It is tiring to see the same issues game after game, or am I the only one….
Does anyone know the answer? I find it hard to see why we cannot get more consistent, and am frustrated watching the same old same old, yet might feel better if I knew what was really concretely going on from one game to the next. Is that too much to ask, and maybe it is and I just need to be more casual about my “fan-ness”. Thoughts ?

Great Question...we all want to know what the heck is going on...we have some great spurts..then lapses....then question marks. I think we have had moments on offense when we have just gone out of the system with little ball movement as well as moments that we have turned the ball over. We have had moments of good ball movement. When we are good we get good looks at 3s and nice isolation inside. When not we turn it over which leads to easy baskets for the other team and poor contested shots. We had a two turnover sequence in the game yesterday..that really cost us and took us from a close game to a not close game.
Defensively other teams seem to be able to take us to the basket at will especially off the high pick and roll screen. More and more teams are taking Braden Norris to the hoop. He plays so hard and stays in front but the larger guards shoot over him. We do not seem to close on 3s well. and this could be the same side of the coin as we hedge to not get beat off the dribble. Some guys seem to be liability playing our defense like Adelikum (still kind of hurt).This has led to a discrepancy in fouls
All of that being said. like someone else mentioned , we are inconsistent. Except for the Harvard game we have not played a complete game. I think part of that is that it is hard to continue to try and incorporate so many new guys into a system. We have had some injuries, Dawson and Mwamba, rotation does not yet seem to be set. You would think they would be getting close to having a solid plan and a rotation, Coaches part, and playing up to their abilities consistently, the players part.
I think the rotation has to focus on players with the best assist to turnover ratios....and best defensive guys....So I am going with Norris, Dolan and Watson with Dawson and Quinn off the bench and Mwamba and Alston...with Miles and Welch off the bench.????????????

It's definitely getting old seeing the same issues for two seasons. You can tell there's a lot of talent, but there's just no sign of things coming together on either end of the floor. We really need Drew to turn this around. It would be brutal to have to fire him this year with DePaul also open.

It would be nice to imagine a more experienced coach making better use of the talent we have, but we would almost certainly lose most of the players to the portal. The only candidate with Loyola ties out there is Mullins, who isn't exactly killing it at SIU. We would be looking at the same candidate pool as DePaul but with less money. Would love to see Drew turn this around, but it looks really unlikely at this point.

I'm sorry but showing up with an MVC skill level undersized point guard for A10 play is like bringing a knife to a gunfight! If that isn't bad enough, he also gets more minutes than anyone on the team. He is a crutch thatvopposing coaches will beat Drew over the head with until a different playing roatation is implemented. The wrong player has the keys to the program! Time to go young and build a program!

My theory is that the run and gun was supposed to be a magic bullet that would cure all ills, so now that it's flamed out again, the team is again unprepared for plan B -- and the fact that Drew didn't learn his lesson on that last year is troubling. I don't think it's uncommon for young coaches to think they've got some brilliant scheme that's going to "break the game" or something. But good coaches, even those that have their own trademark styles, scheme to the personnel they have. In-game, Drew seems to stubbornly stick with schemes even when the other team has obviously figured it out. The Tulsa game is a good example -- that high double-team worked against Harvard, but Tulsa had it completely licked. We stuck with it all game nonetheless.

I have no idea if Drew is going to put it together, he may just need to mature and with experience, will realize that he needs to be more dynamic with his in-game moves, or if he just doesn't have that in him. But I'm inclined to give him another year, unless there is a no-brainer candidate that makes themselves available.

I agree with Ramblor. I never understood the run and gun offense that Coach D wants to run. It didn't work last year and isn't working consistently well this year. Imho, we don't have guys who can handle the ball well enough against the avg A10 level defense without turning it over. Plus our abandonment of playing lights-out defense is troubling too.

Second, I think we really do need to make room for the younger guys and stop playing players like Norris with so many minutes. His offensive production has gone more often than not down and I don't think he's the defensive asset we think he is. He's too small to be an effective 1/2 guard and honestly is too slow. He's making more ball handling mistakes, his 3 shot is more cold than hot and he's just not a threat on the defensive side; getting outsized and outmaneuvered by your typical A10 G/F. Yeah Quinn makes allot of turnovers and Dawson is showing some flashes of brilliance but they need actual game minutes to get better. Des, Rubin and Alston would be the rest of the starting lineup

Is Coach D on the hotseat? I think yeah. Another bad season next year and we'll lose most if not all the momentum and goodwill we earned with the fanbase. Initially, I was surprised by Drew being called to the top spot over a more experienced, bigger name coach but I understood the reasons and tried to support it. Watson needs to make a move to get the ship righted again. If we can't get a consistent team with our current lineup it falls on Coach D and Watson and the current coaching team.

Wow-- there's a ton of topics here...

As to the run-and-gun argument, which I've been thinking about since the beginning of last season.... It's really hard to make the jump from the mid-mid-major levels to the higher and high majors. Look at Butler, Creighton, Xavier, George Mason, VCU, Wichita State, and Davidson as examples. Here's how it happens:

1. The mid-majors and low-mid-majors develop offensive and defensive systems, philosophies, strict discipline, and coaching tactics that begin to defeat most mid-major and some high major teams.
2. The lower majors (think Belmont, Stephen F. Austin, Florida Gulf Coast, etc.) go on a sustained run to get better athletes willing to work in the system to become mid-majors.
3. The mid-majors (Butler, Xavier, Loyola, George Mason, Davidson, VCU, etc.) get better athletes (think Gordon Heyward, David West, Steph Curry, etc.) who get them to a level where they can recruit 3-star athletes at almost every position.
4. At the Big East, American Athletic, West Coast, and A-10 level, athleticism and recruiting should be able to move programs past "Drilling and Discipline" concentration just to show that a program is consequential.... to the "We actually have a chance to go deep in tournaments" level with top athletes that are in the neighborhood of the Blue Blood programs.
5. The not-quite-major conference programs (West Coast, American, A-10, Mountain West) are in an awkward position where developing athletes, physical strength, and discrete skills are more important than developing discipline, drilling plays, and learning how to keep in front of offensive players. It's assumed-- somewhat-- that most players at that 3-star level know how to do the latter group, either intellectually, intuitively or physically. We know that's not always the case.

For the reasons listed above, I consider the move to the A-10 a difficult and highly challenging one (more so than most, evidently), and one that's worthwhile making, particularly because of the changes in the money and structure and rules of college basketball. We're at the point where you can ask yourself what a lot of college administrators ask: Do we want to have college sports as an "amenity"-- a "check a box" option for basic student life and scholarships for some well-performing students likely to stick around if they're on the Cross Country or women's volleyball teams.... OR.... Do we want to pursue college athletics with the goal of national championships, high-level competition, getting our college name in there, and providing the maximum level experience for college athletes?

As for Hot Seat, No..... Coach Valentine is NOT in the hot seat right now. If the Ramblers crash and burn in A-10 play (6 or fewer conference wins IMO would be crash and burn), some red flags will go up. Any coach is going to get four years to prove themselves barring a scandal, and Loyola's athletic program does not have buyout money lying around in giant piles. Thus far Valentine has proven a pretty good recruiter and savvy master of the portal, and that works in his favor. Where we are (and where Valentine is now) in KenPom and the A-10 is better than where Rhode Island is with former Dayton and Indiana coach Archie Miller. We're better off than where La Salle is with former Temple and Penn coach Fran Dunphy (who took his teams to 14 trips to the NCAA Tournament). We're better off than former SEC and Final Four coach Frank Martin is at UMass.

Loyola is going to give Valentine time to grow into the role like they did with Porter Moser. We are currently 135 in KenPom. Moser had one season better than 135 in his first five years.... 132 in 2015, but only by running the table in the CBI. Former Loyola assistant Bryan Mullins has finished 178, 192, 125, and 139 in his four completed years as Head Coach at SIU, even after being handed a program that hadn't finished below 150 for the previous four years with Barry Hinson.

If you are impatient with new coaches, go get season tickets to DePaul.... they've had four coaches since 2006 and two seasons above .500.

Thank you for you cogent analysis JCT. It firmly supports your conclusion, with which I agree.

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Let's go Braden!

JCT do you see an issue with the schemes themselves? There's a twitter handle called Blers Breakdown that's been fairly critical of some of the decisions that I think a lot of us have started following -- they really harped on the issues with halfcourt trap during the Tulsa game, for example.

My take is that Drew is too quick with substitutions and too slow with scheme adjustments. So we end up with some weird hodgepodge lineups that keep doing the same things that the opposing coach is exploiting, not exactly a recipe for success.

JCT,

You make a few compelling points, but the comparison of the coach's that you name in the A-10 and PM is a poor one. Not one of those inherited a program that went to the sweet 16 the prior year and returned 5 of the first 6 players on that team. Not one of those programs had been in a final 4 just 3 years prior.

Those mentioned by you have had very good/excellent careers and are now, somewhat out to pasture trying to get one last crack at the big time (save for PM). As for Mullins, spot on analysis. He has struggled and he has had talent.

Drew's situation is completely and utterly different. He took over a high achieving, high level program and has overseen its dismantling in the last 1 1/2 years as he attempts to implement his inane offensive scheme with talent that is not able to operate in that system.

As for his savvy in the portal, I would like to see him post a winning record in the portal era before bowing to his expertise.

I said it last year, I said it when he was hired, in 4 years the program will be an also ran in the A-10 and that is squarely on Steve Watson's shoulders.