RE: Thoughts on Marquette

[dfairchild]

I heard Tom Izzo (MSU coach) interviewed on the radio today.  He was asked
his opinion regarding players who will only stay for one or two years.  Are
they really worth having.  His response was a quote of Bobbie Cremins -
Eventually, it catches up with you.

I do not fault Huggins for recruiting DerMarr Johnson.  Mike Decoursey
called him the missing piece for a run at the national championship.  But it
has caught up with us.  It hurts even more since we have the "What could
have been" feeling regarding that year.  DerMarr left after one year and
Satterfield after two.  Then you add the Little and Grove fiascals.  I( say
we are fortunate to be where we are.

I am not so much frustrated about the Marquette game, but more at the DePaul
game.  The DePaul team played like the Bearcat teams of old.

I remember a couple years ago when the team wasn't playing hard for 40
minutes.  I believe it was the year the team got locked out of their locker
room and had to use the soccer locker room, etc.  Huggins said they had
gotten away from doing things his way, and they were going to get back to
that.

One of the ways that the early departures end up catching up  - this comes
from Izzo - is that you don't have the older guys in practice to teach the
younger ones how to practice.  Right now there are only 3 scholarship
players and 2 walk-on who know how to practice.  That's an incredible
difference compared to the team Lenny had around him his freshman year -
Kenyon, Tate, Fletch, Pete.

Huggins said recently that the new guys aren't coming in early or staying
late - if that's the reason they are not seeing minutes in the game - then
I'm with Huggins.

DF

-----Original Message-----
From: address@hidden [mailto:address@hidden
Sent: Monday, February 03, 2003 2:03 AM
To: address@hidden
Subject: Re: [UC Basketball] Thoughts on Marquette


I am a big supporter of Bob Huggins and recognize what the Bearcat program
would be without him, but I agree that Huggs is due for some criticism for
the lack of execution of this year's team.  I thought Huggs was badly
outcoached by Tom Crean in Saturday's game.  Marquette played smart.  They
had a game plan and executed it to perfection--even after Dwayne Wade got
two early fouls.  With his team making numerous mistakes, Huggs used nearly
every timeout to bait the refs over some alleged missed call--even when UC
was down 20..  Yes, the refs missed some calls, but in no way did the refs
cost UC the game. Why not use the timeouts to make changes to your offensive
or defensive strategy rather than wasting 30 or 120 seconds on a futile
attempt to change a referee's call?  UC's pitiful rebounding and atrocious
inside play, both offensively and defensively, were the reasons UC lost this
game.  I also think Huggs is making a big mistake in removing Moore and
Hicks and Kirkland every time they make one mistake.  Is Pitino doing that
at Louisville with Dartez, Garcia and Dean?  Which coach is getting more out
of their first-year players?  I think it is clear that Pitino is using a
"positive" approach to build up self-confidence in his young players while
Huggs uses a "negative" approach---"these guys don't know what they are
doing, they don't listen, they don't deserve to play", ad nauseum.  If an
experienced business executive said that about his own employees, it
wouldn't be long before the executive was out of a job-not the employees.