I grow a little weary of all the critics on this board. I would suggest that before anybody criticize Matt Painter, they should list their own coaching experience, at what level they coached, what their record was, and how many championships they won.
My son is now a sophomore in college and I coached him and his friends at multiple levels throughout his childhood. I was good Indiana high school player. I was the most valuable player in my conference, averaged 18 points as a senior and for 30 years held the all-time assist record at my high school. I had a fairly good grasp of basketball. It turns out I was mostly clueless as a coach - although I did get better as I did it more.
How many of you have ever actually tried to communicate a basketball truth to a kid? First, you must make them understand the concept. Then, you have to make sure they have the physical skills to put the concept into practice. Then, you have to get them to remember to do it scrimmage. Then, you have to make sure they remember to do today what you told them yesterday. Finally, and most difficultly, you need to try to make them remember in the game situation, while hundreds of other things are going through their minds, to do what you told them to do.
As an example, I tried to emphasize the importance of taking care of the ball and eliminating turnovers. But I distinctly remember games where I thought, "An outsider watching this game might conclude that this stupid coach never even mentioned that turnovers were a bad thing." My boys would often do the exact opposite of what I had told them repeatedly. The skill of effectively communicating truth is a very difficult skill to master and is very rare.
Coaching is really hard. It is very rare indeed to find the specific combination of intelligence, humor, communication, sales skills, rigor, discipline, and a host of other skills required to generate a coach of the caliber of Wooden,Knight, Krzyzewski, and so on.
Purdue is an engineering school, so you might think the members of this board would understand the bell curve. Hall of Fame Division 1 coaches probably fall somewhere around 99.9999% on the bell curve of college basketball coaches in their specific mix of skills. Very good coaches might drop a few decimals and be just at the 99.9% level.
I was heart-broken & frustrated to see Purdue lose to Little Rock. It really does sap much joy from the entire tournament. But I don't conclude that I could have done better. And I don't conclude that there are a ton of other coaches that could have done better also.
I think Painter is a very good coach. I think he may be capable of taking Purdue to a final four someday. If so, then he is a very rare person indeed.
In my mind, the chances that another coach who would take the job would be better than him is significantly less than 50%. That is, I suspect that the chances of hiring a coach that is better than Painter is probably in the 10-20% range. It's painful to lose, but many many teams are going through that same pain right now. This is not unique to Purdue.
Please don't criticize about things that you don't understand and have never attempted.
My son is now a sophomore in college and I coached him and his friends at multiple levels throughout his childhood. I was good Indiana high school player. I was the most valuable player in my conference, averaged 18 points as a senior and for 30 years held the all-time assist record at my high school. I had a fairly good grasp of basketball. It turns out I was mostly clueless as a coach - although I did get better as I did it more.
How many of you have ever actually tried to communicate a basketball truth to a kid? First, you must make them understand the concept. Then, you have to make sure they have the physical skills to put the concept into practice. Then, you have to get them to remember to do it scrimmage. Then, you have to make sure they remember to do today what you told them yesterday. Finally, and most difficultly, you need to try to make them remember in the game situation, while hundreds of other things are going through their minds, to do what you told them to do.
As an example, I tried to emphasize the importance of taking care of the ball and eliminating turnovers. But I distinctly remember games where I thought, "An outsider watching this game might conclude that this stupid coach never even mentioned that turnovers were a bad thing." My boys would often do the exact opposite of what I had told them repeatedly. The skill of effectively communicating truth is a very difficult skill to master and is very rare.
Coaching is really hard. It is very rare indeed to find the specific combination of intelligence, humor, communication, sales skills, rigor, discipline, and a host of other skills required to generate a coach of the caliber of Wooden,Knight, Krzyzewski, and so on.
Purdue is an engineering school, so you might think the members of this board would understand the bell curve. Hall of Fame Division 1 coaches probably fall somewhere around 99.9999% on the bell curve of college basketball coaches in their specific mix of skills. Very good coaches might drop a few decimals and be just at the 99.9% level.
I was heart-broken & frustrated to see Purdue lose to Little Rock. It really does sap much joy from the entire tournament. But I don't conclude that I could have done better. And I don't conclude that there are a ton of other coaches that could have done better also.
I think Painter is a very good coach. I think he may be capable of taking Purdue to a final four someday. If so, then he is a very rare person indeed.
In my mind, the chances that another coach who would take the job would be better than him is significantly less than 50%. That is, I suspect that the chances of hiring a coach that is better than Painter is probably in the 10-20% range. It's painful to lose, but many many teams are going through that same pain right now. This is not unique to Purdue.
Please don't criticize about things that you don't understand and have never attempted.
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