Just my opinions:
The team has under performed relative to their talent this year. Period.
Disagree that has been true in previous years. In my opinion, the issues have been more about talent and lack of retention.
Previous lack of retention has been mostly due to a lack of NIL funds (my guess). But, I don't have enough information to really know and I doubt many of you do either.
Old coaches tend to do things the way they learned and the way they have always done it. Worked perhaps and is a lot easier and less effort than self evaluation, learning and applying new theories. Moser is stuck on how he plays the last 5 minutes of a game and it is wrong and he is going to keep banging his head against the wall until his skull fractures. The definition of stupid is "doing the things the same way and expecting a different result". At this level with the type of talent he is facing, this is NBA lite and he has to understand that. You can not quit playing offense with 5 minutes to go, or 4 minutes to go, or 3 minutes to go, and probably even 2 minutes to go. He does. The preseason practice I got to watch last year I told you guys about, was actually an internal team scrimmage. The scrimmage was actually 8 four minute scrimmages. Each scrimmage was played as the last 4 minutes of a game. Kept score and had SEC officials calling the game. Assistants acted as coaches, each scrimmage was played out like a real game. With each scrimmage, players were given different amounts of fouls, etc. He was clearly trying to recreate every possible situation that could exist and play it out. He worked both teams in the scrimmage. During time outs and after each scrimmage he coached the kids on the mental aspect of how they played. It mostly revolved around how much time they used before a shot. Behind, play quicker on offense. Ahead, play slower on offense. When the shot clock, fully used, would result in a win regardless of how successful the other team was on offense would result in a win, he just played the clock. Meaning limit offense to layups and/or free throws. Not knowing much about coaching, it seemed to make perfect sense to me. But, watching it play out the last couple years, I think this is a flawed theory and has resulted, particularly, this year in a lot of these late comebacks/collapses. These crazy late comebacks can only occur when we go without scoring at all and they score a bunch. I think Moser may have had success using his approach with lesser competition, but at this level, the talent is so great, he just ends up fighting the last 5 minutes or so with the hands of his team tied behind their backs. In short, it seems to me he needs to evolve or coach at a lower level. In the NBA, they never quit playing offense until just a few seconds left.
I like porter generally, and don't think he has done a bad job considering what he has been given to work with and other circumstances that have been present, but if I am Joe or the new AD, I am either going to go in a different direction, after the season, or at a minimum, get some trusted basketball minds, look at some tape of our worst losses, get a handle on changes that he needs to make, and then have a sit down with him and see if he is fixed on doing it his way or willing to make some changes.
I would consider keeping Moser for the reasons that he has never had a team quit on him. Important to me in this evaluation. He is working on the cheap. And, I think that with a decent big, and perhaps a player or two, there is reason to think he would have a vastly different record this year and overall.
