players (which again saying role player doesn’t mean they’re bad just weren’t the most impactful individually but still improved the team).

If we had 5 A10 starters that would be incredible but I think realistically 2-3 is what we should aim for and invest the NIL accordingly in ensuring we can achieve that, one of whom is a PG.

 

[spiderstudent17]

A schedule with 1 Q1 ooc game. Sigh. Please for the love of all that is holy, take scheduling off your list.

At least 1 GK 😉. I want us to schedule appropriately. To me, it does us no good to schedule really tough to get blown out every game. I think our women’s team is a good example. We had a very difficult schedule with games we lost to the likes of Texas, Alabama, and Tennessee. However, we still had Q1 and high Q2 games against Columbia, Ok State, Fairfield, even Temple and Georgetown looked better on paper. These games were much more winnable than the SEC teams, but we had confidence we could win those games. Had we lost all of them we would’ve gone into conference play with 5-8 that would have eliminated us from at-large.

So I don’t mind playing more Q1 games depending on who those games are against. We spoke about Cincinnati here last week. That’s a good example. They would be Q1 if we played on a neutral court or away and are much more beatable than Auburn was. So if we can find those mid-lower tier P5s that have a hyper inflated net ranking because of conference affiliation, I’d be more willing to play more of those kind of games. A great schedule means nothing if you can’t win the games.

 

[urfan1]

Good thoughts 17. Idk how we have a serious conversation about change when everything flows from the top but I’ll respect the ask.

1. We have to fix the defense. #1 thing to keep us in games when offense isn’t flowing. I don’t ever want to see the switching man defense again, or not until we have guards who can reasonably defend against a big if switched.
2. Schedule real games, no more D2 nonsense, and find legit Q2 games. We don’t have to go up against auburn and Kansas but we do have to play quality opponents.
3. No more developmental redshirts. Just stop that nonsense.
4. Win more.

I say the last thing somewhat jokingly but the product is all that matters, everything else is noise.

I would add, trash the weave, go to a low o rmid-post offense and ATTACK the glass more on O.

 

[rspides]

I would add, trash the weave, go to a low o rmid-post offense and ATTACK the glass more on O.

Or at least when Walz catches ball at high post have him angle his body at least 90 degrees or have him face up occasionally. He can still screen and dribble hand off. But, back to basket at 17 feet - no threat. ADAPT Mooney !

 

[Eight Legger]

Not sure I'd be planning on Walz being back. His presser yesterday seemed a little farewell-ish to me.

 

[SFspidur]

That struck me as well, though I'd still be surprised if he left at this point in his career.

 

[SpiderGuy]

All good thoughts here. The problem is we already know what will happen unless there’s a coaching change, and it’s not most of those things.

It’s great to have lists and discussions now and in off season through to preseason and next November. However EL nails it. It’s really basic and simple. We know what the culture and product on the court looks like. We don’t know the makeup of the team. But I’d be shocked if Mooney changes anything. 20 years tells us this. Best outcome which is just plain wishful thinking is a new head coach for UR.

 

[UR79&Peanuts]

👋👋👋

 

[spiderstudent17]

Well, it took until post #4 on this thread before coaching change was brought up, which quite frankly took longer than I expected.