CKG gushes about Smith all the time as well, despite her on court results. I feel CKG may be overly enamored with athleticism and expects basketball skills just automatically appear, since she lacked the former as a player and the latter came easy to her.
Someone asked how long should we have to wait to see results from hiring CKG? I have said from the start that A) you have to give a new coach 5 years to evaluate them and B) her chances of success coming in from where she did were in the range of winning the Powerball odds. To her credit CKG is far ahead of where I expected in high school recruiting, and that is showing a lot of promise to be an upper half BT team in 2-3 years if we don't screw up team chemistry from marginal portal kids. In game coaching? I give CKG a D. I don't feel she game plans well and is even worse in in-game adjustments. Third main coaching skill is player development. She gets an I right now as only 4 players have completed 3 years under her tutelage. I don't want to form a firm judgement off of that sample, BUT none of the 4 have improved since her first year here, and in fact 2-3 of the 4 regressed last season to have one of their worst years here. If this is in fact who CKG is as a coach, we likely have already seen her high water mark and seasons going forward will continue to get progressively worse. This is why no AD that cares even a little about their program would hire an NAIA coach with not one day of D1 coachign experience.