You boys still debating.
Again, how many of you all have coached a team for pay?
Anybody here coached a HS team? A Middle School team? College team? A club team in Europe or South America?
Not talking about your kids’ soccer team, or your boy’s Rec-league, coach-pitch baseball team.
Were you ever given a steady paycheck to coach?
What sport?
Football? Baseball? Basketball? Soccer? Hockey?
Anybody remember Roy saying he was fed up having to teach/coach toughness, or “want to”?
I do. He said it multiple times towards the end of his tenure. Like Dean, he used to hardly ever throw his players under the bus. It was always the coach taking the blame for the loss and praising the players for the wins. Almost exclusively. But not at the end…
The last 2 or 3 years with Roy, amazingly, you started hearing him complain about how the kids he had on his team needed extra motivation to get up for a game, or how he and the assistants had to try and “coach” heart, energy, toughness, grit, determination, enthusiasm, etc.
At the end, he was constantly complaining about how he was tired of having to do that.
Recall several games under Roy - towards the end - when the team would come out flat in the first half. Only after Roy peeled the paint off in the locker room would the team come out and play with a little fire in the belly.
Hubert is having to deal with a little bit of that too.
I coached over 25 years for a paycheck in organized leagues and conferences at the Club level in Europe and at the middle school and high school levels in the U.S. Admittedly I was an assistant coach most of those years and head coach for only 6 or 7 years.
It ain’t always the X’s and O’s… it’s the Jimmys and Joes.
Some years you would have all The talent in the world, and all you had to do as a coach would be roll the ball out there and say “go get em boys.”Just stay out of the way, coach, and let the big dogs eat. And an undefeated season and a conference championship was yours.
Other seasons, you wouldn’t have great talent just a collection of kids who wanted to wear the uniform. The head coach and assistants could coach their asses off, trying different things, trying new things, switching players’ positions, starting different groups of kids over others, trying to teach heart, grit and determination… All to no avail. You wound up with a losing record, and finishing near the bottom of the conference standings.
It wasn’t the fact you forgot how to coach…
Brady Manek and those guys caught fire in the second half of the season, figured out a way to play together as a team. They almost carried Hubert to the top of the mountain. Take away a Bacot ankle twist and a Brady knock on the head and they would’ve climbed that mountain.
(Notice I said “they” carried Hubert, not the other way around)
Year 2 - discord in the locker room and egos got in the way and there was no Brady Manek but a Nance. The right collection of Jimmys and Joes wasn’t there.
Year 3 - Voilà! Jimmy (Cormac) and Joe (Harrison) stepped in and one of the egos from the previous season left the team. Presto!
Last year - no big man on campus… not the right collection of Jimmys and Joes. Oops!
This year - Aha! We got some Jimmys and Joes on the squad once again. How will it end? Time will tell.
But the same sort of issues Roy had toward the end of his career are still there. How do you keep the motivation up and running within the team on a continual basis? Game to game, day to day, practice to practice, first half and second half?
You’d have to ask Roy what that is with the kids these days.
We start two freshmen. Only one of which is 5 star. The other is point guard.
I for one am willing to let the season play out and take stock then.
But the rumors I hear about what the powers that be are thinking: Hubert may be toast. I think a FF run may be the only thing that gives him year 6.