re: Will Wade's excuse for poor defense in the second half of the Kentucky game

You know I’m a big Wade defender when criticism isn’t warranted but his comments and deflection this week are inexcusable. Throwing Watford under the bus is beyond the pale. Watford didn’t make the decision to be guarding point guards.

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Really? Which other freshman is playing? Mays, Smart, Days, Williams are experienced players. If they haven’t “grasped it” that’s on the coaching.

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Days and Williams averaged playing less than half a game last year.

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ame
if a coach can’t coach his team because they’re 40 feet away, there’s a serious problem

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it’s called a point. Skylar and Smart aren’t even a 1/2 of what Waters brought defensively and running the offense. They are ok players and that’s it. Neither will make it in the league.

Sorry Coach but at this point in the season if they still don’t know then that’s on you!

The bigs obviously help but their problems are far more deep rooted. Smart in particular,some of the others too, are not doing a great job of stopping dribble penetration combined with bad rotations are leading to all the open 3's and most of their problems in defense. At certain times they get caught in mismatches in personnel that cause these problems but as a coach you have to recognize them and sub for that mismatch and now that Manning is back he will help with depth and he's a pretty good defender.

Yeah, it was pointed out that I didn't post all of the context and it wasn't on purpose. I was on Dandydon website and what I posted is what was the only quote from the presser.

They obviously have communication issues with pretty much every situation they come across on defense. My point to be made is, yes, the players aren't executing on defense but for him to make that statement, at this juncture of the season and the players aren't "getting it", you're just as much to blame for your players not having a better understanding of what you want from them defensively and felt like that quote was a lame excuse for why they gave up so many second half points.

I'm not calling for the man's job, I just think after 3 years of poor defensive performance you would have tried to correct this. I truly believe the defensive problems are what's keeping this team from being just an above average team to being a really good team.

I don't mind the calling out of players either. From that quote, he's making it seem like the players are confused on what to do and he's barking out where to go and if that's the case, you're doing a bad job conveying your concepts and strategies ( the only player on the court that wasn't in your system is Watford, so the rest should already know the concepts and rotations). I know some on here feel that maybe the players aren't smart enough (maybe that's a small part of it) but they've played for 10-12 years of ball and at an obvious high level and have been exposed to good coaching ( on offensive and defensive techniques) whether it's at camps, clinics, school coaches or summer leagues, to be playing ball at LSU. I don't totally pardon the players, they obviously have their faults with lack of effort at times and bad communication. As a coach, if you're insinuating you need to direct their every move over midway through the season, you have a problem with how you're coaching because most of the contributing players have been in the system for a minimum of 2 years except for Watford. I'm not trying to say he's a bad coach either, I'm just saying if he can find a way to fix this, he can be a damn good coach and lead this team and future teams to places they may never have been before. Be willing to exhaust your options like coach O did and was able to seek out Joe Burrow and Joe Brady along with other hires ( assistants and analysts) with the advice from others. Look what the end result was.