re: McMahon may prove to be a solid hire.

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didnt MM inherit only 1 scholarship player in Mwani Wilkenson? A player who couldn't dribble, pass, or shoot.

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Mwani was the only player that never entered the portal. Miller and Williams entered the portal but chose to stay at LSU...

A good way I can tell if someone is knowledgeable and a true fan of MBB at LSU is their opinion on Wilkinson. He was a key piece to our success during Wade's tenure. He injured his shoulder in his shooting arm in the offseason prior to McMahon's first season as HC. He never fully recovered but tried to play through it, which led to him being a shadow of his former self in the first season. He got surgery before McMahon's second season but was just never the same player. His shot form was clearly different and looked much flatter.

Of course you would know this if you were actually tapped in to MBB..

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He shot over 40% from 3 in 3 of the 4 years he was here and is a career 38.3% shooter from deep. Like you said he’d know that if he were an actual fan.

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I once argued with someone who was calling Mwani trash. I countered by saying he was a 40% 3pt shooter and was told: "That's still bad, that means he misses over half his shots"

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Well you said I was a non supporter until I wasn’t. Trust and proof is earned, that’s how it works, it’s not bashing someone.

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Taking a wait and see approach is one thing. Saying we shouldn't have wasted our time with JD for 2 years and that he isn't anywhere near as talented as Richardson from Florida is bashing. It's okay to be wrong about things. But don't get mad when people tell you that you're wrong.

It’s funny you left out the fact that a lot of avid JD supporters were saying the same thing and agreeing with me when I made that statement. Again that’s not bashing and you took that other comment out of context as well. Then, naturally you lob another false accusation that reeks of hypocrisy.

I’m not mad you’re just doing exactly what I said to begin with. But now finally since you want to get back on topic what do you like about his Xs and Os?

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X and O wise

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Here were go, the mystical Xs and Os.

I’ve even read he blows other coaches away.

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taking over a disaster of a program

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You mean a program that was in the NCCAT the year prior and reached 4 straight NCAAT (Covid cancellation) and an additional NIT in 2018.

Madking, drizz, and alt arguing over the competency of mcmahon. We have officially entered basketball season

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You mean a program that was in the NCCAT the year prior and reached 4 straight NCAAT (Covid cancellation) and an additional NIT in 2018.

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Cmon now lets be realistic. A program that had to fire their very successful head coach in due to NCAA violations where every player but 1 entered the portal to test the waters due to the uncertainty of the program. You can pretend like this isn't the truth but it is. It takes a while to build a program. It takes one day to destroy it.

It’s one of if not the worst aspect of McMahon. He loves the iso-high ball screen, especially in crunch time. Too bad it’s becoming one of the lowest% plays in college BB and gets even lower when you force the ball handier to shoot it which is what we do the vast majority of the time. On defense I don’t know how it’s even a debate, we’re terrible at defending the pick and roll and have been an abysmal rebounding team under McMahon because we’re always out of position on D. This stuff is fixable and he’s young so there’s no reason to think he can’t get it fixed but so far there’s been no improvement there.

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But now finally since you want to get back on topic what do you like about his Xs and Os?

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Offensively he uses multiple entries to keep defenses honest. This allows him to use similar actions but attack different defenders. He uses weakside actions to hold help defenders but also hits the weakside actions enough where they are real threats. Examples of this would be staggered screens on the backside for a 3. He also identifies how to create mismatches with his actions. Forcing switches to make other teams weaker defenders defend his better players.

Defensively he has been very vanilla with his teams. Playing the standard drop coverage against most ball screens which is the most popular ball screen coverage in college basketball. I think the vanilla nature has been because if you aren't very talented you need to do less and just be solid at the few things you do. I think he will get slightly more complex with this years team. Last 2 years he did a good job of mixing in zone to steal a few possessions as well. I'd imagine the amount of zone we play will expand as well as morphing from zone to man more like Wade used to do with his 1-3-1 full court trap back into man.

Overall I see teams that are "solidly coached" as in they aren't unsound in the things they are trying to do. We just lack in execution at times of those things. The SEC is a very talented league and CMM has to continue to evolve his scheme with what his players can do. As I stated in the last post, I'm not completely sold but I see a coach that has done a good job in his first 2 years. Now we need to see a jump in year 3 into a legit contender for the tourney.