soonerchuck
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- Joined
- Oct 30, 2010
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A theory on what’s causing a late year slump & maybe fewer wins this year
I haven’t ever played basketball at any level and know little about the technicalities of the rules. However, I have been a fan of most sports that OU athletes participate in (especially football, basketball, softball/baseball, gymnastics, wrestling, and golf) since I enrolled there and bought my first all-sports ticket in 1962. I watch a lot of their sports on TV/the internet. I formulated these ideas over the last nearly 2 years as to why OU men’s basketball team has not done as well as all us of would have liked them to do.
Basic assumptions about basketball and our coach that I think are solid. (1) Height/length is good and you can’t teach height or length. (2) Elite athleticism (speed, quickness {foot and hand and change of direction} and jumping ability) are good and you can’t teach those. (3) Talent (mental and physical) is good and it can be taught/developed but it takes lots of coaching, practice time and repetition to achieve. (4) Teams may regress during the season or from season to season, but that does not mean that the individual team members have regressed. (5) Coach Moser is an intelligent person, a good teacher, a good high school recruiter and a good leader who knows the offensive and defensive strategies that can be built-up in a team of intelligent, coachable players over time to create a team that can win at high level during certain seasons when the stars align in a mid or lower-level conference and get an invite to the big dance. His excellent coaching has even taken his team multiple times into the sweet 16 and beyond at his previous coaching job at Loyola.
The factors I think that have contributed to the slow start toward making us a consistent contender to be in the Big Dance. (1) He underestimated the level of athleticism that exists in the Big 12 (the best conference in the country these past 2 years). (2) He was used to getting outstanding results from smart, talented and coachable players who (while less than elite athletes) would willing come on board from high school and stay in the program long enough to greatly increase their skill levels and develop the team membership attributes to play together in a very smooth and efficient way. He continued to recruit using what worked in the past though his conference environment toughened and the rules governing player stability changed.
What went wrong in general. (1) Covid restrictions made recruiting more difficult. (2) Unlimited transfers, the portal and NIL created more turnover than anyone was used to.
What have been the major factors in why this year is going end its season early and this year’s record likely will be worse than last year’s. (1) Turnovers in the roster are more devastating to a talent based team than it is to an athletically based team since athletic based teams can progress faster at getting more talented while talented teams are unlikely to grow more athletic during the season. (2) Moser’s high school and portal recruiting have likely focused largely on players he thought could fit into his desired mold of talent, intelligence and coachability. (3) Oweh and Bamisile (his 2 most athletic new recruits) did not seem to be fitting well into his system in the early part of this season so their minutes went down once we got into the conference games. (4) Some of the coaches and players on conference teams have now played us for 3 or more times in the last 2 seasons so they have developed better plans on how to attack us on offense and defend against us when we are on offense. Alabama (the current #1 team) got beaten by us like a drum. They may have underestimated us but we played fabulously in that game against a team that had not seen us this year or last year. Small school teams that are talented but not particularly athletic have pulled upsets surprisingly often in the Big Dance due to having good shooters with a good scheme that has not been seen by the higher seeded teams (remember how Princeton used to cause fits for teams vastly more athletic than them). (5) As the season goes on, athletically oriented teams improve faster than talent based teams. (6) We are likely the least athletic team in the conference and based on comments I have heard from broadcast experts repeatedly indicated that the referees in our games allow a much more physical game where fouls are less likely to be called. This helps the more athletic teams that are more closely guarding and often getting away with contact that elsewhere would draw a foul call.
I suggest these changes in our program. Given the realities of our major athletic level discrepancy, the availability to all players to have access to unlimited transfers, portal and NIL enticements, focus the recruitment needle to point more toward the athleticism side and work harder to develop elite athletes earlier in the year against non-conference foes. Eliminate red-shirting anyone not physically injured as it is highly unlikely they will stay on board after a year on the bench when they can easily find a new team in our current easy transfer situation. Others will have more and better ideas. But I am still confident that Coach Moser can right the ship.
I haven’t ever played basketball at any level and know little about the technicalities of the rules. However, I have been a fan of most sports that OU athletes participate in (especially football, basketball, softball/baseball, gymnastics, wrestling, and golf) since I enrolled there and bought my first all-sports ticket in 1962. I watch a lot of their sports on TV/the internet. I formulated these ideas over the last nearly 2 years as to why OU men’s basketball team has not done as well as all us of would have liked them to do.
Basic assumptions about basketball and our coach that I think are solid. (1) Height/length is good and you can’t teach height or length. (2) Elite athleticism (speed, quickness {foot and hand and change of direction} and jumping ability) are good and you can’t teach those. (3) Talent (mental and physical) is good and it can be taught/developed but it takes lots of coaching, practice time and repetition to achieve. (4) Teams may regress during the season or from season to season, but that does not mean that the individual team members have regressed. (5) Coach Moser is an intelligent person, a good teacher, a good high school recruiter and a good leader who knows the offensive and defensive strategies that can be built-up in a team of intelligent, coachable players over time to create a team that can win at high level during certain seasons when the stars align in a mid or lower-level conference and get an invite to the big dance. His excellent coaching has even taken his team multiple times into the sweet 16 and beyond at his previous coaching job at Loyola.
The factors I think that have contributed to the slow start toward making us a consistent contender to be in the Big Dance. (1) He underestimated the level of athleticism that exists in the Big 12 (the best conference in the country these past 2 years). (2) He was used to getting outstanding results from smart, talented and coachable players who (while less than elite athletes) would willing come on board from high school and stay in the program long enough to greatly increase their skill levels and develop the team membership attributes to play together in a very smooth and efficient way. He continued to recruit using what worked in the past though his conference environment toughened and the rules governing player stability changed.
What went wrong in general. (1) Covid restrictions made recruiting more difficult. (2) Unlimited transfers, the portal and NIL created more turnover than anyone was used to.
What have been the major factors in why this year is going end its season early and this year’s record likely will be worse than last year’s. (1) Turnovers in the roster are more devastating to a talent based team than it is to an athletically based team since athletic based teams can progress faster at getting more talented while talented teams are unlikely to grow more athletic during the season. (2) Moser’s high school and portal recruiting have likely focused largely on players he thought could fit into his desired mold of talent, intelligence and coachability. (3) Oweh and Bamisile (his 2 most athletic new recruits) did not seem to be fitting well into his system in the early part of this season so their minutes went down once we got into the conference games. (4) Some of the coaches and players on conference teams have now played us for 3 or more times in the last 2 seasons so they have developed better plans on how to attack us on offense and defend against us when we are on offense. Alabama (the current #1 team) got beaten by us like a drum. They may have underestimated us but we played fabulously in that game against a team that had not seen us this year or last year. Small school teams that are talented but not particularly athletic have pulled upsets surprisingly often in the Big Dance due to having good shooters with a good scheme that has not been seen by the higher seeded teams (remember how Princeton used to cause fits for teams vastly more athletic than them). (5) As the season goes on, athletically oriented teams improve faster than talent based teams. (6) We are likely the least athletic team in the conference and based on comments I have heard from broadcast experts repeatedly indicated that the referees in our games allow a much more physical game where fouls are less likely to be called. This helps the more athletic teams that are more closely guarding and often getting away with contact that elsewhere would draw a foul call.
I suggest these changes in our program. Given the realities of our major athletic level discrepancy, the availability to all players to have access to unlimited transfers, portal and NIL enticements, focus the recruitment needle to point more toward the athleticism side and work harder to develop elite athletes earlier in the year against non-conference foes. Eliminate red-shirting anyone not physically injured as it is highly unlikely they will stay on board after a year on the bench when they can easily find a new team in our current easy transfer situation. Others will have more and better ideas. But I am still confident that Coach Moser can right the ship.
